19,000 Emails Against and 0 In Favor of UK Draft Communications Bill

Qedward writes "Open source writer Glyn Moody discusses the Draft Communications Bill (aka Snooper's Charter) in the UK and how the Joint Parliamentary Committee that had been considering the bill received almost 19,000 emails during its consultation period. He notes: 'Out of 19,000 emails received by the Committee on the subject of the proposed Draft Communications Bill, not a single one was in favor of it, or even agreed with its premise. Has there ever been a bill so universally rejected by the public in a consultation? Clearly, it must be thrown out completely.'"

Comments

Unfair comparison

[PieMasters]

People always voice their concern when they're against something but rarely express their opinion if they're for it. This makes it unfair comparison. Just saying..

Re:Unfair comparison

[Anonymous Coward]

And that is just one of the excuses we are likely to see when the government ignores the consultation and presses on regardless.

It goes without saying that all the people who objected are probably terrorists and paedophiles.

Re:Unfair comparison

[ledow]

Ah, yes, the Waitress/Teacher/Street Cleaner Imbalance.

If you're doing a good job, people generally won't bother to tell you.
If you're doing a bad one, people will let you know.

That said, not receiving a SINGLE email for is sign of something - either you didn't do a proper consultation (and those people in favour didn't get the opportunity to reply) or people are vehemently against it. Either way, it means going back to the drawing board rather than pushing through with it.

That doesn't mean that's what will happen, though.

Re:Unfair comparison

[xaxa]

People always voice their concern when they're against something but rarely express their opinion if they're for it. This makes it unfair comparison. Just saying..

I don't think that's true. The article says that on assisted death, there were many replies on both sides.

Re:Unfair comparison

[Adelea]

In the report, they compared this bill with another one, which had appx 50/50 support - so that illustrated that people DO write in on both sides of the fence.

Re:Unfair comparison

[wonkey_monkey]

With this bill there really isn't much of a reason to be outwardly in support of it.

That alone is reason enough to chuck it out!

Re:Unfair comparison

[SimonTheSoundMan]

But this bill is what we wanted. We voted the people in to government that are making this bill.

I'm sure the government will use some bullshit excuse like this.

Re:Unfair comparison

[Joce640k]

And that is just one of the excuses we are likely to see when the government ignores the consultation and presses on regardless.

It goes without saying that all the people who objected are probably terrorists and paedophiles.

They're being added to the "extra surveillance" list as I write this.

Re:Unfair comparison

[Adambomb]

Basically all this states is that you have those that are willing to write in against it, and those who are ignorant of it.

Sorry but at a rate of 19K to 0 the statistical significance is there to derive overwhelming disapproval from the result. Do you honestly believe if the populace was MORE aware of the details of the bill that suddenly there'd be an outpouring of support?

Re:Unfair comparison

[Nursie]

Always the way.

The last big one I remember was ID cards, which was also very skewed, but at the last minute the government decided that any results collected from the internet were unrepresentative and to be ignored.

It's almost as if your opinion doesn't count if collected electronically, because it's too easy or something. Never mind that it brings down the barriers and allows people to participate just that little bit more in democracy, no citizen, you didn't try hard enough so even though we heard you we feel safe ignoring you.

And they are safe, frankly. We never vote the bastards out because of this stuff.

Re:Unfair comparison

[IamTheRealMike]

Having read the results of a previous unrelated consulation (on anti-money laundering powers), that unfortunately sounds way too accurate. In that case actually most of the responses were for additional state surveillance and law enforcement powers, largely because it didn't get noticed by any groups like 38 Degrees or ORG so most responders were, eg, regulators, people who run compliance training firms, law enforcement themselves, companies that already paid the huge cost of compliance and wanted competitors to have to pay it too and other organizations that were by and large a part of "the system".

In that case the consultation was triggered because a survey of "government activities that infringe civil liberties and individual freedom" highlighted the oppressive AML regime. Several years later, the results of the consultation concluded that the laws should be made even more intense! The government did get some dissenting submissions (such as mine). However the response was largely along the lines of, "we recognize the highlighted potential for abuse and you can rest assured we will be proportionate and reasonable in our application of these powers". Which is obviously stupid. The whole point for separation and limitation of government powers is you cannot assume reasonability over the long run! But despite that being pointed out they did not understand or care.

