Tomorrow is Britain's nationwide "Convention on Modern Liberty"

Tomorrow marks the first ever British Convention on Modern Liberty, co-sponsored by The Guardian, OpenDemocracy, and Liberty. It's a daylong, nationwide forum on the erosion of liberty, privacy and civil rights in Britain. Boing Boing is a proud sponsor of the event, and I'll be speaking at the closing plenary with Billy Bragg tomorrow afternoon in London.

We are entering a dangerous period in our country. Economic turmoil threatens profound hardship and disharmony. Disenchantment with politics is growing and even legitimate protest is threatened by an unprecedented programme of challenges to our rights, freedoms and democracy. Sixty years ago Britain was a proud co-author of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. Now it is increasingly centralized, abandoning its historic principles some of which date back to the Magna Carta.
The Government’s continued stated determination to extend detention without charge in terrorism cases to 42 days is one symbol of the damage done to our hard-won rights and freedoms. The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA), which gives hundreds of agencies access to people’s records without their knowing, is another. The collection of all available records on a huge central database for the use of the authorities is a third.
We believe that such threats can be overcome but only if the public is woken to the dangers. While we may be impatient for action, the issues must be addressed in an open-minded way with as thorough and accessible public debate as possible.

The Convention on Modern Liberty

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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Anonymous

Yesterday Philip Pullman had an op piece in the Times, but not for long. It vanished, a 404 page is all that remains http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article5811412.ece

Someone has posted the full text at http://www.modernliberty.net/2009/philip-pullman-voices-his-thoughts
Kevin Kenny

I think that censorship in a private forum is entirely reasonable. This is the editors’ space, and what they expose to the world is what they see fit to expose.

Censorship becomes evil when it constrains a publisher from publishing what he sees fit, and others are willing to read. “Freedom of the press belongs to the man who owns one.”
JJR1971

How about restoring British self-defence rights, re: personal ownership of firearms. No?

*crickets chirping*

Yeah, guess that didn’t make it onto the agenda. We colonials considered that a fundamental liberty, which is part of why we’re not a colony anymore, and why Ireland is an independent nation, too (and why Irish gun control is even more bitterly ironic, but I digress).

But we Yanks are all just backwoods barbarians, what do we know…

And before you point to Bush and say “this proves personal ownership of firearms is meaningless to modern liberty”, just think what the Bushies would’ve been able to pull off if the people WERE largely disarmed. I shudder at the thought.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  JJR1971,
  
  Please read the Moderation Policy linked at the top of the page.
Anonymous

Antinous,

thickdot didn’t say that you were nefarious, but
that you were censoring comments. Which in the
case of blogspam you are, and rightly.

Intellectual honesty demands that you introspect at least
enough to say “yes, this action could be viewed
as ‘censorship’, but I believe that this action
is the right thing to do because X”. You sound
as if your reasoning is “censorship is bad, and
I am a good person, therefore what I am doing
cannot be censorship.”
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Anonymous, the spam filter is a system function, an algorithm, which funnily enough never, ever, ever catches any real spam, but frequently grabs legitimate comments with multiple links. My job vis-a-vis the spam filter is to release comments back to gen-pop. So my reasoning is that I’m not responsible for what an algorithm does behind the scenes.
Takuan

I think it is libellous to suggest that Antinous built and operates the spam filter. Intellectual honesty requires that your prejudice be declared – or are you too good a person?
starfish and coffee

#11

+1
Ugly Canuck

Hey here’s a youtube link to “Fingerprint File”, the Stones song I referenced earlier.
This song is thirty-four years old: the problems of state surveillance in an age of tech has been with us for a while; arguably, the need for getting the edge on our fellow humans drives the whole techno thing for us. Link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-7rBtZS_j0

Danm that’s good white funk!
…Some little jerk in the FBI
Keeping files on me six feet high
It gets me down….
Ugly Canuck

I guess it should be changed to:
…some little creep in the FBI
keeping files on me 6 gigs deep…
Anonymous

I can’t get to London due to college, but I’ll be attending the Cardiff satellite convention, taking along some CDs of crypto shiny for anyone who wants them, and a laptop to demosntrate them on. (Tor, GPG4win, Enigmail, TrueCrypt)

Great to hear that you’re going to speak, I hadn’t seen your name associated with it before.
Flying_Monkey

Spam? It’s Cory’s site, isn’t it? ;) It’s no more spam than the multiple posts about ‘X’ played on a ukelele (and rather more important IMHO…). Boingboing has been a really important ally for UK civil liberties campaigners like myself and we really appreciate it.

I guess some of you don’t care much for what is happening in the UK, but it’s important even if you’re not British. The UK is seen by governments throughout the world as a ‘good example’ for security and surveillance. What has happened in the UK is being exported…

It’s a great shame I can’t be there (being in Brazil at the moment)… knock ‘em dead, Cory!
Ugly Canuck

Did somebody mention Blitzkrieg?
Police at protests(thanks to Cryptome for pointer).
Link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RW0o0oMxzEs
thickdot

Other voices from over the pond:
http://davidsirota.com/
http://davidswanson.org/
http://imagineaworldof.blogspot.com/
Ugly Canuck

In case some have not seen this, the UK’s retired spy chief does not like what’s going on either.
Link:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article5750713.ece

These days
It’s all secrecy
No privacy
-M.Jagger, K.Richards (in 1974!!)
“Fingerprint File” from
It’s Only Rock’n'Roll
thickdot

hmmm and to show how much you hate censorship you are holding my comments?!

typical
Cory Doctorow

1: I love the New York Times, but I hate sports. And every day, there’s that damned sports section!

2: So throw away the sports section

1: Oh, I do, but man, I sure hate the sports section

2: Other people like the sports section

1: I hate it

2: So throw it away!

1: I hate the sports section!

2: There are other papers that don’t have a sports section, you know

1: But I love the New York Times!

(repeat)
Jeff

I’d like to see some vids posted, maybe the entire Cory part. CALIBRATED, just skip the stuff you don’t like, ya know? Although the line about Cory being built for modern liberty issues was ok. That is, after all, one of the reasons he’s so worthy.
Anonymous

There is no way that I’m taking a convention that has the insane Countryside Alliance as a partner seriously. Let me know when you’ve come to your senses and ditched them and I’ll be right along.

– Paul Crowley
reginald

i cannot believe that this is so controversial
liberty!
Hamish MacDonald

Darn, you’re not making it up to Scotland. Anyway…

This is something I’m peripherally aware is going on in the background, and I know activism is not my personal role in life, so I’m glad there are people like Cory who are up in arms about this and are raising some appropriately-sized hell.
pilcrow

Huge Billy Bragg fan here. Mermaid Avenue Volume II (one of his collaborative effort with Wilco covering unreleased Guthrie songs) is nirvana con carne.

That being said, we’re still freaking doomed.
Takuan

oppression costs money
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article5793087.ece
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Comments renumbered due to sock puppet extraction.
  
  And ThickDot, your comments were caught in the automatic spam filter due to three links in one tiny comment. Since you’ve never had a comment held before, why would you jump to the conclusion that we’re doing something nefarious? That’s rather ungracious of you.
pilcrow

oppression costs money

That’s a rather odd picture in the article you linked. Man dressed in blue smurf suit and surgical mask holds camera while giving the thumbs up to a couple of policemen. Sweet!
imipak

semi-O/T: visitors (or residents) of London can see the self-same eight-hundred-year-old Magna Carta, and various other crucial documents from the history of the ongoing fight for individual and collective freedom and rights, at the British Library on the Euston Road (turn right out of King’s Cross station, it’s 100m down the road.) And join Liberty.