Surveillance Britain, Invasive Google

February 6, 2009

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In the wake of the Lords’ report on Surveillance Britain, Alex Wade fears that Google’s new Latitude mapping service is yet another encroachment on individual liberty.

In the red corner, the House of Lords, which today condemns the seemingly unstoppable rise of the UK’s “surveillance society”. In the blue – and who would have thought it – Google, the American corporation usually associated with democracy, philanthropy, technological innovation and freedom of information. Their battleground? It’s one beloved of Max Mosley and, if you believe the editor of the Daily Mail, Mr Justice Eady, too. I refer, of course, of each citizen’s right to a private life.

The Lords today publish a report, Surveillance: Citizens and the State, which reveals that Britain has an estimated 4m CCTV cameras. We also lead the world in building a national DNA database, with more than 7% of the population already logged compared with 0.5% in the America. But, say the Lords, our extensive and technologically advanced surveillance systems are ripe for abuse.

A cross-party committee which includes Lord Woolf, a former lord chief justice, and two former attorneys general, Lord Morris and Lord Lyell, warns that “pervasive and routine” electronic surveillance and the collection and processing of personal information is not only taken for granted but could, along with the national DNA database, be co-opted for “malign purposes”. The Lords also doubt whether CCTV cuts crime and question whether local authorities should be allowed to use surveillance powers at all.

The report is published in a week in which Google unveiled its mobile phone tracking software. The new feature, dubbed Latitude, is part of the Google Maps 3.0 software update. It will initially only appear on BlackBerry mobile phones and those devices running the Windows Mobile and Symbian S60 operating systems, but will soon be available to iPhone and Google Android users.

Google says that the Latitude service is designed to answer the question most commonly asked by mobile phone users – “Where are you?” (or, in text-speak, “Where r u?”). When users sign up to Latitude – an opt-in service – an icon representing their position, and the position of friends and contacts, will appear on the Google Maps software on their mobile phone. Lo and behold, directions to help users navigate their way to their friend’s location can be downloaded, and users can click on a friend’s icon to call, text, and email them, or send an instant message.

In other words, not only is your every movement anonymously tracked already by CCTV cameras and the apparatus of the state’s electronic surveillance systems, but now your friends (and there are sure to be a lot of them, thanks to the likes of Facebook) can stalk your every move. Not to mention, suspicious partners, meddling bosses and the downright invasive with nothing better to do.

It’s enough to make me want to smash my mobile phone to smithereens on the nearest pavement. But there’d probably be a CCTV camera watching me, and I’d be charged with a public disorder offence. The police would no doubt circumvent my opt-in settings to pinpoint my exact location, too. Surveillance Britain – doncha just love it?

 

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When a lawyer’s son is before the law

September 8, 2010

A lawyer of Swordplay’s acquaintance finds himself in a fix.

“My teenage son is to be interviewed by the local constable,” he tells us. “He is alleged to have committed an offence.”

We gasp, for such seems the appropriate response, and then ask: is it serious?

“No, it is not,” our troubled legal friend tells us. “In the great scheme of things, my son’s alleged transgression is about as de minimis as they get.”

For a split second, we wonder if said teenage son is cognisant of lawyerly terms of art such as de minimis, but rapidly conclude that the answer to this question is not a sine qua non of further discourse. And so we press on. That sounds good, we say, relatively speaking, at least.

“Yes,” says the lawyer, “but I am at a loss as to what to do with him. Do I come down hard and ground him, or do I play the liberal card, or do I find a compromise?”

That depends, we aver.

“On what?” asks our man.

On whether you would prefer to deal with your son’s alleged offence as a lawyer, or as a father, or as a father who is a lawyer, or maybe even as a lawyer who is a father.

“I see your point,” says the lawyer. And then, as if to prove that there is no cure for recidivism, he says: “The offence is, after all, de minimis.”

Without prejudice, we add.

Pictured: something out of Kafka. Now there was a man who knew about the law. And had a tough old father, too.

Max Mosley and Wayne Rooney: bedfellows?

September 6, 2010

We rarely enjoy pondering Max Mosley – the man, the sins, the legal action, what he stands for – but confess to a degree of grudging admiration for his tenacity in trying to change the law of privacy. As this story from the Independent has it, Mosley has lodged a request with the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg asking that, by law, journalists must inform the subject of a story of the private details they intend to print, prior to publication.

We suspect the motor racing man would never have thought it, but he would appear to have an unlikely bedfellow in a certain England footballer. Step forward, Wayne Rooney, who would presumably put his name to Mosley’s petition.

Pictured courtesy of NashvilleScene: some bedfellows are stranger than fiction.


Memo to Freelance Writers: return that editor’s call quickly

September 3, 2010

Woe betide those who freelance and fail to return a call.

We say this upon hearing of a normally prolific freelance journalist who picked up a voicemail from an editor at one of the nationals on Tuesday afternoon. Please call us, was the message, and it could mean just one thing – a commission.

Our hero’s habitual practice is to return such calls as soon as is reasonably practicable, as m’learned friends might put it. In practice, that would habitually mean within a couple of hours. Most atypically, and for reasons we have yet to fathom, our man failed to call back for a full 24 hours.

By then, said editor had looked elsewhere. One of our man’s competitors had the gig, an interesting piece about cricket and the law, one which might just be in The Times today and which, we assume, asks whether the Pakistan cricket team have been caught out (in the legal sense, you understand).

We make no judgement on the no ball scandal, save to say that it is a scandal, but in another sense the moral is clear: in the fast-paced world of modern media, he who hesitates is lost.

Pictured courtesy of PrintedClothing.com: a fast-selling shirt.