Consultation processes do seem like little more than an exercise in box ticking, especially when the consultations are often so obscure or (too often) simply canvassing opinions only from people who stand to directly benefit.

Re:Unfair comparison

[RaceProUK]

Not quite, but not that far off.

The way it works is we all vote for an MP to represent us, then the party with the majority of MPs is (formally speaking) invited by the reigning monarch to form a government. If a majority isn't achieved (and the requirements vary a little depending on how the vote swings), then parties can team up as a coalition.

Re:Unfair comparison

[Adambomb]

So given a situation where of those informed and interested in the bill there is a significant amount of opposition, and of the remainder of the population people either don't know or don't care enough to support the bill, does this imply to you that this legislation is representative of the will of the people?

If this was a case of 19K for and even 1 against I might be able to buy the argument of sampling bias. When not one single person supports it in the consultation it is not only reasonable to infer that the legislation is not desired, but damn near certain.

Re:Unfair comparison

[yotto]

You forgot option 3:

One guy emailed them 19,000 times.

Re:Unfair comparison

[BlueStrat]

It's funny because it's true.

I think we left "funny" quite a ways back.

It may qualify as a Greek comedy however, which often ended tragically for the proponents in the play as well.

Make a decision. You know how this type of domestic government surveillance/secret police crap always ends. History is filled with such. There's not much time left in which anything can really be done politically by the people short of global chaos, death, and destruction before their control infrastructure is complete and it's too late. The window of time remaining for people to affect relatively peaceful change is closing as we speak.

Or do nothing. You, me, and everybody else will be living out that line from "Us and Them" by Pink Floyd; "'Listen Son,' said the man with the gun, 'there's room for you inside'."

Strat

Re:Unfair comparison

[tubs]

19,000 people? What difference is that going to make? The government of the day ignored at least 750,000 (+/- some) people who appeared in person to protest. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/2765041.stm

Re:Unfair comparison

[Xest]

We use First Past the Post in the UK, chances are your opinion doesn't matter to your local MP anyway because they more often than not get elected with less than a third of their constituents supporting them.

AV would've fixed this to some degree because it would've forced MPs to be at least somewhat palatable to over half their constituency, but it still wouldn't have been led to truly representative governments. Unfortunately the Tories and Murdoch saw that any hope of them having to at least somewhat listen to most of their constituents was thrown out the window whilst hypocritically and hence nonsensically arguing against an actual proportional representation system with the excuse that they wanted an electoral system where the electorate had representatives, which is great, except most of us don't, because our MPs don't actually represent our views in the slightest. As such, the Tory argument was actually irrelevant to the vast majority of the population as a change from a system where you have a representative that doesn't give a fuck what you think, to a system where you don't have a representative at all, is absolutely no change at all.

But here's the real irony, the referendum WAS proportional, and most of the UK's population was too dumb to see that if they wanted MPs that at least somewhat listened to them, that was their opportunity. Instead, over 2/3rds of the population decide they didn't want that, and hence gave their implicit blessing to the status quo - of having MPs that don't give a shit what the vast majority of the country thinks.

So honestly, you can't even blame MPs, the electorate had their chance and threw it away, it's the electorates fault entirely for being so fucking dumb on average that MPs don't listen to them because the electorate voted to maintain a system where MPs don't have to listen to them.

So don't blame the MPs, like most people they're doing their job in a way that best suits them, and the electorate gave them the blessing they required to carry on doing that.

Re:Unfair comparison

[Anonymous Coward]

Both the Conservatives and the Liberals were opposed to this proposal before the election when Labour called it the Interception Modernisation Program, and both campaigned against 'Labour's Surveillance State', yet when they were elected they simply renamed the IMP to CCDP and are now preparing to implement it with almost no changes from the previous governments proposal
e.g. http://www.conservatives.com/News/News_stories/2009/09/Reversing_the_rise_of_the_surveillance_state.aspx

If our MPs lie or change their minds they are not representing our views

Re:Unfair comparison

[7-Vodka]

They change their positions because this issue is part of The Agenda.

This is something the ruling class has been doing for a long time in England. When an issue is part of The Agenda, something the power elite wants passed that harms the public, the government always pushes for it and the shadow government who is powerless to stop it voices opposition.

Then the people vote the government out and the shadow government in and they switch positions. Now that the new government is in power they start being for the issue and now that the old government is out of power they can afford to be against it.

What's the solution?

