Censorship, Parliament, and Monarchy

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It is not uncommon to observe a fellow citizen who, in an extraordinarily self-righteous manner, points out how people of other countries suffer under censorship. It is regrettable that this affection for the freedoms of the inhabitants of these other countries rarely extends to the freedoms of our own.

Jon Stewart of the Daily Show recently exclaimed that ‘England is awesome’ in one his broadcasts. This particular segment of his show is, however, illegal in Britain. The problem? He used footage of Cameron and some quite unfriendly MPs in the chamber to support his admiration for the British Parliament, and it is apparently illegal to use parliamentary footage in a satirical/comedic context in Britain. This is ridiculous to say the least, but this form of censorship is unfortunately not limited to our politicians.

The monarchy is another institution that is overly protected against witty minds. One recent example of this occurred a few months ago when the Australian Broadcasting Corporation intended to air a satirical Royal Wedding Commentary. Clarence House, the official residence and office of Prince Charles, reportedly ruined these plans, and certain coverage restrictions were suddenly put in place. It was now the case that footage from Westminster Abbey could not be used ‘in any drama, comedy, satirical or similar entertainment programme or content’.

If you are the current or future head of church and state, you should expect to be the target of satire and comedy. And so should politicians. Restrictions of the kind considered above only make the satirical coverage more sharply ridiculing. For example, in their coverage of the royal wedding, Jon Stewart and his team decided to use an animation of the ceremony instead. The hilarious (but not 100% family-friendly) result can be found here.

When the politicians and the monarchy are too touchy, we ought to stand up against censorship. Luckily, the rules do not seem to apply to other countries, so I will browse the Internet and enjoy an uncensored version instead. Or, alternatively, I could catch a plane to one of ‘Chad, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Yemen’ where, Jon Stewart claimed, they do not censor a satirical news show.

First they came for the anarchists...

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The clipping attached comes from the City of Westminster police’s “Counter Terrorist Focus List” (PDF, H/T to Liberal Conspiracy). I’m not quite an anarchist – although some of my best friends are, and the works of people like David Friedman (PDF) and Georgetown legal philosopher John Hasnas (PDF) make me unsure. But saying that "anarchists should be reported to your local Police" is a pretty extraordinary command that should worry everybody. Disliking the state is now enough for your neighbours to report on you, and for plod to take notice.

Instead of a legitimate request for information about people who might be violent at riots (who quite incorrectly call themselves anarchists while demanding more state spending), the police have targeted people who believe something to spy on. The reason, in the police’s own words, is that anarchists:

consider the state undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, and instead promotes a stateless society.

Heaven forbid that anybody think the state might be harmful. Where could they have gotten that idea from? Fortunately the police are on their way, and they’re here to help.

The thinking behind this is, at best, a misunderstanding of the police’s role. They police are supposed to protect people from harm – not the state from peaceful change. Thinking that the police should protect the state from peaceful reform is more akin to 20th century totalitarianism than modern liberal democracy. Let’s not fall for the myth that a small group of violent thugs somehow implicates other people who share some of their beliefs. Nobody should be considered a criminal because of their opinions. If the police are getting involved, actions are what count.

We should be profoundly disturbed by this development, and not because it’s people who mistrust the state that are being targeted. The police section that released this piece is probably incompetent. But they’re incompetents who have the power to throw innocent people in jail, and they're sniffing around people who've had "bad" thoughts.

No, this isn’t East Germany, where you’d be thrown in jail (or worse) for holding unusual political opinions. But, when the police investigate people for thoughtcrime, it’s not the England that most people think they live in either.

Don't drive right-wing extremism underground

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Today, police brought Anders Behring Breivik, the man responsible for the Norway attacks, back in for questioning. He will have been asked about his links to other right-wing nationalist groups, a subject of obvious interest to the police. Such movements are not unique to Norway, and Britain has been doing some soul-searching of its own over the past week. Attention has turned to the English Defence League (EDL) in particular, a group to which various news sources (BBC, Telegraph, Guardian) have linked Breivik. Though I suspect that doing so may have put me on a government watch-list, I took the time this morning to browse the EDL website.

The EDL denies in its official statement that it has ever had a relationship with Breivik. Indeed, the welcome page encourages “protesting peacefully,” and the three most recent postings are articles decrying “extremism.” Unquirk the eyebrow that shot up at the claim that the organisation eschews “extremist beliefs.” It may well be that EDL members meet in secret to learn how to assemble assault rifles, but they are trying hard not to look like it. Regardless of how convincing you find them, the EDL’s efforts to seem normal are significant. They smack of self-censorship and the moderating influence of public discourse.

