Published letters on civil liberties issues

• Let's see an end to Biometric ID Cards - Jun 2009

• Brown's position on ID - Jan 2008

• Data protection - Nov 2007

• Security at any price? - Nov 2007

• Why Brown is wrong to refuse to meet Mugabe - Sept 2007

• Labour Ministers thwarted by the Lord on Freedom of Information opt out - June 2007

• Taking a Civl Liberty - June 2007

• Thumb Prints for Library Books - Jan 2007

• ID cards & glorifing terrorism - Feb 2006

Let's see an end to Biometric ID Cards - Jun 2009

I am heartened to see the Conservatives getting behind the long running campaign by the Liberal Democrats to block the government’s biometric ID card extravaganza. ID cards, along with many other measures promoted by this increaingly authoritarian Labour government, will not protect us from terrorism, they will simply waste at least £5 billion of public money.

Creating vast databanks of information on ordinary law-abiding citizens provides a resource for criminals. Criminals do not participate in these databases, except as identity thieves.

All complex data systems leak information, whether through human error or through deliberate criminal activity. We all remember the mountain of personal data on millions of children, families, property owners, driving licence holders, army personel, and others that has gone missing over the past couple of years. The biometric ID card just adds another opportunity for error and theft.

Your identity is safe when YOU hold the information about yourself. If a database has your DNA, your fingerprints, your mother’s maiden name, the birthdays of your family, your entire medical history, your shopping habits, your credit card details, etc. then the person who steals all this information becomes you. To all intents and purposes, you no longer own yourself.

Given the many failures of this government, the collapse of the banking system, the recession we are all suffering, and the massive debts this government is committing us all to for decades into the future, one might have hoped that abandoning this wasteful and pointless ID card idea would have made sense, even to Gordon Brown.

Not a bit of it. In the absence of any new vision or plan for the country, the Labour government continues to throw money at a project that will no nothing to prevent terrorism. This is a bankrupt government.

Brown's position on ID - Jan 2008

So Gordon Brown is now wriggling on Biometric ID cards and refuses to answer whether or not he supports them.

Now the Prime Minister is being coy on this great Labour initiative will Hugh Bayley tells us where he stands, or will he wait until he is told where he stands, as on so many other issues? He has voted for ID cards and superdatabases and all the rest of it at every opportunity, while at the same time also voting to exclude MPs from the Freedom of Information Act. He has been remarkably silent over the dozens CDs that have been flying out from government offices all over the place, threatening the security of personal information on tens of thousands of York residents, and tens of millions of UK residents.

The Lib Dems have been the only major party to consistently oppose the gross infringements of our civil liberties that this Labour government has been imposing on us all. It is now patently obvious to anyone with half a grain of intelligence that superdatabases don't work. Hospitals can't keep information secure. The DVLA can't keep information secure. The Revenue and Customs offices can't keep information secure. Why should anyone believe an ID superdatabase would do any better?

And even if the information could be stopped from leaking like a sieve, who really believes terrorists will throw their hands up and run away as soon as every UK citizen is forced to carry one? Those who flew planes into the twin towers in New York were carrying valid passports, so isn't it time to ditch this hugely expensive and unwelcome Labour initiative once and for all?

Data protection - Nov 2007

It seems like only days ago that I wrote in responding to an article in the Press about civil liberties, reminding readers about the dangers of the DNA databases and the government's ID card plans.

Today we learn that 25 million of us, including me and my family and probably yours, have had the data the government holds about us lost in the post. 25 Million of us. Our National insurance numbers, bank details, addresses and so on have all gone missing. Just the data any fraudster needs to access our bank accounts, fill in forms, take out loans, and countless other opportunities for identity fraud.

Is anyone out there still convinced that this government is looking after our best interests with its plans for biometric ID cards storing personal information about us that we ourselves cannot access. Or how about the DNA database with information about millions of British citizens including tens of thousands of children? What if that goes missing in the post?

Maybe someone could use the child benefit information that has just been lost to apply for a dodgy passport then access the DNA database to obtain those records and compromise the whole system and frame you or I for crimes we had nothing to do with. Of course, ministers will be queuing up to tells us this just isn't possible. Just like losing information of seven million families with children under 16 isn't possible, I suppose.

