You are currently browsing the Civil Liberties category.
Telegraph – ‘Mosquito’ devices which emit high-pitched whine to help disperse teenagers from street corners could be banned by the European Union on the grounds that they infringe children’s human rights.A committee of MEPs voted unanimously for a Europe-wide ban on the marketing, sale and use of the Mosquito acoustic youth dispersal devices in all public places. They said the devices treat young people “as if they were unwanted birds or pests” and that their use was tantamount to degrading treatment prohibited by the European Convention on Human Rights. The “Mosquito” device is currently marketed and used in the United Kingdom, where 3,500 devices are deployed, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands and Switzerland. . Read Article
BBC- Civil rights group Liberty has questioned the value of an anti-terrorism plan in Cornwall schools. The county council is holding a £3,500 conference to train secondary schools teachers how to spot children who might grow up to become suicide bombers. It follows a presentation from police to the council’s Standing Advisory Council on Religious Education. The council’s religious education advisor said curbing violent extremism should be “core to education”. Read Article
Associated Press – As the U.S. military prepares to leave Iraq, the State Department is blaming the Iraqi government for arbitrary killings of civilians and other human rights abuses. The department’s annual human rights report, released Thursday, also highlighted abuses in Afghanistan, another country where American troops are battling an insurgency. Civilians suffered the most when violence in Afghanistan spiked last year, the report said. Blaming the insurgents, the report said that almost one-third of Afghanistan was plunged into armed conflict, reducing the government’s ability to protect its citizens and extend its influence. Read Article
BBC – Public services and transport in Greece have ground to a halt as workers stage a third general strike in protest at the government’s austerity measures. Flights are grounded, and most schools and hospitals closed in the 24-hour walk-out called by the two main unions. Riot police fired tear gas at stone-throwing protesters during a large demonstration in the capital, Athens. The government says it sympathises with public anger over tax rises and wage cuts but is refusing to back down. Read Article
Associated Press – Repressive regimes have stepped up efforts to censor the Internet and jail dissidents, Reporters Without Borders said in a study out Thursday. China, Iran and Tunisia, which are on the group’s “Enemies of the Internet” list, got more sophisticated at censorship and overcoming dissidents’ attempts to communicate online, said Reporters Without Borders’ Washington director, Clothilde Le Coz. Meanwhile, Turkey and Russia found themselves on the group’s “Under Surveillance” list of nations in danger of making the main enemies list. Although Zimbabwe and Yemen dropped from the surveillance list, that was primarily because the Internet isn’t used much in either country, rather than because of changes by the governments, Le Coz said. Australia is among the countries under the group’s surveillance for its efforts to require Internet service providers to block sites that the government deems inappropriate, including child pornography and instructions in crime or drug use. Critics are worried that the list of sites to be blocked and the reasons for doing so would be kept secret, opening the possibility that legitimate sites might be censored. Read Article
ITWire – Shadow treasurer Joe Hockey yesterday launched an attack on the Federal Government’s internet filtering scheme, in one of the first cases of a senior Opposition figure coming out publicly against the controversial policy. “What we have in the government’s Internet filtering proposals is a scheme that is likely to be unworkable in practice. But more perniciously it is a scheme that will create the infrastructure for government censorship on a broader scale,” said Hockey in a wide-ranging speech on freedom to the Grattan Institute last night. Hockey said that “of course” people wanted to stop unlawful material being viewed on the internet, and that there were appropriate protections that are in place for that. “But I have personal responsibility as a parent,” he added. “If I want to stop my children from viewing other material that I feel is inappropriate then that is my responsibility to do something about it – not that of the government.” Read Article
The Register – Global arms’n'aerospace behemoth Boeing says it will now begin work in earnest on its “Phantom Eye” high-altitude hydrogen spy drone, powered by a pair of modified Ford car engines. The unmanned Phantom Eye will, according to Boeing engineers, be able to cruise for as long as four days at a time at altitudes of up to 65,000 feet. They should call it the Ford bi-motor, not the Phantom Eye. Read Article
