http://whiterose.samizdata.net/White Rose is a protest blog
collective focusing on civil liberties in the UK and the rest of
world.

It was set up to point a finger at the erosion of personal freedom in
the UK.

Government's active measures introduce new means of control such as
identity cards and surveillance cameras, the passive measures such as
weakening of double jeopardy and presumption of innocence.

The arguments:

Most measures regarding security and crime control do not work.
Their effect is restriction of 'honest citizen's' privacy and freedom.

Alternative solutions to the security and privacy 'trade-off'
The resistants Gabriel Syme and Perry de Havilland of Samizdata.net
to rally the Anglosphere behind the UK. White Rose contributors are
those bloggers and non-bloggers who oppose restrictions on personal
liberties.


Saturday, February 19, 2005
Travelling with the Big Brother
Gabriel Syme (London)

Big Brother
The land of the free is imposing privacy-busting requirementson its
visitors.

At America's insistence, passports are about to get their biggest
overhaul since they were introduced. They are to be fitted with
computer chips that have been loaded with digital photographs of the
bearer (so that the process of comparing the face on the passport
with the face on the person can be automated), digitised fingerprints
and even scans of the bearer's irises, which are as unique to people
as their fingerprints.
There are so many concerns that one does not know where to start:

For one thing, the data on these chips will be readable remotely,
without the bearer knowing. Wednesday, February 02, 2005
Terror suspects: let judges decide
Alex Singleton (London)

Security
Dr Eamonn Butler writes on the Adam Smith Institute Blog:

Soon after 9/11, Britain introduced draconian anti-terrorist
legislation that included the power to imprison suspected terrorists
without trial. It required an abrogation of human rights laws, and
was a denial of habeas corpus: but the argument was that in some
cases, producing evidence in a trial might expose secret sources or
prejudice the lives and safety of the security services and their
informers.

Not surprisingly, the High Court objected. So last week, Britain's
Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, replied that instead of detaining
suspects in prison, he would keep them under house arrest, bar them
using the internet and mobile phones, and so on.

Home Office ministers said we shouldn't worry about this, because
nice Mr Clarke would keep all such detentions under constant review.
And because it only applies to international terrorists. But then
other ministers said it might apply to animal rights campaigners too,
since they were pretty dangerous characters. Err...where is this
going to end?

Sure, a liberal order must protect itself from those who would
destroy liberalism itself. And maybe, at times, you have to act
illiberally to do that. But you should still act according to the
rule of law. If there is evidence, it should be produced in court. If
the evidence is too sensitive to be made public, then it should be
heard in private before qualified judges. At the moment we are
jailing people, and soon we will be imprisoning them in their homes,
on the say-so of a politician. That is scary.

Sensible blog Spyblog, does an excellent job of pointing out how the
state likes to keep an eye on us via CCTV systems, ID cards and by
collecting our DNA. As a servant of the state it worries me, and if
it worries me then it really ought to worry you.
- Dave of The Policeman's blog

This, along with the passport could form the basis of an intrusive EU
wide identity card, similar to that the current British government is
proposing at national level, and certainly would enable EU-wide
surveillance of everyone's movements.

The organisations Privacy International, Statewatch and European
Digital Rights have written an open letter to MEPs. They are calling
for endorsements of this letter, please email privacyint@...
if you wish to do this. (The email address (terrrights@...)
given on PI's web page for this purpose bounced.)

They are also calling for people to contact their MEPs over this by
November 30th. You can find UK MEPs' emails here. For those EU
residents not in the UK, these links should help.
http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/006977.html

California is crawling with cops. That kind of stop is more common in
America than here, for any kind of traffic infringement, or minor
violation. In fact rush hour is policed, not to keep traffic flowing,
but to catch people with any kind of minor infringement. Rush hour,
is easy pickings. Libertarianism is ok, the feitishisation of America
is bizare. They do have more people in prison than here, and pop over
to see overcriminalized.com and see exactly how free it is. Or try
living there, rather than visiting.

David, I posted a link on another thread below, but it was already so
far down the screen, you may not have seen it. It addressed precisely
what you're talking about and it left me with raised goosebumps. It's
the lead article in this week's Speccie, and is the first-person
account of a man in London innocently making his way to a meeting
when he was stopped by the police ... Go to the Speccie and read the
whole thing if you have the stomach for it.

As in your piece above, I highly recommend it to Americans.

http://www.alternet.org/rights/21105/
The Inquisition Strikes Back

By Jules Siegel, AlterNet. Posted January 29, 2005.

In 'Guantanamo: What the World Should Know,' it's hard to say which
is more disgusting, the descriptions of the torture or the bone-
chilling analyses of how the president gave himself the powers of an
absolute military dictator.

The Guantanamo Human Rights Commission

Did you know that there was a Guantanamo Human Rights Commission
dedicated to ending all forms of internment without trial? Founded in
January 2004, the site provides information on the latest on what's
going on with the military tribunals, how to write to civil liberties
organizations, and action you can take daily to support civil
liberties.

And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls
for thee." – John Donne, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions,
Meditation XVII, 1623

We have by now all seen much of this material before, but reading it
all in one piece, told by human voices in this book-length interview,
is not easy to take. "Guantánamo: What the World Should Know"
(Chelsea Green) – by Michael Ratner and Ellen Ray – becomes a heart-
stopper once you cross the line and realize that you could be any of
these victims.

Michael Ratner, President of the Center for Constitutional Rights, is
co-counsel in Rasul v. Bush, the historic case of Guantánamo
detainees now before the U.S. Supreme Court. His interviewer, Ellen
Ray, is President of the Institute for Media Analysis, and a widely
published author and editor on U.S. intelligence and international
politics.