In the aftermath of Norway, politicos have proposed a new MI5 unit dedicated to “the Right,” shutting down the EDL and BNP, and myriad other ways to muzzle nationalists. Enacting these proposals would be intensely unwise. Without public platforms, I suspect that the EDL would produce literature of a far different stripe than that posted on its website. Restrictions on freedoms of expression and assembly are not only rights violations but also ill-conceived policy; they serve only to push speech underground, where it radicalises and becomes more virulent. Right-wing extremism needs to be diffused, but the best way to do this is to let it burn itself out.

Because they're worth it

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I hope that you’ve some appetite left for the advertising standards debate, for today marked yet another instalment in the rigmarole of Nanny v. the AdMan. Following objections from LibDem MP Jo Swinson, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has banned L’Oreal ads featuring Julia Roberts and Christy Turlington. Apparently the ads are sufficiently airbrushed as to be “misleading” under the advertising standards code.

Swinson’s problem is that the ads are “not representative of the results the product could achieve.” This is a strange charge, as in a sense that is surely true of all advertising. Sudden transport to some solstitial dune thick with beach-ready babes is unlikely to be one of the effects of drinking light beer, but we allow Budweiser advertisements that suggest this. Indeed, it is plainly misleading to suggest that any foundation will make you look like Julia Roberts or Christy Turlington – airbrushed or not. Advertisements often hint at things that can never be guaranteed, and drawing a bright red line at greater-than-average airbrushing is arbitrary.

Even if some clear line could be delineated, though, I would still see no reason to prohibit this kind of ‘misleading’ advertisements. A ban is only justified to prevent a serious harm and when there is a direct and necessary causality between an action and that harm. These adverts should not be forbidden under either criterion. First, the only direct harm I can see is that women might be disappointed. This is not enough to limit freedom of expression; there is no right not to misspend.

Second, though, there is no direct causality between ads and greater harms. The problem that Swinson is really targeting is low self-esteem and its associated evils: eating disorders, depression, and self-harm. Body image issues are serious, but they are not a reason to censor advertisements. The fact is that not everyone who sees an airbrushed advertisement will suffer because of it, and we cannot ban everything that maybe, might harm some people. We criminalise poisoning, not leaving cleaning products lying around.

Swinson’s agitation comes from a good place, but it is misguided. We hold our right to freedom of expression too dearly to violate it on the grounds that Swinson and the ASA present. Just because the expression in question comes from a big, bad corporation does not make it any less worthy of protection. Here’s hoping that the next blow in the never-ending ad standards saga comes for freedom of speech.

Is Clare's Law just?

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Though it might now be mistaken for a political class cage fight, the News of the World scandal is really about privacy. Interesting, then, to see another public debate swinging wholly against the right to privacy. This Monday, a campaign was launched for Clare’s Law, a proposal that would force the police to reveal, upon request, an individual’s history of violence to his or her partner.

The law is so-named in memory of Clare Woods, who was murdered in 2009 by a man with previous domestic abuse complaints. The proposal enjoys the support of Victims Commissioner Louise Casey, former Home Office Minister Hazel Blears, and the victim’s father. Reportedly, Home Secretary Theresa May is also reviewing the proposal (though her plate is rather full at the moment).

According to Casey, the law will help women avoid abusive relationships. She says, ''This seems common sense to me. Our priority should not be protecting a perpetrator's privacy at the expense of costing a woman's life.”

Casey presents Clare’s Law as a trade-off between an offender’s privacy and a woman’s life. If that were really the choice, I doubt many of us would object. What Casey means, though, is that Clare’s Law barters an offender’s privacy for the possibility of a decreased risk of harm. Domestic abuse is horrible, but this is not the way to solve it.

The issue is risk. An individual has the right to defend herself against direct harm. She has the right to try to avoid risk. She does not have the right to violate another’s privacy to avoid risk, however. Privacy, like all other individual liberties, should be jealously guarded, and is only justifiably breached to protect against direct harm. Probability is insufficient.

To think otherwise denies a tenet of our justice system, that people are innocent until proven guilty. With Clare’s Law, Casey is juxtaposing a rap sheet and crime stats and assuming recidivism. This is unacceptable.

Justifying a rights violation on the basis of likelihood is an argument of infinite regress: mightn’t every woman with whom an offender comes into contact be at risk? Everyone, for that matter? The only acceptable bright-line is actual harm.

