Liberty isn't the opposite of security, it's the basis for a safe, strong and successful society

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

Although the conext of Benjamin Franklin's remark is somewhat specific (it was about rich people using political power to dodge taxes), the sentiment comes down to us as an essential argument against authoritarian government. It also reminds us, or should do, that liberty is not the opposite of security. Nations with high levels of freedom are, overwhelmingly, safer than places without those liberties. Moreover, people in free countries are less fearful and more optimistic.

So it should concern us that Onward, the supposedly 'conservative' (or at least 'centre-right') think tank run by Theresa May's former policy wonk now frames the future direction of policy - the "Politics of Belonging" is their slightly cutesie term - as a choice between freedom and security:

The poll suggests that policies which increase freedom, autonomy and choice are unlikely to be major vote-winners in the way they were for much of the last fifty years. Instead, policies that restore a sense of belonging, provide security and protect citizens from the modern world are likely to be most effective.

My first thought here is that this is not really a surprise since Onward has given the people it polled a binary choice between "a society that focuses on giving people more security" and one that “focuses on giving people more freedom”. Do you want A or B ask the pollsters without it seems considering that there isn't any real contradition between freedom and security.

There are plenty of competing measures of safety but all of them show that the world's safest countries - least conflict, lower crime, safer streets - are all places we would see as liberal.

The Global Peace Index has a Top 5 of Iceland, New Zealand, Austria, Portugal and Denmark while SafeAround's similar ranking has a Top 5 of Iceland, Denmark, Austria, New Zealand and Singapore. If we look at immediate public concerns about crime for example we have a Top 10 including Sweden, Austria, Norway, Denmark and Japan. And when we look at the extent to which people trust other people (a central factor in the idea of belonging that Onward speak about) we find the same countries - Sweden, Denmark, Norway - crop up near the top again.

Although authoritarian places like Singapore (sadly a favourite of so many on the Tory right, something they share with China's leadership) appear in these lists, the majority of the world's safest places are associated with those individual liberal values Onward place as the opposite to security. They are also places with very free market economies, big welfare states and that invest a great deal in community (much of Denmark's huge welfare state is managed by local not national government, for example).

I like it when conservatives talk about community but this research seems to co-opt the ideas of family and community into a justification for “having experts, not government, make decisions according to what they think is best for the country”. And we see a sort of isolationist, protectionist streak in the claims that that "globalisation, technological change and immigration have harmed ordinary people’s lives, jobs and wages".

What we have here isn't a reflection of what a good, safe, strong society looks like (clue - it looks quite a lot like Denmark) but rather a reflected set of fears about crime, terrorism and economic insecurity. Day after day wise-looking grey heads on the TV tell the public that the economy is weak, that everyone is getting poorer and that austerity is biting. Other 'experts' appear and tell them that every business is trying to rip you off, that all sorts of scams and cons are widespread and the Internet needs controlling because it's fostering all sorts of evils (even though you and I don't see any of them). All this is accompanied by a weird ennui among the great and good; nothing is quite right, there's hate and offence (albeit mostly a sort of lazy on-line hatred and offence) everywhere, and you can't trust anyone any more.

Is it any surprise that, when asked to chose between the freedom that gave us all this bad stuff (hint - it didn't, quite the opposite) and some sort of unspecified 'security' people plump for the latter? And if that just means a few more coppers, a bit more spent on the military and some road safety cameras, then we're all cool with it. But what if it means ending the aspiration for free trade (and what else does “globalisation has not benefited most people” mean) and closing the borders to foreigners - especially brown foreigners? Will that really make us more secure?

If we want a real agenda for conservatives, one embracing freedom and democracy, then we need to start with the idea that the best government is government closest to the people. This means a radical devolution back to communities - not the technocratic and undemocratic nonsense of grand regional mayors given a campaign pulpit and a little bit of central government cash. It means putting communities not technocrats in charge of the police, the hospitals and the schools. It means central government handing over administering welfare and the collection of taxes to those communities.

At the same time we need a return to the presumption that people are mostly decent and honest. And that we should trust them. This means an end to officious demands for ID, the simplification of welfare applications and tax forms, and no longer seeing people as just a reference number on a national database.

