So Henry Porty at the Guardian’s Liberty Central Blog has decided to call it a day. The Government is ‘great’ on Civil Liberties so job done, right?
I wish I could be so sure. Labour’s totalitarianism was the force that created the Liberty Central blog, not to mention the rest of the pro-Liberty bloggers, pundits and writers. Labour’s power-grab caused a reaction, of which I know I’m a part. We organised and protested on the Internet and in the newspapers and at fancy speaking dinners, doing everything we could to influence the opinions of policy makers and regular voters.
And hey, in many ways it worked. Good for us. Rare common ground between the grassroots of the left, right and liberal leading to a good result. But what about the next front in the battle for liberty? It’s not enough for people to be politically and personally free. They have to be economically free, too. If you control a person’s money you control the person. The true power of our State lies here, and there’s no sign of The Coalition being willing to give that up.
Nope, the battle for real liberty has barely started. Our victory, if you can call it that, is that the very worst abuses of personal freedom by the last Government are going to be checked and rolled back. But the Digital Economy Act is staying on the statute books, we have no idea what’s going to be in the Freedom Bill… and there’s more than just a few weasel words and exceptions in what we’ve seen already that may blunt the knife The Coalition is using. We may, still, be disappointed.
Going further, the new front as far as Civil Liberties are concerned may turn out to be adapting to threats to our privacy not just from the State, but from abusive private sector organisations and web applications like Facebook. Facebook needs bringing down, I’ve no doubt about that. Not by the Government, but in the same way that MySpace and all the other old social networking sites fell – people just need somewhere better to go. The “punditariat” have a long way to go in educating and persuading that having photographs and personal details available for anyone to access on the internet is harmful, that such lack of privacy changes how people behave and removes an individual’s freedom from conformity. Facebook’s made it extremely difficult to secure your private data, and it’s alarming that people haven’t reacted more strongly to this.
Time to redouble efforts, not simply fade away regarding the job as done.
Steve Tierney said...
21 May 10 at 12:42 pm
But its quite easy to secure your Facebook data if you want to. It’s just that most people don’t want to. The celebrity culture has encouraged people’s wish to parade themselves in front of the world.
Curmudgeon said...
21 May 10 at 12:50 pm
I don’t see any sign of a let-up in the official campaign to restrict lifestyle freedoms, either. Amend the smoking ban? Not a chance!
Katabasis said...
21 May 10 at 12:57 pm
“But the Digital Economy Act is staying on the statute books”
Do you have a source for that?
James S said...
21 May 10 at 12:59 pm
Steve this is incorrect, facebook have repeatedly changed the settings and default settings of peoples profiles.
Non-technically minded users will generally use the defaults. If they joined prior to the default privacy being relaxed they could even have tested to see how private facebook is and then found the data being public without their realizing.
P said...
21 May 10 at 1:04 pm
Charlotte,
I think it would be a mistake to argue there was something characteristically ‘New Labour’ about the authoritarian nature of ID cards, anti-terror legislation, ASBOs and such like.
Rather, this must be seen against a broader trend that both predates Blair and transcends the borders of any one particular nation.
True, Labour introduced draconian legislation with enthusiasm. But nothing so savage, I would argue, as the anti-trade union legislation of Thatcher. Remember also that the exponential growth of the prison population began in earnest under Michael Howard’s watch as Home Secretary.
Consider the policing of the miners strike, or the policing of inner cities which led to riots in Brixton, Toxteth and elsewhere.
I think rather that this ‘new authoritarianism’ must be understood as a development intrinsic to this particular epoch of late global capitalism.
I think any changes to this agenda by the new administration (whichever way the election had gone) will be managerial and cosmetic at best, and aimed squarely at regaining the populism of 80s single mum bashing, or combatting the perceived plague of benefit fraud.
It is pleasing that you, or anyone, wants to declare battle on it. But I don’t think a victory can ever really be attained without a decisive overturning of the ruling class and the dictatorship of Capital.
Charlotte Gore said...
21 May 10 at 1:05 pm
Source: Condems won’t repeal UK’s digital economy act
ejoftheweb said...
