Some notable examples from the past few days’ media coverage:

Swedes favour more bugging
Supreme court refuses to hear challenge to air passenger identification requirements
The continuing air passenger data-sharing disagreement between the EU & USA
US Visitor Fingerprints To Be (Perhaps) Stored by FBI
Bush says feds can open mail without warrant

I personally find some of these developments to be more than a little disturbing: however I am conscious that, particularly outside the United States (where many of the most egregious challenges to civil liberties occur nowadays), people don’t seem to care about privacy any more. Or else, they see these developments as inevitable and (to some extent) a necessary compromise.

I wonder if this has anything to do with the political context of the ‘war on terror(ism)’, or whether it’s part of a trend of passivity toward individual rights which pre-dates 9/11. In any case, many seem willing to trade privacy for ’security’. Ben Franklin aside, people apparently fail to recognise the dangerous, and quite possibly permanent trade-off they are making.

The arguments used always go something like this: “We are facing a radically new threat, that of violent and suicidal terrorism. This terrorism seeks to destroy our essential liberties”.

And then the logical complement which is usually given:

“Therefore, we must give up some individual liberties in order to guarantee the security of the community as a whole”

For the life (and liberty) of me, I can’t make this argument flow. We hear it every day from people like John Reid, Tony Blair and any number of chief police officers, yet as far as I can see, it’s analytically hollow.

The final gambit often turns out to be a suspension of due legal process, as a corollary of the compromise made. New threats = suspension of tried and tested principles. To take an example: Section 43 of the Terrorism Act 2000’s stop-and-search powers.

I’d like to throw this one open to my intelligent and well-informed readership. So, answers on a postcard please:

Is 9/11 entirely to blame for society’s acceptance of measures like these, or were people already willing to make the compromise?
Does the example argument presented have merit?
Is it justified, necessary or effective to make compromises in privacy and civil liberties for the purposes of defeating terrorism?
Are privacy and civil liberties contested concepts in the first place?
Do you think that measures such as Sec. 43 will be repealed - or is the loss of civil liberties a relatively one-way street?

And no, the title/headline is nothing to do with me - so send your groans/complaints elsewhere!

A leaked draft memorandum has revealed the UK government gave serious consideration to asking senior university staff to pass on information regarding Muslim or “Asian-looking” students to the security services. This approach appears to be the latest in a series of faltering efforts aimed at tackling ‘extremism’ in Muslim communities, for which the government believes campuses are “fertile recruiting grounds”.

The memo, which is not publicly available but was obtained by The Guardian, calls for university staff to cede information to Special Branch units of regional police forces regarding the activities of Muslim societies on campus.

It has provoked outrage among students, university staff and among Muslim communities.

Ousman Sadiq, a Masters student on Strathclyde’s Computer and Electronic Systems course described the measures as “a largely unhelpful bit of guidance that will end up only making Muslims feel more oppressed, while still not being a deterrent to those who tend towards an extremist viewpoint”.

NUS National President Gemma Tumelty criticised the plans as likely to introduce a “McCarthy-like atmosphere of suspicion between students and lecturers”, and the Universities and Colleges Union joint secretary Paul Mackney warned that the memo had the implication of “blurring the boundaries of what is illegal and what is possibly undesirable”. “UCU members have a pivotal role in building trust - these proposals, if implemented, would make it all but impossible”. The Australian Vice Chancellors Committee (AVCC) even went so far as to issue a press release to reassure students studying in Australia that such measures would never be implemented there.

While plans to distribute the memo itself among senior university staff appear to have been shelved, its essentially ill-founded premises, unhelpful tone and ham-fisted terminology are further evidence of the Government’s increasingly desperate attempts to foster better community relations from the top down.

The memo is ostensibly aimed at averting acts of terrorism, but confuses terrorism on the one hand, and radicalisation on the other. To say that universities sometimes radicalise people in their religious and political views is hardly controversial, but to consider this radicalisation in the context of Muslim communities a stepping stone to committing acts of violence implies a very dim view of students’ morality. Tumelty suggests that “indiscriminate monitoring of groups on campus assumes collective guilt”.

The accusatory tone of the document also has implications for student recruitment and retention. The numbers of Muslim students on many university courses is already unrepresentative of the wider social mix in many British cities - and Mackney fears that proposals like those in the memo, mixed with unhelpful comments from government ministers in recent weeks regarding issues such as the veil, could undermine the “enormous strides” made in recent years in university diversity and race relations.

The government’s approach of ethnic profiling, as evidenced by the ‘Asian-looking’ reference in the memo, has also come in for sharp criticism. Labony Choudhury, a student at Sheffield University interviewed by The Guardian, pointed out that “being Muslim has nothing to do with the colour of your skin, nor terrorism of any description. It’s like trying to define what a rapist looks like. Far too simplistic.”