We also need to rediscover some old ideas - a chivalry that recognises men are strong but raises them to use that strength for good, a charity that isn't a well-funded industry but rather individual, selfless acts of care for our neighbour, and that the family forms the bedrock of a safe, secure society. What we don't need is more of the security state, more cameras, more restrictions, more controls, bans and limitations - all imposed because it will make us safer, a sort of nanny state on steroids. Most of all we should reject - utterly reject - the seemingly popular idea of “a strong leader who does not have to bother with Parliament”.

The best security doesn't come from any sort of benign authoritarianism, from a sort of cuddly fascism, but from living in a world where we see out neighbour and see someone we can trust, where we know the government because he or she lives round the corner and where the decisions that affect us are mostly made in a place nearby filled with our neighbours not by anonymous authorities in a castle in a city.

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We're healthier, wealthier, safer and happier because of liberty. Let's not spoil it.

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Baron Evans of Weardale used to be the head of MI5 which means that, when he expresses a view on security matters, journalists and broadcasters go into sombre, stern nodding-dog mode. So Evans gets away with saying this stuff unchallenged:

“Inadequate security will breed vulnerability and fear and that in turn will tend to limit people’s ability to contribute to civil society, will tend to provoke vigilantism and will tend to diminish people’s ability to exercise the very civil liberties and human rights that we wish to sustain.” 

My problem with this is that there is precisely zero evidence of 'vigilantism' in the UK. Nor is there any indication that - other than oddly in a little Pennine village - people are organising themselves in gangs to provide security or exact vengance.

Don't get me wrong here, I'm not suggesting that we don't need the security services or security for that matter. Merely that the sort of language used by Evans is designed merely to frighten, to operationalise the H L Mencken definition of politics:

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

I will however give Evans the benefit of some doubt - having spent a lifetime looking almost exclusively at the relatively small number of bad guys in the world, it's understandable that his mind is set to see those bad guys as the central problem facing democratic societies. Thus we get this observation from our retired spook:

...the world faced a build-up of trained terrorists not seen since al-Qaeda ran training camps in Afghanistan before 9/11. 

 

We are, of course, expected to take this at face value. But it really is rather meaningless. So al-Qaeda ran training camps in Afghanistan but Evans gives no indication of numbers or the operational capability of those terrorists being trained. The reality is, I suspect, that we're talking about at most a few thousand (most of whom are safely losing a war in Syria against other Muslims) and Evans' former colleagues know who nearly all of them are. But by referring to 9/11, Evans takes us to a dark moment in our history - the worst terrorist atrocity in recent times.

The events in Paris remind us that there are people who would tear down our freedom and destroy the peace in which we (most of the time) live our lives. But we should not allow such doomsayers as Evans with their jaundiced view of humanity to set the security agenda. The truth is that, if we get vigilantism, it will be because people like Evans scared the pants off us not because of anything al-Qaeda, ISIS or Anjem Choudhary do or say.

What Evans should be doing is trumpeting the success of peace and freedom - that the world is now a safer place than it has ever been:

...while there's still plenty of war, hunger, sickness, and poverty in the world, things are much better than what they were only a few decades ago—not to talk about centuries ago. We are still far from utopia, but the data is stubborn: We are getting there. Fast.

 

However you assess the evidence and wherever you look people are safer, healthier, wealthier and happier (at least on average). The cynic would suggest that the likes of Lord Evans are conjuring up those hobgoblins so as to keep the security business going whereas others point to more powers for such folk as part of the reason. They are wrong, the main reason for the world being better is that more people have more freedom. It shouldn't be a surprise that the least safe, healthy, wealthy and happy places are places where security is absolute and government dominates everything.

And when we look at the Muslim world, we need to stop looking at it merely as the breeding ground for murderers like those in Paris but as a place where millions of people discovered they have a voice and are beginning to demand it's heard - by the military and traditionalist leaders as well as by the upholders of religious orthodoxy. The Arab spring may have turned into a pretty lousy summer but the new leaders of these places (as well as those in other places not touched by that spring) cannot put the voices back into a box.

