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ID and DNA: I’d rather keep my freedom and be mugged more often, thank-you very much.
Here we go again.
We have a government demanding that we let the power exist to lock people up for 42 days, and making “it won’t happen very often” an excuse, and we have a police force demanding that the crimes that have been solved because of 5 million records on the DNA database and nearly as many CCTV Cameras justify putting us under more and more control.
Signally, the Association of Chief Police Officers is calling for:
a debate on whether to expand the current database - of DNA details taken from crime suspects - to cover all people in the UK.
This is the wrong place to focus that debate. The question should be whether we scale the DNA database down so that it does not impinge on the human rights of individuals. As things stand, we have the rights of the innocent being routinely abused in DNA samples being retained.
The same goes for the guilty - it is wrong to routinely keep DNA records when the sentence for a crime has been served. There are exceptions to this, but not many.
Meanwhile we have a challenge in the European Court to the right for the police to retain the DNA of the innocent, purely because they happen to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time when an enquiry was in progress. The argument is based on how many crimes have been solved using DNA techniques.
Solve the Problem not the Symptom
However, we know that treating the symptoms of crime will not ultimately fix the problem.
It did not fix it when Michael Howard told us “prison works”, and it has not worked for the 2 N million extra fixed penalty notices handed out to increase the safety of drivers who were not trained properly originally.
We must address the causes, and that requires members of our society to take decisions not to commit crime in the first place.
So where does that leave us?
In short, at present we are on a helter-skelter to greater and greater state control of the individual - in a rush to be seen to address a panicky fear of crime in ways that are unlikely to fix the root cause anyway.
Saying the Unsayable
In my opinion we have the balance wrong between acceptance of personal risk, and a wild goose chase after sticky plaster quick and easy measures to fix whatever the lastest “crime problem” is stated to be.
If the continuing stream of greater inspection, greater control and greater loss of freedom was actually the way to reduce crime, then I would rather keep my freedom and be mugged more often; but it isn’t the way.
A state and police run electronic Nanny McPhee will not deal with the problem. Crime may be reduced by an authoritarian centre in the short term, but in the long term crime is reduced by a society that is not willing to accept it - that certainly involves punishment, but more importantly it involves communities built on a human scale locally.
Which brings us back to a need for a vital local democracy, and that needs political and human initiatives at the grassroots - not more control government control freakery from Whitehall.
Wrapping Up
Mr Cameron, if you will put comprehensive measures in your manifesto to defend Civil Liberties and Freedom of Speech - you have my vote. The same goes for you, Mr Clegg.
Who is going to make the decisive move to reverse the prevailing trend? We have a decade of control freakery to liquidate.
Tags: civil liberties, nany mcpgee, ethics, michael howard, jacqui smith[tags]civil liberties, nany mcpgee, ethics, michael howard, jacqui smith[/tags]
And here’s some more control unsayable.
When thinking of the social deterioration that is occurring, some people blame various social policies of different governing political parties and there has to be some truth in that in a general sense, but something all can agree with is that despite evermore legislation the problem continues to worsen.
What is hidden from view and discussion of course, is the pervasive and truly insidious influence of “the friends” (a secretive civil service population control organisation I have been resisting for over 12 years), always present regardless of elections, and concentrated on the lower income groups which have the most contact with the civil service and suffer the most damage.
What used to strike me is the abnormal and relentless pursuit of control; until “the friends” mission was revealed, namely maximum control without being caught breaking laws. The abnormality is the activities of psychopaths. This is important because now the definition of control becomes apparent, namely the pleasing of psychopaths. (Note the equanimity with which the rule of law is subverted. Human rights legislation in particular simply evaporates.)
In essence, when people cooperate (knowingly or otherwise) with “the friends” they are delivered into a moral wasteland (the psychopath sees only tools of control, even in the moral codes of normal people) to be served up to the civil service.
However, the imperative of secrecy results bizarrely in “the friends” inability to fully control, producing a lot of confusion, and to cap this horror its members are subliminally imparting their core ethos when interacting with the public, namely “Don’t get caught breaking the law”. The interaction with the public is continuing daily and I can tell you more if you ask.
Thus “the friends” deliver a triple whammy to the public.
1. The invitation to cooperate in a moral wilderness.
2. Confusion.
3. A powerful subliminal message to join in subverting the rule of law.
I believe it is are a leftover from the reds-under-the-bed scare of the fifties and normal bureaucratic reluctance to dismantle empires, along with the belief that one can’t have too much control, because in political terms “the friends” is simply a tidied up copy of the control and repression arms of this country’s historical totalitarian enemies. Civil servants have pinched the wardrobe of the enemy so to speak, and replaced political ideology with a secret control ideology.
Perhaps the civil servants responsible are far enough removed from the consequences of this failed experiment to still believe one can’t have too much control.
Ref. “the friends” comment, I should add that I believe there are two conflicting interests which both want publicity. Firstly, enough members of the organization realize what they are being used for and want it closed down with proper redundancy procedures.
Secondly, the people with the power to close it down believe that if controlled silent acquiescence can be brought to follow controlled widespread knowledge of “the friends”, then more control power accrues.
Which interest will win out?