And we think we've got it bad

On January 7, the government of Tony Blair, freedom-lover extraordinaire, introduced the so-called Civil Contingencies Bill into Parliament.

The proposed legislation is supposedly aimed at giving authorities necessary new powers to deal with civil emergencies and terrorist attacks. But it is so extreme that leading UK newspapers have used the word "Draconian" in describing it. The Independent for January 11 says the bill

will give the police and Army sweeping powers to create exclusion zones and enforce them[,] to make arrests on looser grounds of suspicion than usual, to ban people from travelling and stop gatherings, as well as requisitioning property and taking over stations and airports. Ministers will be able to suspend Acts of Parliament, take control of major financial institutions and declare bank holidays....

The Scotsman adds that it also allows police to

destroy private property without compensation and ban peaceful protests.

And what constitutes the sort of "emergency" that would bring this into play? The Independent tells us that an "emergency" is

defined as "an event or situation which threatens serious damage to human welfare, the environment or the security of the UK or a place in the UK". This could include war, terrorism, contamination of land with "harmful biological, chemical or radioactive matter or oil", flooding and "disruption or destruction of plant life or animal life".

You read that right: Technically, an oil spill would be grounds for a wholesale crackdown on civil liberties.

And believe it or not, this is the watered-down version. The original bill, proposed last summer,

allowed for the suspension of basic human rights in a time of emergency.

It was intended that the activities of police, politicians and other public authorities could not be challenged under human rights law during an emergency. The effect of the original bill would also have been to allow house arrest and detention without trial,

says the Scotsman.

But even this apparently isn't enough. Under the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act, passed in the wake of 9/11, fourteen suspected international terrorists have been held in high security prisons for almost two years, without being charged and without any evidence put before the courts. It's expected that Home Secretary David Blunkett is going to demand amendments to the Civil Contingencies Bill that would extend those powers to cover all British subjects. In the event of an "emergency," British "terror Suspects" could be rounded up, locked up, and shut up without police being under any obligation to justify it. The Scotsman adds that

[a]nother controversial proposal is for police to be given the right to detain anyone in the 'vicinity' of a suspected bioterrorist attack.

This bill, of course, still has to get through Parliament. But it does show the thinking that arises when power feels in even the smallest way threatened - and I'm sure is being eagerly watched in the halls of our own Injustice Department.

Meanwhile [the Independent continues], the Office for National Statistics has just been given permission to start work on a national computerised register of the population, for which every resident of the UK will be given a personal identity code.... Initially the records will include name, address, date and place of birth, and sex. Public services including the NHS [National Health Service], Passport Agency, Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority and Department for Work and Pensions will check off submissions against this number.... It is also expected to be used for the electoral roll, council tax and the Inland Revenue, the Child Support Agency, national insurance, health, police and legal records, and even court files from divorce proceedings. ...

The number is also expected to become the identifier for services such as credit cards, websites, mobile phones, and airline reservations....

In short, one number that with a straightforward coordination of databases - who could object, it's all in the fight against terrorism and you're not a terrorist sympathizer are you and why do you hate the UK so much? - becomes a portal to massive details of your personal life more extensive than it's likely even you recall, all available to any low-level functionary in a position to play the part of the jack-booted thug with the phonied-up German accent in some cliche-driven World War II movie demanding "your papuhs, plees."

But, comes the reply, the more information we have, the easier you can establish your innocence. And the biometric data that will be on the ID cards we'll be issuing to everyone is so secure that only the guilty need fear! So what are you afraid of? ::eyes narrowing::

Plenty. First, as Simon Davies of Privacy International notes,

the number of circumstances where you can be wrongly identified or falsely accused increases exponentially to the amount of information they have on you.... The Government is working from a position that says if there is enough information available and it is all linked to a unique number, that will enable you to establish your innocence more easily if questioned. If they, say, produce evidence you were in a certain place at a certain time it is up to you to prove you were not. That is a reversal of the burden of proof.

That reversal arises because the "presumption of regularity" will declare that the records are correct unless you can prove otherwise. But the idea that such records are necessarily correct is not just a presumption, it's presumptuous, as several people on an Air France flight over the holidays could tell us. Undoing even a single incorrect entry in an "official" record - or even an unofficial one - can be difficult and frustrating, as I expect many of us could testify from personal experience. (I know I could.)

And the biometric data isn't a whole lot better. The issue isn't only whether your data on your government-issued ID card is actually your data, but whether or not it's accurately read and accurately compared (to accurate records). For example, iris recognition technology, one of the methods now being touted, was found in a Pentagon study to be 94% accurate. That sounds pretty good - until you recall that terrorists, those against who this whole business is supposedly protection, likely make up no more than a small fraction of one percent of the populace. And that promises massive cock-ups.

For example, consider the US, a nation of just under 300 million people. Let's just suppose there are 10,000 domestic terrorists running around loose. (I say domestic - here understood to include all legal residents, whether citizens or not - because this national ID card business obviously does not apply to foreign visitors. This is for internal control and domination.) Do the math. Terrorists thus amount to .0033% of the population. With a 6% error rate, that means getting over 1800 false positives for every evildoer-nabbing correct match. Even using the industry's inflated claims of 99.5% accuracy, that still gives you about 150 false positives for every correct identification.

It was, if I recall, William O. Douglas who said, in describing a right to privacy, "the most fundamental right is the right to be left alone." It would have been interesting to hear what he'd have to say about 198- excuse me, 2004.

Unintentional Humor Dept., Bitter Laughter Div.: The Scotsman reports that

[g]overnment spokesmen insist that the new powers afforded by the proposals in the bill will be used sensibly to protect the public rather than infringe their rights.

I think we should all re-read this. Hell, this too, if you can find it.