Indeed that hope is there still. Here's Abdelbaseer A. Mohamed talking about his home city of Cairo:

So what to do? Integrate different kinds of people with each other by removing barriers and improving connectivity. By reintegrating street networks we can create valuable urban space. Arguably, allowing people to meet and interact in public urban spaces won’t threaten the security of the country and won’t corrupt morals as old players may fear it will. Rather, it might bring tolerance and promote reconciliation and reduce crime rates. Additionally, it will help in building trust between the regime and people.

My article is a call for a new strategy in which ‘anti-territorial’ programmes that are designed to break down boundaries between communities by encouraging social mix through increasing people’s freedom to construct bridges to other communities and overcome their isolation. In this respect, a new borderless Cairo might foster economic integration and urban competitiveness. I think that is the first step in security sector reform, otherwise this open plan jail will collapse and the prisoners of Cairo will be released.

The last open question that I will leave for the future to answer is: how long will the division between rulers and ruled remain?

This is the antithesis of the position that Evans and the security experts adopt. They want to manage - limit even - interaction, to ban certain activities, to control speech and to determine the sorts of fun that are permissable. Such people are brothers to both the fussbuckets and to the religious absolutists, to people who believe absolutely how people should behave in public and who use arguments about health, wealth, safety and happiness to promote their authoritarian agenda.

Forgetting of course that the thing making us healthier, wealthier, happier and safer isn't government but liberty. It's free trade, free enterprise, free assembly and above all free speech not armed policemen and snooping spies that makes for a healthier, wealthier, happier and, yes Lord Evans, safer world.

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Freedom or security? Is this really the choice?

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It's OK folks, I'm not going to recycle that Ben Franklin quote but you'll all have noticed that the government, the possible next government and perhaps the last government too (not to mention governments in Europe and the USA) are all very keen to tell you that them having the power to stick their neb into any and every part of our lives is necessary for reasons of 'national security'.

You see, dear reader, some British people have decided that living in Birmingham or Billericay is dull and have headed off to Syria or some other part of the middle east to join in the excitingly murderous civil wars going on round there. These young folk are, in the jargon of today, "radicalised" and represent a serious existential threat to our civilisation and to that nebulous but convenient thing, 'national security'.

"It is the first duty of government to protect our national security and to act quickly when that security is compromised. As events in Iraq and Syria demonstrate, now is not the time to be scaling back on our ability to keep our people safe."

Now I rather understand why Prime Ministers are wont to say this sort of thing - after all when there is some sort of terrorist incident they're the ones who have to front up the government's response and deal with the media's inevitable "you didn't do enough" line.  And there are some British people fighting out there in the middle east who may well return to the UK puffed up with their radicalised ideas ready to do terrible things. It's not clear how many there are out there - some reports suggest 700 and other reports also suggest that a couple of hundred or so are already back in the UK.

So it seems eminently sensible for the security forces to keep an eye on these chaps so as to make sure they aren't up to nefarious stuff that threatens our security. This is what we employ spies to do, I think. But those spies have all the powers and systems they need to keep tabs on a relatively small number of dodgy radicalised men who've been out to Syria on some sort of jihad. I don't see how the ability to monitor people who have done nothing wrong and are doing nothing wrong adds to our security.

This intrusion makes us less secure. It doesn't make us safer from the terrorist or the murderer but it provides government with the means to interfere in the lives of innocent people. This is the world of micro-chipped waste bins, covert surveillance of parents, the use of anti-social behaviour orders to effect social control and the preference for the banning of anything that makes the police or security services have to do their core job of protecting us.

We are less secure because an ever widening collection of anonymous officials can order investigations, gather data and take action to enforce a mountain of controls and regulations. Everything from the smoking ban in pubs and the use of curfew orders on drinking through to legislation on speech that is so broadly written as to allow the authorities to arrest almost anyone on whatever pretext they want. And all this intervention in our lives is done to protect us, to prevent offence and to make sure that we all comply with the latest iteration of equalities-speak dreamt up by those with an interest in extending its scope.

For sure the government won't be earwigging you calling the local kebab shop for a delivery of doner and chips. Nor will they be routinely opening your post or giggling at your inane text messages. But they are giving themselves the power to do these things should they wish to. All on the basis of 'national security', a term so ill-defined as to place little or no limit on the scope of the security services and police.