Wall Street Journal – Lawmakers working to craft a new comprehensive immigration bill have settled on a way to prevent employers from hiring illegal immigrants: a national biometric identification card all American workers would eventually be required to obtain. Under the potentially controversial plan still taking shape in the Senate, all legal U.S. workers, including citizens and immigrants, would be issued an ID card with embedded information, such as fingerprints, to tie the card to the worker. The ID card plan is one of several steps advocates of an immigration overhaul are taking to address concerns that have defeated similar bills in the past. Read Article
The Columbus Dispatch – WASHINGTON – Dozens of former federal officials are playing leading roles in helping carmakers handle federal investigations of auto defects, including those for Toyota’s runaway acceleration problems. A Washington Post analysis shows that as many as 33 former National Highway Traffic Safety Administration employees and Transportation Department appointees left those jobs and now work for automakers as lawyers, consultants, lobbyists and in other jobs that deal with government safety probes, recalls and regulations. The reach of these former agency employees is broad. Their names appear on rosters for every major automaker, every automotive trade group and as expert witnesses and legal counsel for the industry in class-action lawsuits. Read Article
Sky news – Youngsters at Grace Academy in Chelmsley Wood claim they returned from half-term to find staff had installed the cameras without notifying them or their parents. Some parents are furious at what they say is a “total invasion of privacy” and claim some pupils are so anxious about being watched they are refusing to use the facilities. One mother whose teenage daughter attends the school is concerned the footage could fall into the wrong hands. Read Article
Mail Online – TV crime shows may have created the myth that DNA can solve almost every grisly crime – but the reality is very different. As few as one in every 1,300 crimes reported to the police is solved by the national DNA database, according to a report released by MPs yesterday. The research shows that – despite the massive expansion in the Government database – only 3,666 crimes are detected every year with links to an existing DNA profile. Questions have been raised over the effectiveness of the Government’s DNA database. Read Article
Telegraph – But doctors have accused the Government of rushing the project through, meaning that patients have had their details uploaded to the database before they have had a chance to object. The scheme, one of the largest of its kind in the world, will eventually hold the private records of more than 50 million patients. But it has been dogged by accusations that the private information held on it will not be safe from hackers. Read Article
The Australian – WEST Australian police may have inappropriately fired a Taser three times at a 49-year-old drug user who later died in police custody, an inquest has heard. Today at the inquest into the death of Mark Lewis Conway it was suggested that a police officer used his Taser as a compliance tool, contrary to police training protocols. Mr Conway’s death in August 2007 was caused by a drug overdose and the inquest has heard there is no suggestion the Taser shots contributed to his death. Read Article
Guardian – The official equalities watchdog will threaten to brand as racist police forces which are deemed to have used stop and search powers excessively against people from ethnic minorities, the Guardian has learned. Police forces will be told they face enforcement action unless they give meaningful promises to change, says a report for the Equality and Human Rights Commission expected to be released later this month. It presents a prima facie case that the police are still failing in their duties under racial equality laws and finds that an officer’s power to stop and search, based on having a reasonable suspicion of involvement in criminality, is disproportionately used against Afro-Caribbean and Asian Britons. Read Article
Telegraph – A “Minority Report” styled digital billboard that targets consumers using customised advertising based on their demographics is being developed by Japanese researchers. Engineers have developed the billboard, similar to one used in the Tom Cruise blockbuster, that uses in built cameras to instantly identifies a shopper’s age and gender as they walk past. The facial-recognition system, called the Next Generation Digital Signage Solution, then offers consumers a product it thinks is suited to their demographic. Read Article
The Independent – A former head of MI5 has accused intelligence services in the US of deliberately hiding the mistreatment of terror suspects from their British allies. Baroness Manningham-Buller, giving a lecture in London last night, said the US was “very keen” to prevent Britain discovering how they were getting vital intelligence. She cited the case of Binyam Mohamed, a British resident, who was held at Guantanamo Bay after the 9/11 attacks and provided his captors with useful intelligence which was passed on the the UK security services. She was unaware until 2007, she said, that he had been subjected to waterboarding. Read Article