The proposal subverts the purposes of punishment. Submitting an ex-felon to perpetual privacy violations does nothing to further the aims of incarceration, deterrence, rehabilitation, or retribution (well, perhaps some ignoble part of the latter). It is likely to alienate offenders who are trying to move on with their lives. Indeed, Clare’s Law actively undermines rehabilitation. Treating offenders as statistical data points denies the possibility of reform.

Violence against women is unacceptable. So are witch hunts and privacy violations. We restrict who can access police files because we believe privacy is important, and correlation is not enough to encroach upon this right.

Immigration, good and bad

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The Independent's economics editor Sean O'Grady had a very good article on Monday about the benefits of immigration to Britain. The native British population is getting older, he points out, and having fewer children. Where some see the demographic dynamism of immigrants as a threat, O'Grady sees it as an opportunity to revitalize Britain: 

To be a productive and prosperous nation we need people, lots of them, and the younger and better skilled the better. Immigrants tend to be young and enterprising. They work harder, often; think of the thousands toiling, yes, often illegally, in sweat shops, cleaning hotels and hospitals, serving behind bars or waiting on tables, driving minicabs at all hours and working in care homes tending to our parents and grandparents. Their children often go into the professions or start their own businesses – like the Kenyan and Ugandan Asians I grew up with in Leicester. . . .

Think of the most vibrant economies in history: America, Argentina and Britain in the 19th-century; western Europe and Japan in the 1960s; China, Brazil, Indonesia and India today; Australia for most of its history. All had rapidly expanding, youthful populations, some of them by attracting immigrants. Contrast them with the sclerotic, ageing economies of today – southern Europe and Japan.

Indeed. Countries become rich and prosperous when they attract people from elsewhere. Many opponents of open borders accuse its advocates of being blind to the cultural arguments, but this is untrue. Consider the American Century, driven (culturally, at least) by the universal appeal of the Hollywood culture. An enormous number of the greatest directors, writers and actors of the Hollywood era were first- or second-generation immigrants, often bringing the techniques and sensibilities of their homelands to the American melting pot.

The Polish-born Roman Polanski (Chinatown), the Greek-born Elia Kazan (On the Waterfront), and the Italian-American Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather, Apocalypse Now) come to mind – all directors of films speaking to the American experience. Immigrants helped to make American culture what it is. Some will say that Britain is different; that its culture is one of conservatism (in the literal sense) and tradition. Maybe, but British culture has also been influenced by its immigrant groups (and, less happily, by its colonies).

The real problem with immigration, I think, is ghettoization. This is a danger, and one that has already been realized in some parts of the country: certain communities of people being shunted together and creating their own cultural enclaves in urban areas. To an extent this is a natural part of immigration – new arrivals to a country want to be near people they have something in common with – but that isn't the whole story. Successive government housing policies based around Le Corbusier-style council estates have also added to the ghettoization of immigrant groups. Sticking a whole load of people into a housing estate, without property rights over the houses they're in, is bound to generate delinquency and discontent. So too with welfare policies that discourage work and, thus, social mobility. This may explain native resistence to immigration as well – competition for government welfare, a truly fixed pie, is likely to engender resentment and hostility in a way that voluntary exchange never could.

Immigration opponents would do well to recognise the benefits – economic and cultural – of allowing people into Britain. But supporters of open borders should accept that, as things currently stand, there are some downsides. If both could make peace and accept that free movement of people is just as important as the free movement of goods, they could work to dismantle parts of government, the real problem-maker. Then Britain really could be back on the road to greatness.

Civil liberties go up in smoke

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A new report by Simon Davies of Privacy International points out that legislation introduced for the protection of public health is being cynically exploited to impose regulations on us that were never intended. The report, Civil Liberties: Up in Smoke, focuses particularly on tobacco regulations, saying that the official encroachment into the home and family life of smokers is now 'blatant and intrusive'.

It highlights the increasing use of non-statutory fines and controls, increased surveillance, a sharp increase in discrimination against smokers, and a shift from public health consideration to the demonisation of people who don't 'fit in' with prevailing attitudes. Local authorities, health bodies and housing associations are now adopting measures that restrict the right of people to act freely in their own home or vehicle. Tracking and surveillance eqipment is being used to monitor the activities and movements of smokers. And public employers are unfairly discriminating against staff who smoke, and subjecting them to harassment and intimidation. Tolerance and evidence-based policy has been replaced by zealotry. Yet smokers' actions have minimal impact on other people.