If we are to have changes to surveillance rules and to give secret agencies powers to make greater use of such powers then this needs to be accompanied by two other significant additions - much greater openness and transparency from the security agencies and strong guarantees of free speech in legislation. Conducting a review of laws created for a pre-internet age does make some sense but this should not be undertaken without a wider public understanding of what any new rules might mean. Simply saying something akin to "look at the scary terrorist man with a beard" as the basis for new rules isn't right and gives me little comfort that my freedoms - especially my right to an opinion you may disagree with - will be protected.

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On blocking access...a slight rant

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I sent an email entitled "a slight rant". It went like this:

Hi,

Corporate Overview & Scrutiny are running a review of drugs and alcohol work in the district. The Council spends some £12 million every year on this work with similar amounts spent by health services. That's a lot of money and some important services.

 

However, if I want to do a little research into drugs policy - look at the case for deregulation or at some of the work being done by charities and health services maybe...

 

...I can't because the Council blocks just about every site and I'm not going to keep sending requests to the 'infosec' address.

 

I'm a grown up. I am not about to start up a drugs peddling site nor am I about to use council IT to make or promote the illegal purchase of drugs. The presence of drugs references - or alcohol or smoking, for that matter - on my screen is not about to turn me into some sort of crack-addled speed freak.

 

What exactly are we doing? Who exactly are we protecting? And how am I to do my job?

 

Many thanks

 

Simon

Nothing to add to this but am I alone in finding this stuff utterly maddening.

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Quote of the day: on press (un)freedom

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From Nick Cohen:

...you could see the mess liberal England has made of the very principles it is meant to defend. We now have more than 100 journalists and newspaper sources under arrest for allegedly breaking the existing law. The coercive arm of the state, has taken advantage of the climate of liberal hysteria to tell any public servant, who thinks of speaking to the press, that they will end up in the dock. Now thanks to Leveson and virtually every power-grabbing MP in Parliament, we are going to have state-sponsored press regulation as well. 

I never dreamt that we'd see parliament acting to muzzle the press - either to prevent celebrities being revealed as fans of buying blow jobs, cocaine or spanking or, perhaps more importantly, stopping journalists from exposing how our "security" services routinely run a coach and horses through the idea of democratic accountability.

As I've said before: welcome again to the new fascism.

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Here be monsters...

“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown”  H. P. Lovecraft

Here we go again. Buoyed up by terrible things, the bureaucrats of the security state are out to persuade their political masters that, without them, we'd all be raped, pillaged, blown up and generally battered by the chthonic forces of evil that cluster round the gates into our civilised land.

"Indeed you will never be aware of all the things that these agencies are doing to stop your identity being stolen or to stop a terrorist blowing you up tomorrow." 

This fills me with such confidence - "you will never be aware" says the Minister. But surely the whole point is that we should be aware, we should know what these agencies are doing. Not every case, every investigation but the rules under which they operate and the manner in which those rules are applied.

Instead of understanding, openness and information what we get is fear and the feeding of fear. We are to be scared - of terrorists, of sinister identity thieves, of cunning fraudsters and international crime. And when the justification for all this frightening of the people is challenged, we regaled with 'facts' - unsubstantiated statistics of terrorist plots thwarted and spy networks broken, of criminal masterminds snared in their lairs and drug lords brought to justice.

Without these 'powers', without the snooping, poking about and pouring over data, the monsters would flood in - from a peaceful, quiet place we would tumble into barbarian chaos, into some dystopian dog-eat-dog nihilism where terrorists, criminals and fraudsters destroy the tranquillity of our world. The spooks and spies are guarding the gate to that dark underworld of evil.

And the spies, spooks and snoopers know their world must remain secret - without that secrecy the frightening things would wither and suddenly the billion pound industry of surveillance and espionage would seem less vital, less important. And that would never do!

Out there in the world are bad people akin to the monsters of old. I know this because the minister told me.