Re:Unfair comparison

[dgatwood]

The remarkable thing is that in the U.S., the same thing happens, and we've been blaming it on the two-party system. Apparently, such blatant disregard for voters is not caused by the number of parties, but by the mere existence of parties.

I wrote to my MP

[xaxa]

I wrote to my MP, via a link the Open Rights Group (which I'm a member of) sent. I was pleased with the reply -- my MP agreed with me, gave some additional points that I'd not made, and asked me to forward any reply I received to him.

(At least, I think I did. There have been a few similar bills, and I've not necessarily kept up with which one is which.)

Yeah, but will the government care?

[Coisiche]

When faced by overwhelming public rejection of a Bill has there ever been a modern government that has thrown one out because of that? Clearly they will just change the name and sneak it in with something else. Because what do the public know?

Government politics is now so completely flawed that it needs to be replaced. I'm with Billy Connolly when he said that "the desire to be an MP [modify as appropriate for your jurisdiction] should automatically prevent you from becoming one."

Re:Yeah, but will the government care?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm with Billy Connolly when he said that "the desire to be an MP [modify as appropriate for your jurisdiction] should automatically prevent you from becoming one."

Isn't that more or less a rehash of Douglas Adams? "It is a well known fact, that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. Anyone who is capable of getting themselves into a position of power should on no account be allowed to do the job."

Not only that. It must be made illegal, to even...

[Anonymous Coward]

...suggest such a thing. Just like it's illegal to organize and conspire to murder or terrorize people. Oh wait. That means it already is.

Re:Does anybody really think it matters?

[Altanar]

Emails to your representative can work.

"When SOPA-PIPA blew up, it was a transformative event," said Dodd. "There were eight million e-mails [to elected representatives] in two days." That caused senators to run away from the legislation. "People were dropping their names as co-sponsors within minutes, not hours," he said.

Quit changing UK spelling to US

[gsslay]

When you are directly quoting someone's writing it is usually considered a professional courtesy not to change the spelling to suit your own preferences.

He did not say "not a single one was in favor of it", he said "not a single one was in favour of it.

Re:Quit changing UK spelling to US

[jez9999]

Yeah, it does color my opinion of Slashdot a little.

Consultation, ha ha ha!

[Alioth]

Clearly, the submitter doesn't understand the purpose of a consulation in the UK if he thinks this will get the bill thrown out.

The purpose of a public consultation is so that Westminster can tick a box saying "we had a public consultation". If the consultation is favourable, they additionally may say that a bill has public support. If a consultation is negative, the consultation is simply ignored. I've responded to a couple of these consultations and I shan't bother again because they were simply ignored despite volumes of correspondence voicing (often constructive) opposition.

Perhaps a consultation won't be ignored if the majority of the comments are from marginal constituencies, but 19,000 voters can safely be totally ignored if not.

Re:"GLYN"?

[Alioth]

Being the proud posessor of a Welsh name - come on, it's not that hard!

You must have heard of Bob Dylan (who took his name from Dylan Thomas, the Welsh poet). The y in Glyn is exactly as the y in Dylan. (Although many people from the US seem to think that Dylan is actually pronounced Dialin', which is what you do on a telephone - despite Bob Dylan's fame).

I know a motorcycle sidecar racer called Glyn Jones who crashes often (and puts his passengers in hospital so frequently) his nickname is the Glyn Reaper. Think how you pronounce 'grim', it rhymes with Glyn, hence the joke.

Unfortunately

[Alioth]

As I already commented, consultations generally are to tick a box "we had a consultation" (not to pay any actual attention to the responses), furthermore the document from "JOINT COMMITTEE ON DRAFT COMMUNICATIONS DATA BILL" is already titled "WRITTEN EVIDENCE: SUMMARY OF CHAIN EMAILS" (sorry about caps, copy and pasting from the PDF). They note more than once that most of the emails are pro-forma and go onto mention it's from a political pressure group website. This means furthermore that the responses will be ignored.

If you're ever responding to a European Union consultaiton, they say right up front that pro-forma responses will be ignored (at least they are honest) - so if you ever want the slightest chance that your response to an EU consultation then you have to write your concerns in your own words. I suspect Westminster is the same, they just don't come right out and say it.

Therefore I'm even more pessimistic that anyone is going to pay the slightest bit of attention to this consultation - it will be full steam ahead for this awful bill.