Where is the British EFF? Just Around the Corner!

Drachan writes "A seminar at the UK's (BBC sponsored) technology conference 'Open Tech 2005' (organised by the fantastic 'Need To Know' (NTK) team as a follow on to last year's "Notcon 2004"event) posed the question 'Where is the British EFF?' The answer, as prompted by those attending the seminar was, of course 'Nowhere! so... uhh.. well... why don't We create it?' A PledgeBank page was set up within a few hours (available here) which states that the pledging person will donate £5 (GBP) per month to the support of a British EFF-style organisation provided that 1000 others also agree to do so. There is considerably more information at Danny O'Brien's Oblomovoka. Maybe this is a step in the right direction, after all the controversy over ID cards, the Anti-Terrorism Bill and general UK political disaster?"

Comments

ID Cards Refuseniks

[Baljet]

There's been a fair bit of recent noise comming from pledgebank for example the No2ID campaign: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/07/25/id_refuse_ resist/

There are some organisations already

[bvdbos]

Of course there's the European Digital Rights-EDRI (http://www.edri.org/) which is the joint organisation for digital rights in Europe. In the UK the
* Campaign for Digital Rights-CDR (http://ukcdr.org/)
* the Foundation for Information Policy Research-FIPR (http://www.fipr.org/) and
* Greennet (http://www.gn.apc.org/)
are members. I would suggest consulting them first.

Re:What's the big deal with ID cards?

[t_allardyce]

That's not the problem, the problem is that they want these cards to be mandatory to carry at all times and include fingerprint and possibly iris scans. They also want to make them exempt from the data protection act so that you won't even have the right to know what information they store. As if that's not enough they will also use RFID (and we will probably see that broken) and they want to charge each of us for the honour, an estimate of £100 to £300 each!

Re:Political disaster?

[mikeplokta]

The current government is incapable of coherent thought: on the one hand, giving the police more powers to deal with the growing binge-drinking culture, while also loosening licensing laws so pubs and bars can stay open all day.

But those policies are both intended to address binge drinking. If you don't have every pub in a city full of people drinking as fast as they can in order to drink as much as possible before the pubs close at 11, and then throw them all out onto the street at the same time, it will reduce rather than increasing binge drinking and alcohol-fuelled violence.

Re:Political disaster?

[ColdGrits]

Actually, it DOES work as was shown in Scotland where a relaxation of the drinking laws saw a reduction in drink-related disorder for precisely the reason you dismiss - no need to cram those last 4 oints down your neck and then head into the street with hundreds of others when the pub remains open for hours more.

Where's the -1, Uninformed mod?

[One Childish N00b]

The parent is not a troll, from the outside, the comment tacked on the end about political disaster was completely unwarranted and does indeed look like a knee-jerk reaction to everyone's favourite warmongers getting new terms in office, so I can quite understand the parent's annoyance at Slashdot (a site supposed to report the news and not bias it with it's personal opinions) taking a swipe at the UK government.

An uninformed person does not a troll make.

The problem with the British political system is that, while stable, every party looks pretty much like every other party, only with slightly different reasons to hate them - in other words, people do not vote for the best, they vote for the least worst. Allow me to indulge in a non-partizan rant about the major political forces in the UK, this should give anyone else confused like the parent a little help...

Labour Led by Tony Blair, these are they guys in power right now - Labour, traditionally, is a socialist, left-leaning party, but under the leadership of Blair it has swung very much swung hard towards the right, and have done all the awful things you've heard about on /. before, like flooding the country with CCTV, planning ID cards, etc, while the police are wholly incapable of dealing with what are essentially groups of kids. Blair, if not the party as a whole, is now very unpopular with many people, largely due to the Iraq war and the ID cards debacle - most people would like to see Blair step down and Gordon Brown take the reins, with many members of the party itself voting against him on important issues. The party, however, remains in charge because last time the other major force in UK politics was in power, they made things even worse.

The Conservatives In the last election, led by Michael Howard, but with him stepping down it looks like Kenneth Clarke may be replacing him sooner rather than later. In my opinion it's a bad idea for them to be considering placing another unpopular figure from the last Conservative government in charge, which proved a major negative point for them during the last election. More right-wing in terms of immigration (a sensitive issue in the run-up to the election and an even more sensitive one in light of the London bombings) and promising to pull troops out of Iraq, the major factor against them is the fact that when they were in power (when Margaret Thatcher and later John Major were leaders) they very nearly crippled the country with severe mismanagement. Arguably the largest factor in their election failure, in light of the unpopularity of Blair's government, was the spectre of those old governments in the form of Michael Howard, who was Home Secretary under the former Conservative rule.