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The digital police state - not so far away at all

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You, of course, have nothing to fear. You are an honest citizen and Judge Dredd isn't going to swoop down and exercise summary judgement over any infringement. Or so you think and you call for more CCTV cameras, for DNA databases, for biometrics on passports, for speed cameras and for in-car tracking devices. And the government smiles benignly as it rushes to comply with your desire for security - protection from terrorists they say or 'responding to anti-social behaviour'. Sometimes it's even simpler - the government tells you as it licks its chops that these measures will be ever so convenient for you as you go about your life.

We have constructed much of the infrastructure for control and it is but a short step to tie all this together:

….everything a regime would need to build an incredibly intimidating digital police state—including software that facilitates data mining and real-time monitoring of citizens—is commercially available right now.

And don't pretend that this digital police state will be in China or Saudi Arabia, it's as likely to be right here in Britain. They'll say you have "rights" but they'll also know that surveillance brings power that mere rights do not protect. And those rights will be shoved aside for 'security', for 'community safety', all lovingly enforced by the authorities and a a legion of 'concerned citizens'.

I hope I am wrong and that this isn't the path we're set on. But I am right to fear what that path means.

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Forgetting....

Sometimes we forget. Not in that absent-minded, oh dear, oops sort of way but really forget. No matter how hard we search, wandering into the dustier corners of the mind and to the backs of the brain's cupboards it's not there. You must have stored it away somewhere but can you find it?

"Now what was 'my favourite place' four years ago when I first signed into that system? Or for that matter the name of 'my favourite teacher' or the first pet?" Nope, it's gone, there is only dust and an echo of laughter as you have to start again at the beginning.

I put this down to the simple fact that life's too short to spend it filling in the endless forms of government - often for them to tell you that you aren't qualified or that you've filled in the wrong form. Combine this with the obsession with security and we have a recipe for the inevitable forgetfulness.

I suppose someone might want to hack into the system and alter the details on a student loan application? This is just possible but, I suspect, highly unlikely. For sure, there's some personal information but I can't see that this unlikely hacker discovering just how little I earnt in a particular year gains him (it will be a him, I'm sure - women don't waste their time with such silliness) much if anything.

So why all this obsession? Today I signed into a spam filter at work - had to register and, you've guessed it, provide an answer to one of those 'secret questions' as well as a password. All this so I can access spammed e-mails sent to me at work - in the main e-bulletins and such like (for some reason the system dislikes the Manchester Evening News).

Why? It just makes for forgetting. It simply annoys. And I can't see what is gained?

Maybe I forgot?

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"Live Free Or Die..." - thoughts on the imperative of freedom

“Live Free or Die!” goes the motto of New Hampshire – not for that place these cute Latin bon mots but a raw, clear and understandable statement of political intent.

The motto became "Live Free Or Die," as once voiced by General John Stark, the state’s most distinguished hero of the Revolutionary War, and the world famous Old Man of the Mountain was voted the official state emblem.

The motto was part of a volunteer toast which General Stark sent to his wartime comrades, in which he declined an invitation to head up a 32nd anniversary reunion of the 1777 Battle of Bennington in Vermont, because of poor health. The toast said in full: "Live Free Or Die; Death Is Not The Worst of Evils." The following year, a similar invitation (also declined) said: "The toast, sir, which you sent us in 1809 will continue to vibrate with unceasing pleasure in our ears, "Live Free Or Die; Death Is Not The Worst Of Evils."

We take liberty lightly because we want to believe the best of those around us – including those whose job is to serve. And, as a result, we accept constraints on liberty because they seem for most of us little more than an inconvenience. While we would find it odd to have to justify a daily journey, we accept other little bites into our freedom – the requirement to identify ourselves, the cameras peering at our movements, the regulation of our business and the restriction of our pleasures.

Too often, people who lay claim to being conservatives are in the vanguard of these little attacks on liberty – for, they tell us, freedom is nothing without security. It is as if the post-apocalypse story – perhaps The Postman, maybe just Mad Max – is burned into our psyche. Without authority, without the security that authority brings there is unrule, anarchy, chaos.

At the same time – without any hesitation – those same conservatives cry freedom. The spirit of free enterprise is invoked, the idea of a free nation is proclaimed and, over in New Hampshire, the nation dubs itself; “Land of the Free”. This conflict – between security and liberty – is central to conservatism – it is not resolved any more than the socialist can resolve the need for social control and the idea of man’s perfection. But I will always argue that the imperative of freedom must win – that is the message in the New Hampshire motto, not that freedom means license but that living free, in peace and independent is the aim of politics, government and the life we live.