By Graeme West

29th October 2006

Traditionally, copyright has been firmly in the realm of ’stakeholder’ politics, but in an age where ’stakeholders’ include 15-year-olds uploading videos to SueTube (explanation), multi-billion dollar ‘content’ companies and the quasi-corporatist non-governmental organisations, isn’t it time for a proper debate?

The Parallel Politics of Copyright and Environment:

zumaya100k writes “In recent months, Slashdot has covered the rise of the Pirate Party and the battles in Europe over iPod interoperability. Canada’s Hill Times has an insightful column from Michael Geist that links these developments as the growing importance of copyright as a political issue. He argues that copyright is now tracking the environment as a mainstream political issue.” (Geist is talking about Canada here, but much the same can be said about the U.S. and other places.)

(Via Slashdot).

I, for one, welcome our digitising, organising, aggregating, comparison shopping, advertising, Mountain View overlords.

Publishers Thank Google for Book Sales:

eldavojohn writes “A few book publishers are actually thanking Google for an apparent rise in sales due to Google’s scan plan. Google is busy defending itself against authors and publishers that have brought lawsuits for ignoring copyrights. The director of the Oxford University Press said, ‘Google Book Search has helped us turn searchers into consumers.’ It seems to work in favor of the smaller publishers: ‘Walter de Gruyter/Mouton-De Gruyter, a German publisher, said its encyclopedia of fairy tales has been viewed 471 times since appearing in the program, with 44 percent of them clicking on the ‘buy this book’ Google link.’ Do you think that Google’s ’sneak peak’ search access increases sales or violates copyrights on intellectual property?”

(Via Slashdot).

And so it comes round again, international Talk Like A Pirate Day. This year’s a little more special than most, with so much piratey memorabilia available. For starters, Apple is making a contribution thanks to this graphic, and the availability of Piratey (or should that be Richards-ey) movies on the DRM-laden iTunes store.

Piratey translation:

Yarr, it be upon us oncemore, the Daye when landlubbers succumb their wretched Speach t’the way of the Salty Seadog. The riggin be sound on this here Daye - yarr, Davy Jones’ Locker’ll take me now if there ain’t a grand booty on them thar Inter Nette, of Squiffies who be postin’ plunder of Gentlemen o’ Fortune.

Aye, me parrot concurs.

Yes, indeed the Internet has given us some great things: RSS; instant communication across political and cultural boundaries; Chuck Norris facts and more, but it is surely in this area of piratey camp humour in which its faculties as a medium for increasing human understanding truly shine.

Just look at the piratey songs; dictionaries; thesaurus (and wiki) lesson plans; clothing; Flash animations; offical TLAPD songs; movies; online Piratey translator cartoon (one of my faves); Slashdot story; and more the Web has to offer. And if all this Piratese confuses your English-accustomed tongue, see this helpful Pirate grammar how-to video.

Ask not what pirates can do for you; ask what you can do for pirates.

And don’t forget this guy.

My birthday has, after two weeks, begun to cease being the central focus of my life… I had a great time out with friends on on the 1st August (those who remember more of it will attest to this). And I was pleasantly surprised at the turn-out level

21sts seem to go on and on - and since my cousin’s 21st was yesterday, it felt like the dust had barely settled from mine before the whole gravy train started up again. It’s all very nice though, and I think he had a good time. there’s something tangibly different this birthday from the others I’ve had. I suppose the most obvious thing is that people treat it as sort of watershed - the beginnings of some new stage of your life. I expect that for me this is probably true. I’ve changed a great deal in the past few months, and though I won’t bore you with the details, I rather like the way things are going for me just now.

Oh, and come the 18th, Sharon and I will have been together for 18 months.

A few small updates and errata:

I’m working at Spoken Word three days a week just now, splitting my time between fixing bugs in Padova, and working on our squeaky-clean and brand new installation of the excellent Fedora repository software. Fedora is an interesting, though opaque environment. Lots of challenges ahead…

Loving Muse right now. I have tickets to the Edinburgh gig on the 24th and also to the Glasgow one in November. Should be excellent.

My friend Ross won a silver in the high jump at the Scottish Athletics Championships today, and also became under 20s champion. Though if I could jump my own height, I think I would put it to some form of criminal purposes. Not sure what, but there’s gotta be a fence somewhere that needs jumped over.

I also got my phone pretty much sorted out. I received a refund for the original E61 and thanks to a miraculous bit of timing I only had 24 hours ‘downtime’ between sending away the ‘old’ one and receiving the new one from a reseller. So I only had to use the yucky WinMo T-Mobile MDA Vario (right)for that short period. Euughh. It *should* be an okay phone, considering the specifications, but that OS - horrible. That one’s being eBay-ed ASAP. The new E61 is great.

I started reading Great Expectations. My literary criticism skills are about as advanced as that of a house-brick, so I will make a stark generalised comment and say “what a wonderful writer old Charlie was”, and leave it at that.

TTFN, dear readers. I love you all in exactly the way that one does not love him.

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