On liberty
Today is the Convention on Modern Liberty in London (and elsewhere) to discuss “the crisis of fundamental rights and freedoms”. Presumably this means the erosion thereof, and how it’s a bad thing. Of course, this being the UK — world capital of CCTV — I cannot be entirely sure.
More seriously, though, the UK government has a worrying set of policies when it comes to the freedom of its citizens, residents and visitors. Back in Canada, trying to put a CCTV camera pointing at a crowded street for monitoring purposes would be met with considerable publice furor, and the politicians would doubtlessly back down, as they have in the past. Here in the UK, they are everywhere — it is accepted that you are being filmed by the government hundreds of time each day.
Back in Canada, if you are not charged with a crime there is a very short period of time during which the police can detain you without charging you — one day. The rule is, if you have done something wrong, you are told what it is and put into the process. It makes sense to me. Here in the UK, they can already detain you for a ridiculous amount of time — 28 days, in fact. Somehow, the government feels this is not long enough, and are pushing to extend it to 42 days.
Twenty-eight days is already too long to be jailed without charge. It is long enough to screw up somebody’s life — get them fired from their job, for instance. After all, what employer is going to say “it’s OK that you spent four weeks in jail, we did not mind your unscheduled absence”? And at the end of this, there is not even enough evidence to charge the person? Then why would they be arrested in the first place?
In fact, I now present a short skit showing the impact of arrests without charges:
Canada:
Employer – Where were you yesterday, eh?
Employee – Arrested. It was a misunderstanding, no charges or anything.
Employer – The hosers!
UK:
Employer – Where were you last month, yeah?
Employee – Arrested. It was a misunderstanding, no charges or anything.
Employer – Uh-huh. We hired a replacement. Go away.
Enough of my ramblings, though. Philip Pullman is a much better writer than me. Let’s see what he has to say:
Are we conscious of being watched, as we sleep? Are we aware of an ever-open eye at the corner of every street, of a watching presence in the very keyboards we type our messages on? The new laws don’t mind if we are. They don’t think we care about it.
We want to watch you day and night
We think you are abject enough to feel safe when we watch you
We can see you have lost all sense of what is proper to a free people
We can see you have abandoned modesty
Some of our friends have seen to that
They have arranged for you to find modesty contemptible
In a thousand ways they have led you to think that whoever does not want to be watched must have something shameful to hide
We want you to feel that solitude is frightening and unnatural
We want you to feel that being watched is the natural state of things
One of the pleasant fantasies that consoles us in our sleep is that we are a sovereign nation, and safe within our borders. This is what the new laws say about that:
We know who our friends are
And when our friends want to have words with one of you
We shall make it easy for them to take you away to a country where you will learn that you have more fingernails than you need
It will be no use bleating that you know of no offence you have committed under British law
It is for us to know what your offence is
Angering our friends is an offence
(Mr. Pullman’s words found via Mr. Doctorow at BoingBoing)
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