Security at any price? - Nov 2007

Thank you to the Press for raising the issue of DNA databases and civil liberties.

In a week where government is seeking to extend detention without charge, it is worth reconsidering where Labour's surveillance society is taking us.

Although this nation has only 1% of the world's population, we have 20% of all the cctv cameras in the world. 1 camera for every 14 people in the UK.

A higher percentage of our population has been DNA sampled than any other nation, with 3.6 million people on the UK database. In all other developed nations, taking DNA samples of children to identify them for life is seen as a gross infringement of civil liberties, rather than a useful way of cautioning twelve year olds.

We already detain people without charge longer than any other developed nation. And still the government wants more.

How did this happen? The government tells us these measures make us safer but there are many ways of making people safer that do not involve destroying our civil liberties.

An obvious way to make us safer is to teach parenting skills to those who self-evidently lack them. Another is to avoid starting wars in Iraq or Afghanistan then we wouldn't attract and inflame theterrorism the government seeks to protect us from. You cannot impose democracy on others, however noble your intentions.

It took centuries for the British people to obtain the freedoms that this government is tossing away in favour of CCTV, DNA databases, biometric ID cards, unlimited detention without charge, and cosy chats with repressive regimes like that in Saudi Arabia.

A read of George Orwell's Animal Farm reveals uncomfortable reminders of the risks we run from an all powerful state. It is a shame we didn't have an autumn election.

Why Brown is wrong to refuse to meet Mugabe - Sept 2007

When despots and tyrants are persecuting their own population the nations of the world always have three options: to use military force to bring about change, to use politics, or to do nothing.

The situation in Zimbabwe is horrific, with hunger everywhere and life expectancy in the low thirties. Explaining the spiraling inflation in her country, a Zimbabwean woman explained recently that the money she had spent to buy her house five years ago would now only buy her a banana. Our Northern Rock problems are nothing compared with the problems facing ordinary Zimbabweans.

Our government is content to meet representatives from Burma dictatorship, a regime as brutal as Mugabe's. Why? Because Burma has resources we need. Zimbabwe has nothing so our government can turn its back on the regime.

We have a right to expect our leaders to have the courage to meet with dictators and challenge them directly. By all means ban Mugabe and his colleagues from traveling to Europe as private individuals but his government must be held to account.

We've had a bellyful of military intervention, with Labour's illegal war in Iraq, but we also have the example of John Major's and Tony Blair's hard work in Northern Ireland. We pay our national politicians to represent us and our values on the world stage, however difficult or unpleasant that may be. Our Prime Minister turning his back on Mugabe, in the face of the suffering in Zimbabwe, is not an option.

Labour Ministers thwarted by the Lord on Freedom of Information opt out - June 2007

The Tory private members bill which sought to free MPs from being subject to the Freedom of Information Act was killed off today by the House of Lords, in spite of having received the support of seven Labour government Ministers.

There wasn't a single member of the House of Lords prepared to back what Liberal Democrat leader in the Lords, Lord McNally, called 'this squalid little Bill'.

In a week when the government has again blocked an enquiry into the disaster which is the illegal war in Iraq, let's celebrate the end of this attempt by Labour and Tory MPs to put themselves above the law.

The debate now switches to those who are arguing for a stronger freedom of information act. A new Freedom of Information (Amendment) (No2) Bill, sponsored by Liberal Democrat MPs Tom Brake, Norman Baker and Simon Hughes will shortly go before the Commons. It seeks to remove the veto which currently allows ministers to overrule the Information Commissioner and Information Tribunal. The bill also proposes the introduction of a time limit for responses to public-interest Freedom of Information requests. Compared with many other countries we have a long way to go on Freedom of Information.

I hope we can rely on York's MP, Hugh Bayley, to turn up to support this new bill, given his professed commitment to Freedom of Information and his failure to vote against the previous one.