When asked what drives my politics I usually respond:

“Free Speech, Free Enterprise, Free Trade”

And of these I wrote:

These are the three things that matter most to me - fighting for them is the reason I remain in politics. Little else matters when you get to the crunch - free speech opens the doors of discovery, free enterprise allows us to create wonders from that discovery and free trade allows the riches of that discovery and creation to be shared by all.

Whenever people propose new rules, the controlling of things they don’t like and the directing of people to your purpose rather than theirs, I look at it through the prism of these three freedoms. For it is those very things I wish to conserve – if by the setting of rules we lose some of that liberty, speech, enterprise or trade are compromised then, as conservatives, we should oppose.

“Live Free or Die...” – understanding this is central to conservatism. It is the imperative of freedom.

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Seems Robert Halfon wants the government to regulate the Internet (but only for businesses). And he's a Tory?

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Now before I go any further let’s be clear that I know little of the technical whizz-bangery that underlies on-line advertising and marketing. Indeed, it is possible – just as was the case with a previous generation of targeted marketing – that the technical possibilities get in the way of sense and good tactical thinking.

The objective of targeted market hasn’t changed – the aim is to reduce cost-per-order. That is it. There is no other justification for targeting customer and prospects. The only point is to raise the productivity of marketing activity and to improve the return on marketing investment.

Now we know how targeted advertising and marketing raises privacy concerns – indeed MPs are very keen to apply standards of data protection, data gathering and data use to private business that are ignored in the operation of public activities (and especially security and law enforcement).

So we have an EDM – a pointless motion to be sure but a statement from some MPs – about “new data protection controls to protect people against the rise in targeted advertising.” Apparently, WPP have “...profiles of up to half a billion internet users, which the motion suggests may include almost all British citizens.”

We’ll return to Big Brother Watch’s scaremongering about WPP in a minute, but first the motion:

That this House is deeply concerned that privacy is gradually being eroded by private companies using the internet to obtain personal data and selling it for commercial gain; notes that the latest problem is with WPP Group plc, the advertising firm, which claims to have built up individual profiles for half a billion internet users across the world, including allegedly almost 100 per cent. of British people; further notes that secret monitoring of internet users is already a huge issue, with data scraping and cookies monitoring people without their consent; believes an internet bill of rights is needed to guard against the growing infringement of civil liberties that are not covered by existing legislation; and further believes that the Information Commissioner lacks the powers necessary to protect personal data and has done precious little to protect our privacy in recent tests such as the Google Street View project.

Note that the MPs aren’t expressing concern about the police collecting and storing personal data, or HMRC, or DWP, of the security services or your local council. These MPs are concerned that private businesses are “secretly monitoring the internet”. This is rubbish. Utter rubbish.

Now I don’t know for sure what it is that WPP have collected but I’m pretty sure that if it does contain data on “almost 100% of British people” that will be information that you or I – or even Robert Halfon, the motion sponsor – would be able to collect without much trouble. You know the stuff – name, address, maybe a phone number, some credit history analysis and, for some, a little purchase history. Understand that this is the collecting of information that people give across freely in order to play in the Internet’s happy world.

And it makes me smile when phrases like “using the Internet to obtain personal data and selling it for commercial gain” – what on earth do these people think businesses do? And the Internet is increasingly the place to do business. So for Mr Halfon – who is a Tory and should know better – let me explain targeting.

There’s a shopkeeper who, when a customer walks into his shop, engages them in conversation. He finds out where they live, what they like to do, how many kids they have, when their birthdays are, what sort of jam they prefer and so forth. That same shopkeeper also notes what the customer buys, how much they spend and even where else they shop. And he keeps a record of this “data”.

The shopkeeper sends the kids a birthday card – perhaps with a discount off some sweets or a toy. And he makes sure he stocks the right jam, tells those who like it when there’s an offer on and introduces new offers, maybe as a result of looking at what other similar customers are buying.

