Harry Metcalfe

Don’t let the Government zap your internet connection

The government have just announced that they do intend to introduce technical measures to reduce illicit file-sharing after all, and have tacked some extra questions onto an existing consultation file-sharing consultation. You need to write to your MP. Yes! You!

Among the points you could make:

This regulation is unnecessary

File-sharing is on the wane. Legal services like Spotify and last.fm are extremely popular, and heavily used. Spotify have been gaining 40,000 new users per day. The market is solving this problem. Heavy-handed regulation is not necessary.

These measures are disproportionate

The Government intends to introduce measures that would allow Ofcom to strip people of their internet connection. This is an extremely severe measure. The Internet is not a luxury that can reasonably withdrawn on a whim. It is a crucial part of modern life. Increasingly it is the medium by which we interact with the state, with each other, and with the banks, energy companies and merchants that are intricately woven into our lives.

To suggest that the Internet is something that can be withdrawn from a person on the say-so of rightsholders is as if we gave private companies the power to crush our cars for speeding in their car parks. It’s grotesquely disproportionate.

These measures will cause collateral damage

There is little or no way to gather evidence that ties illicit filesharing to a person. It can often be tied to an ISP account, and sometimes to a computer, but that’s about it. These measures would affect all users of an internet connection alike. What happens to people in houses of multiple occupation? Home businesses? Public wifi hotspots?

Is it right for all the users of an internet connection to be punished because of the actions of one person?

Unaccountable and Illiberal

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, these measures are almost completely unaccountable. The Secretary of State is empowered to decide when technical measures are necessary. A private body collects evidence and supplies it to another private body, which supplies that evidence to a Quango who are empowered to remove people from the internet. Where are the courts? Who evaluates the evidence? Where is my right to confront my accusers? Where is the due process?

Why do we keep letting the executive pass laws which bypass the courts and place judicial powers in the hands of ministers? It makes me so angry I could spit.

What you should do

• Write to your MP. Now. Go! Draw this consultation to their attention. Ask them to do all they can to oppose these measures.
• Respond to the consultation
• Join the Open Rights Group, who fight against this stuff every day.
• Spread the word: blog this, tweet about it, post stuff on facebook. Tell your friends. Put it in your email signature. Make sure people notice.

Photo by DeaPeaJay

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Write to your MP about ID cards!

It’s been a while since we’ve been able to do that. I fruitlessly wrote to my MP, David Lepper, while the ID cards bill was being voted on. Unfortunately, he never saw sense.

In any case, No2ID are raising the alert: a batch of regulations are being laid before Parliament next month which provide a lot of details about the scheme’s implementation. These regulations must be approved by MPs before they are passed, which means a vote — and which means that the time has once again come to write to your MP and ask them to vote against the regulations. From No2ID, here they are:

• The Identity Cards Act 2006 (Application and Issue of ID Card and Notification of Changes) Regulations 2009

  The detail that you will have to give to the Home Office about
  yourself, much much more than the “basic identifying information”
  ministers keep referring to.

• The Identity Cards Act 2006 (Prescribed Information) Regulations 2009

  What will be kept on the cards – but not yet anything about the national identity register database and how it might work.

• The Identity Cards Act 2006 (Designation) Order 2009

  The first of potentially many such. Provides for some people to be forced onto the system because joining will be a condition of applying for another official document that they need.

• The Identity Cards Act 2006 (Fees) Regulations 2009
• The Identity Cards Act 2006 (Information and Code of Practice on Penalties) Order 2009

  The unfair rules that will be used to punish non-compliance.

• The Identity Cards Act 2006 (Provision of Information without Consent) Regulations 2009

  Sets out who the information may be passed to once the IPS has it. Audit trail information will go to: police, intelligence services, and SOCA, and to anyone else they authorise – so we are immediately beyond government promise – plus HMRC, who can’t however authorise it to be given to third parties. Further, non-audit trail information – such as document numbers, names and addresses, signatures and fingerprints, quite enough to be keys for other searches or massive identity fraud – may be provided to the Home Office and MoJ, DWP, DoT and FCO. Records of what information has been given to whom and why may be destroyed after 12 months or less.

• The Immigration (Biometric Registration) (Amendment) Regulations 2009

  Expands the ‘ID cards for foreigners’ system vastly by extending it to more categories of people (for example, spouses of British citizens, visiting artists and academics) who are only being treated as a threat in order to justify ID cards for all.

Please: write to your MP now and ask them to vote against these regulations next month — especially if you have a Labour MP.

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