David Miliband

Foreign Secretary

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Wednesday 01 April, 2009

Free Society

This article by Conor Gearty in the New Statesman was a breath of fresh air. Professor Gearty is an acknowledged authority on civil rights and individual liberties - but he does not fall for the idea that the UK is falling into the trap of becoming a police state because it uses a DNA database. (There is a brilliant article about the other canard, CCTV cameras, by David Aaronovitch in the Times which exposes the fraud behind the allegation that we are all photographed 300 times a day. It turns out to be drawn from a fictional account). Anyway, our rights are hard won; we should guard them properly; they should be defended by an independent judiciary and proper checks and balances. But as Professor Gearty says, "the idea that the state is an unwarranted assault on individual freedom is not a progressive one". And Professor Gearty should know: as he is open enough to admit, he proclaimed the coming of a police state in 1986, and has now recanted.

Posted at 12:46 01 April 2009 by David Miliband  |  Comments[4]

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"Of course, these powers can be abused and so must be controlled in a way which balances their importance with the risk that they impact on personal freedom too severely. It is not enough to rule out all discussion of this new technology as inevitably unacceptable, yet this is what many of today’s self-styled defenders of liberty seem to do. And doing this in such an indiscriminate manner means that we lack the verbal tools to critique truly unacceptable exercises of state power on the occasions that these arise – if everything is always condemned, nothing truly is." Breath of fresh air or exaggerated "straw man" argument?

Posted by OwenE2 on April 01, 2009 at 02:33 PM BST #

Well this is good news. To confirm: 1. Which powers over citizens has the state given up recently? So all the travel is not in one direction. 2. When did anti-terror laws stop being used against photographers, trainspotters and protestors? 3. If a party supporting a police state were elected, what would they have left to do?

Posted by Joe Otten on April 01, 2009 at 02:52 PM BST #

I admire British professors! Some of them like to chant “down with capitalism”, “long live socialism”. I really like those people, but sometimes I think: “What would you say if worked for some time in GULAG Stalin’s camps”. Would you still want to experiment with your social order? They criticize democratically elected government for alleged violations of human rights. The criticism is necessary. But does everyone in the free world understand what you have and what the majority of the population of the world is devoid of? Do professors and their students value it?

Posted by Vladimir on April 02, 2009 at 06:44 PM BST #

David. Do the words 'deep packet inspection' have any meaning in this blinkered world of yours? Perhaps you could have a chat to Phorm to see what they and BT have in mind for your 'free society'.

Posted by Paul E on April 03, 2009 at 09:39 PM BST #

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