Now I’m pretty sure that Mr Halfon would applaud such enterprise from a shopkeeper in his Harlow constituency. Indeed, as MPs are wont to do, he might pass comment on such initiative in the House while urging some minister to support and encourage such entrepreneurship.

But it seems that when a business does just this – gathering information about people so it might make better offers to them, design the products they need or want and reduce costs through less wasteful advertising – Mr Halfon disapproves and talks darkly of “civil liberties”. Yet there is no real difference – other than efficiency (the shopkeepers records will be far better than WPP’s ‘profiles’) – between the two activities.

There is a problem with targeting – mostly that it doesn’t work nearly as well as those selling the technology claim. And indeed the most precious information – purchase history and responsiveness to offer – isn’t something that businesses are prepared to share with their competitors. Simple address-related data has some use but as a tool for targeting is of limited value – and bluntly this is most of what WPP will have gathered.

And finally let me make an important point. I know exactly and precisely why a business wants to collect, store and use information about me. The business does this in order to improve its chances of selling something to me. I get benefit from this. That is it.

the state collects, stores and makes use of information about me for reasons of control, direction and taxation. I derive no benefit from such activity. Perhaps, rather than getting in such a flap about WPP, Mr Halfon (and the assortment of lefties who have signed his motion) might like to turn their attention to the real problem – abuse of personal data by the state.

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CRB checks, bureacracy and regeneration

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I have to have another CRB check done. This is so I can sit in a committee room at Bradford City Hall and hear appeals against the Council’s refusal of support for travelling to school. Apparently, Councillors who sit on committees that “discharge any education or social services function” require a CRB check. Here in Bradford the Council’s bureaucracy has decided that this will be an ‘enhanced’ check.

I have no idea at all what all this is for, whether is achieves anything other than feed a system. I have no problem with running background checks on people who are working with children but I’m not doing that, I’m just sitting on a committee and won’t come into contact with any children who aren’t firmly attached (so to speak) to parents, guardians or other responsible adults. And that contact – if we can credit it with such a description – takes place in the company of other panel members, committee clerks, officers of the education authority and other assorted educational flotsam and jetsam. There is precisely zero risk associated with such a circumstance.

I am inclined not to complete the necessary forms and to see what happens – the worst outcome is that they take me off the Education Appeals Panel, which wouldn’t be a great loss on my part! However, the whole exercise does remind me of a lecture given by someone involved in regenerating (of trying to regenerate) Wythenshawe in South Manchester. Given Wythenshawe’s location close to the North West’s biggest employment generator – Manchester Airport – very few residents of the town actually secured work there. On investigation, it turned out that the main reason for this was that records of petty criminality or anti-social behaviour meant most of them failed security checks. As we were told – going straight doesn’t look a great option to these young men!

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This isn't security it's ritual magic

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Yesterday the Government – in the form of Home Secretary Alan Johnson – raised the security level to “severe” which apparently means the public needs to be more “aware”. And Mr Johnson said:

“…I would urge the public to remain vigilant and carry on reporting suspicious events to the appropriate authorities and to support the police and security services in their continuing efforts to discover, track and disrupt terrorist activity."

All well and good but what exactly has changed? We should be more aware of what exactly? Blokes with beards (or with evidence of having had a beard once) carrying backpacks? Suspicious photographers snapping random architectural features? Opposition members of parliament?

This isn’t scaremongering says professional scaremonger Lord Carlile (competing with Dr Evan Harris for the prize as the world’s most illiberal liberal):

"The government has quite rightly decided that if you don't tell the public to be vigilant, they're not going to be vigilant. The message from the current change of assessment is not that we should be more afraid, but that we should be a little bit more vigilant than we have been. It is crucial that the public report to the police anything suspicious they see."

So what are you going to do? Let me describe the typical official response:

1. Gather together briefing notes from police and Home Office
2. Hold meeting with door staff, security, reception and "management"
3. Change little cardboard sign in window from ‘green’ to ‘amber’
4. Write briefing note for superiors, police, home office
5. Issue press release saying we’re more “alert”

This entire exercise is just mumbo jumbo – little different from waving incense over the altar and probably less effective. We have replaced sensible, targeted and effective security with ritual magic.

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