Taking a civil liberty - June 2007

Your readers will recall that, a few months ago, Joan Ryan, under-secretary of state with special responsibility for passports, identity cards, criminal records, and judicial co-operation used this paper to lecture us all on civil liberties. I was wrong, she told me, to worry about the government using ID cards and a super database to erode our freedom.

We know know why she wasn't worried. Yesterday she voted in support of the Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill promoted by the former Conservative Chief Whip David Maclean. Seven other Labour Ministers joined her, including Tony McNulty, Minister for Security.

This bill allows Members of Parliament to exempt themselves from the Freedom of Information Legislation that covers everyone else in this country. So while the government stores information about the rest of us on databases that civil servants all over the country can access, and send from one department to another, with all the risks that represents, Joan Ryan and those around her can decide for themselves what can or cannot be known about them and their activites. We already have a situation where you or I could be refused access to the information the government is storing about us, on the grounds that it is too expensive to retrieve. Now the Ministers and government responsible for passing the legislation are exempting themselves from having to tell us anything at all about their activites.

From Hugh Bayley's comments in Friday's Press it would appear he didn't consider the matter important enough to bother voting. As with governments before them, this government has been in power too long and has lost all sense of restraint. One law for Ministers and another for the rest of us is not compatible with democracy.

Thumb Prints for Library Books - Jan 2007

Re: finger printing school children, one head teacher comments in your article on Monday that ' the world has no answer to terrorism without using these things '. This shows the insidious way we persuade each other that endlessly reducing the liberties of the majority makes us safe.

Why is it that in streets packed with more CCTV cameras than any other western nation we allow certain people an opt out? Three men entering a bank in balaclavas are an evident threat, but three figures hidden beneath full face veils on a crowded tube train are simply making a cultural expression of difference.

The government imposes ID cards on us, bearing 'biometric' information, and anything else they want on the microchip: about our friends, our politics, our religion. But we won't have the right to know what is stored on the cards so we will be unable to challenge any errors.

The tiresome argument that 'if you are innocent what have you got to fear' is nonsense. None of this stuff is meant to provide an opportunity for the innocent to walk with their heads held high; we're sold it on the basis that it will catch criminals and terrorists. If it fails to do that then it's worthless junk.

Honest people of every race and religion, [Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Jew, and atheist alike] are having their rights eroded year on year, by a government failing to tackle the real and glaring loopholes that put us all at risk. We need a written constitution that defines the right of all UK citizens, one that ensures that the same civi liberties apply to everybody.

I suspect that 'thumb prints for library books' is simply an ill-considered technological gimmick but what it says about the disregard for civil liberties is telling.

ID cards & glorifing terrorism - Feb 2006

In the space of a few days we see further proof of how illiberal this Labour Government is, and how disinterested it is in tackling the real problems that face us.

Take ID cards: hundreds of millions, possibly billions of pounds, no-one knows, to be lavished on a scheme that we are told is not compulsory ... except that if you want a passport you have to have an ID card. You work it out.

Take the so-called glorification of terrorism. I take my hat off to Nelson Mandela [branded a terrorist for over 20 years] for his lifelong service to humanity by challenging the south african state and the apartheit system it perpetrated. Does that mean I can now expect to go on trial? Who decides who is a terrorist? Blair? Bush? Murdoch?

Take the environment: last week Blair announced that we have just seven years left to save the planet then refused to even discuss putting a tax on aviation fuel.

On issue after issue Blair is showing that he is not fit to lead this country - he neither protects our rights nor our environment. On initiative after initiative he doesn't lead, he simply follows the US administration's wishes. Why do we need a biometric identity system? Because the US is insisting on it. And what if the rest of the world refused, would the US cut itself off from everyone? I don't think so.

And don't expect any better from Brown who is even more pro-american and pro-big business than Blair. Like millions of others I breathed a sigh of relief when 18 years of Tory rule ended in 1997. But what have we got? A ruling elite who are planning to change Prime Ministers without holding an election, who curb the freedoms of us all although they only received about a quarter of the popular vote, and who refuse to engage with the issue that Blair himself tells us is the most important issue facing the planet - Climate Change.

Published and promoted by Christian Vassie, 10 Blake Court, Wheldrake, York YO19 6BT