Liberal Democrats Led by Charles Kennedy, and could be summed up as 'lacking voice'. Their PR assault during the last election boiled down to, while the other two parties slogged it out over immigration, ID cards and the War in Iraq, the Lib Dem PR machine putting out a statement that Kennedy's wife had had a baby. Even in the UK of reality TV stars being involved in supposedly serious political debate and tabloid newspapers declaring they could decide the election simply by siding with one side or the other on election day, this didn't get them the votes they needed, falling far short of their target of overtaking the Conservatives as the 2nd-largest party in Britain. Very left-wing in their views, they are disliked by many for their open-doors views on immigration, which as I previously pointed out was a sensitive issue at the time of the election, with many Britons fearing being swamped by immigrants largely from Eastern Europe. This, combined with their status as perpetual also-rans in general elections for as long as I can remember pretty much scuppered their chances of winning this election.

British National Party Led by Nick Griffin. A media campaign against the BNP by the BBC led to Griffin's arrest under religious hatred laws

Re:Where's the -1, Uninformed mod?

[awol]

I think the poster's distinction between left and right with regard to the position on ID cards and things like CC TV monitoring is mistaken. The issue is big government vs little government and when taken in that context the Labour party is exactly the party that I would expect to push for ID cards and monitoring.

The main issue for politics in the socialist democracies of Europe and the Commonwealth (Aus, NZ, Canada etc) is that there is an overriding push to the centre for economic policy since there is almost no way of "arguing" against the tenets of economic rationalism in the Global Economy. Interest rates, Budget deficit are more or less out of the control of the government (well whilst technically in control, to use fiscal policy unfettered has been shown to be ordinarily problematic). Which means the battle ground for politics has turned to how the government spends money (the extent and quality of the welfare state) and how they collect it (who pays what tax).

Since there are so few actual issues, it is almost impossible for the parties to distinguish themselves. Most people attribute this to the fact that the parties are equally crap. The reality is, I think, much more benign. The function of government is so well established that it is only around the edges that can be tuned and the distinguishing features of the left and right are unable do do this "tuning" in such a way that they are different enough to justify someone changing their vote.

Obviously, radical changes in structure are possible. In the UK the most recent was Thatcher's attack on the labour market to free up the structural rigidity that was stifling the economy. But there was the NHS before that and others before that. In Australia, the massive changes to industrial relations (the labout market) that are impending are the natural successor to the extensive deregulation that has already taken place. These radical changes in structure are usually the result of "great leaders" (I don't mean good I just mean influential) and it seems to me that these structural changes are the result of the left and right ideological differences. One would never find the labour party in any of these economies advocating the kind of industrial reform being contemplated in Australia and once the reform is complete the left may well regain power to add a little "sugar" to the recipe that the right has formulated. As a result the swinging between left and right in the Liberal Democracies is a very marginal thing in general since there are so few "fundamental" differences remaining to distingush them.

This begs an obvious question in my view and that is; "Are there new 'big ticket' items that the left and right can use to distinguish themselves?".
From my perspective it is less the left and the right that is the axis on which the new big issues are based and more liberal -> totalitarian and the answer is yes. The EFF acts in the space where I think many of these issues will be defined. So it is a very important organisation to add to the Corporatist landscape since it is the influence of these corporate groups (environmentalists, human rights campaigners, business groups, etc etc) that provide a second channel for the influence of political agenda within the democracies of which we speak.

Re:What's the big deal with ID cards?

[MartinG]

I just don't get why everyone's so worked up over this

For me it is exactly the same as if the government said they were going to force each citizen to pay 100 quid towards having their house painted white in order to raise educational standards.

My point is the card costs money but nobody has yet adequately explained what problem it actually solves and how.

I don't care whether costs are kept low or not. Is it good value is the real question and that requires knowing what it is actually supposed to do.

Also, google around a bit and see how mandatory id systems have been abused in the past.

signed up

[Cederic]

I prefer to avoid signing up to things, especially when they want money.

However, Danny O'Brien is that rarest of beasts, a journalist I trust. I've also experienced a lot of his work in this arena in the past (or, more accurately, been informed by him of the work being done by and with people he knows).

Some of the other names mentioned are also ones I've recognised, and a couple of the people I've met.

I may not agree with everything they propose, but I do agree with their general aims, and I'm happy to do a little to help it. Since I'm a lazy sod (rarely doing much more than writing to my MP/MEP and posting on slashdot) contributing a small amount to help fund someone to do my campaigning for me sounds like a fine idea.

Re:What's the big deal with ID cards?

[Shaper_pmp]

If you want a government-backed ID card then sign up for a Citizen Card (yeah, the website sucks). These are photo ID, require references to apply for one, and are supported by the Home Office.

Importantly, they're also optional, administrated by a non-profit, non-governmental organisation, and have to conform to strict Data Protection laws, none of which apply to the ID card if the government decides otherwise.

With options like these available it seems like simple ignorance or laziness to support the ID card scheme. You have your option. You have your benefits.

Leave our rights and privacy alone.

Apologies if this post seems somewhat terse, but you've just advanced the most intellectually lazy and unashamedly self-serving reason I've ever heard for supporting a national ID card scheme.