Guardian – All dogs are to be compulsorily microchipped so that their owners can be more easily traced under a crackdown on dangerous dogs to be unveiled today. The package will include extending the dangerous dogs law to cover attacks by dogs on private property to protect postmen, and making third-party insurance compulsory so that victims can be financially compensated. Read Article
Telegraph – A far-Right candidate for Austria’s presidential election has brought the country’s dark past to the surface again, by denouncing a law banning Nazi groups and Holocaust denial. Barbara Rosenkranz, 51, a regional leader of the Freedom Party (FPOe), looks likely to be the only candidate to run against the incumbent, President Heinz Fischer, on April 25. But her comments supporting the scrapping of the tough prohibition law have renewed the debate about a heritage with which the country, which was under Nazi rule from 1938 to 1945, has never fully come to terms. Austrian leaders and the press already fear for the country’s image abroad. Under the 1947 Verbotsgesetz law, anyone who seeks to set up a Nazi organisation, propagates Nazi ideology or denies Nazi crimes can be jailed for up to 20 years. Read article
Ed – is it democratic to suppress or ban political ideologies, no matter how repulsive they might be to the majority? Surely a healthy democracy will ensure good debate and the election of those fit to represent their constituents.
Guardian – The digital economy bill will become law before Parliament is dissolved at the beginning of April ahead of a likely general election in May, senior media industry figures believe. That will usher in controversial laws enabling rights owners to cut off or restrict internet access for users who download films and music illegally. The bill contains measures designed to combat piracy. If it becomes law it will compel internet service providers including Carphone Warehouse and Virgin Media to pass on information about persistent offenders to rights holders. Read Article
The Australian – POLICE will be given new powers to use people’s secret tax details against them in criminal trials, under legislation that weakens the privacy protection over Australians’ tax returns. For the first time, prosecutors will be able to use private tax information as evidence in court for “serious offences”, including identity theft, money laundering, drug-smuggling, corporate fraud, sexual slavery and terrorism. Read Article
Mail Online – A commuter in a diabetic coma, an 89-year-old man and children as young as 12 – just some of the targets of British police armed with skin-piercing 50,000-volt Taser guns. As the Home Office investigates bringing an even more powerful rifle version to Britain, Jason Benetto reports on the slow creep of arms onto our streets. Read Article
Guardian – The government will attempt today to have a case about torture heard entirely behind closed doors in a move that some lawyers say would extend secrecy to a new area of hearings, overriding ancient principles of English law. This morning a case will come before three appeal judges in London in which seven men are seeking damages against the government for mistreatment during what they say was their “extraordinary rendition” and torture facilitated by the British security services. Read Article
The Independent – Two IT workers at a suburban Philadelphia school district that secretly activated webcams on students’ school-issued laptops are on paid leave amid an FBI wiretap investigation. Lower Merion School District officials insist the move is not meant to suggest wrongdoing by the veteran employees. They have said the webcams were only activated to find missing laptops, and not for any rogue purpose. Read Article
NewScientist – ABU GHRAIB and Guantanamo Bay: two names that have become synonymous in many people’s minds with torture and abuse of human rights by American interrogators. When Barack Obama entered the White House in January 2009, he set out to erase the stain such practices have left on America’s image. The High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group established later that year has as one of its stated aims to interrogate without brute force and to employ “scientifically proven” techniques – though without saying what these might be. Read Article
Telegraph – Hundreds more town hall staff and private security guards are to be handed police-style powers in a fresh Home Office drive to create an army of civilian “spies”. Almost 1,700 people, also including car park attendants and dog wardens, already have powers to hand out a string of fines and even take photographs of low level offenders under the Community Safety Accreditation Scheme. But the Government has quietly announced it plans to review the scheme with chief police officers to see how it can be expanded further. Read Article