21 May 10 at 1:05 pm
Yes! We need to refocus our attention on corporations as threats to our liberty, and recognise that they are not always our most trustworthy allies. States and corporations are just different sorts of organisations with each of which we have to compact, as citizens or shareholders or “members”. Whenever it becomes close to being a necessity to deal with any sort of organisation, our liberty is compromised, so those essential – or near-essential – deals should be subject to far greater democratic scrutiny than those that are voluntary or where there is competitive choice.
Millsy said...
21 May 10 at 1:21 pm
There are plenty of stories of people being undone by comments or pictures they’ve put on Facebook – either through the obvious sources such as friends/partners or through employers.
These stories will become more and more prevalent and either Facebook rolls with the punches and changes, or people will vote with their feet.
Your post says the battle for civil liberties is mostly won (depending on what this coalition actually does) and go on to say that the battle for economic liberty has barely started.
Then you got side-tracked. What do you mean by economically free?
R Grey said...
21 May 10 at 1:28 pm
Sorry, but i just don’t see facebook as an issue, don’t use it, job done.
I thought libitarians where#nt supposed to ask for the goverment to protect them, but allow the free market to work.
The digital economy act does matter, it’s basicly giving people legal rights to monitor your communications (how else can it be enforced).
(excuse my drunken spelling)
Shaun Pilkington said...
21 May 10 at 1:32 pm
Anyone who’s spent more than 10 minutes in British politics knows that it’s when things are ‘over’ or ‘settled’ and everyone goes home feeling smug and self-satisfied, that the real decisions get made.
I want my freedom back and will continue to do so until I actually have it. Not a promise of it someday or an inquiry or committee into it, but actually getting it back. Thus far, sure, the noise is good but the delivery is nil.
Charlotte Gore said...
21 May 10 at 1:36 pm
R Grey, I explicitly said that I wanted Facebook brought down by consumers, not the Government!
Millsy, by economically free I mean everything from manipulating behaviours through sin taxes, to the really big issue of the State consuming such vast quantities of the nation’s wealth and output. When I was on 22k a year nearly half my income was being taken in taxes and being spent for me. That’s not economic freedom – quite the opposite. It’s a much bigger topic than I have space to cover in this post today though.
I probably shouldn’t write while I’ve got a fever, to be honest. Can’t be sure how much sense I’m making.
Jon said...
21 May 10 at 4:28 pm
Hi Charlotte,
Sorry to hear you have a fever.
If you’re on £22k a year, it’s not easy to make ends meet, even before taxes (speaking as someone who moved from Yorkshire to London to start earning just below that wage) a few years ago.
I’m also a bit worried that you were on some absurd tax code – you should have been on about £17k or so after tax and NI – so you’ve lost £6k down the back of the sofa somewhere!
Charlotte Gore said...
21 May 10 at 4:30 pm
I was on that much, I’m not any more being self employed, sadly. Also, it’s not just direct taxation it’s indirect – vat, duties, council tax etc. It all adds up.
Ian B said...
21 May 10 at 5:20 pm
The frontline in the battle for freedom remains where it always was in this country; big “civil” liberties come and go- the state will always find a way to arrest and ruin you if it wants one- but the battle over personal liberties is more intense than it has ever been since the late c19/early c20 heyday of the Temperance Movement.
We must expect this coalition of crusty tories and sandal wearing loonies to be the most intensely puritanical of the post-war era, and the signs on that are already clear. Clampdowns on drinking will worsen, there will be no letup- and probably intensification- of the persecution of smokers. Censorship will intensify as well, to protect the children of course.
Anyone who thinks getting rid of Labour is some kind of victory for liberty is in cloud cuckoo land.
Yeah, no ID cards. We’ve been saved from one new tyranny. The old ones will continue, and get worse. It’s the fight for beer and skittles that matters, as it always has.
Does Facebook Need “Taking Down?” « WH00PS said...
23 May 10 at 12:23 am
[...] Facebook Need “Taking Down?” Charlotte Gore thinks so. I’m not so sure. Facebook does some nasty things to privacy, for sure. In fact, Facebook is [...]