I am not a smoker, but I agree that the fanaticism with which smokers are now pursued has gone far beyond any public health considerations, which was the original purpose – or excuse – for regulation. In many parts of the US, you cannot even smoke in public parks or on the street anywhere near a building. This is not a public health measure. It is the majority trying to dictate the lifestyle choices of a minority. And one can see the bullies lining up other 'health' targets, like wine and fast food, that they disapprove of.

Frankly, I prefer a world in which people could live in their own way, without others telling them how to behave. That would be a world that is much more diverse, interesting, exciting and innovative. The trouble is that some find it also unsettling. Well, create your own perfect lifestyle world, then, and leave me to mine.

Clarification on the Police National Database

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Last week Anna wrote a piece on ‘The fatal conceit of the Police National Database’. It raised concerns about plans to store the details of 10-15 million people in this database, on the basis that there are only 9.2 million people in the UK with criminal records. By implication, Anna wrote, up to 6 million people without criminal records would be on the database. And given the British government’s less-than-stellar track record with data security, this poses a worrying threat to privacy. I stand behind all of that.

However, the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA) has written in to say that Anna’s piece contained a factual error that they would like us to clarify. They say Jennie Cronin, director of the NPIA, never said that, “many of these people [the additional six million] are victims”. In fact, they say that victim data will only be held in a limited number of cases, where it relates to sexual offences for which a court can grant a sexual offences prevention order.

I’m happy to admit it when we get something wrong, and I apologize for us putting inaccurate words in Ms Cronin’s mouth.

The NPIA go on to say that holding such victim data is important because it will help the police to realize when vulnerable people are being repeatedly targeted and prompt them to provide additional protection. The example they cite is of a recent Police National Database (PND) search on a victim of domestic violence, which revealed a pattern of abusive relationships across the country. They say that now the police force in question is fully appraised of the situation, they are in a better position to protect her and to “help her to break the pattern of abusive relationships.” Similarly, they believe the victim data on the PND will help police to protect “children and young people being ‘groomed’ for prostitution and then trafficked across local police force borders”.

The NPIA also argue that they are justified to put the details of people who haven’t been convicted of any crime on the PND. They say that individual police forces already hold information on such people, and that all that is in question is sharing it between forces. They also say that Ian Huntley, the murderer of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, came to the attention of Humberside Police in relation to allegations of eight separate sexual offences between 1995 and 1999, was investigated in yet another, but was never convicted. They do not claim that the PND would have prevented the Soham murders, but do say it would help to prevent people like Huntley slipping through their net in future.

Now, the NPIA advance valid arguments on both victim data and sharing information on those who have not actually been convicted of any offence. And I think it is important that even those of us are deeply concerned about the over-extension of police powers and the inexorable rise of the database state acknowledge that such policy shifts are often driven by noble intentions.

But I’m still not sold on the whole thing. The trouble is that we’ve been here so many times before: we’re told that new police powers are needed to tackle terrorism, and before you know it they’re being used to arrest people for walking on cycle lanes or heckling at the Labour Party conference. We assume that the police will only arrest you for serious wrongdoing, and then we hear you can be banged up for dropping an apple core and prosecuted for overfilling your wheelie bin.

If I still believed that the police could be trusted to exercise their powers fairly, proportionately, and responsibly, I wouldn’t have to be writing this blog. But I don’t believe it, and many others feel the same way. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the Police National Database, the National Policing Improvement Agency has its work cut out to convince us we’re wrong about that.

Watching the watchers

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If you went to a school where you were subjected to years of Latin, or are a Star Trek: the Next Generation enthusiast, you will be familiar with the phrase, “Who watches the watchers?” Though Juvenal was decrying the corruptibility of men guarding their masters’ wives, his line is now used to refer to that quality in government—no comment on the evolution of the phrase. The problem of how to ensure government accountability is older than Juvenal, and sadly perpetual. Two recent stories on the Internet and police misconduct raise interesting questions about how technology might be used to guard the guardsmen in the modern era. Might we finally be getting it right?

First to cross my radar screen was a Telegraph article on a Merseyside Police scandal. Merseyside had 152 breaches of the Data Protection Act in 2009, an act that limits police access to information on private individuals. Most of the violations appear to have been the result of voyeuristic interest in Steven Gerrard’s affray charges, though there were a fair few private investigations into daughters’ boyfriends.

That we know of this is encouraging. It shows that the Freedom of Information Act, under which the breach statistics were released, is doing some of its job. It also shows that technology can make it easier to identify government wrongdoing; login information leaves a paper trail. The flip side, of course, is that technology in the form of databases makes all manner of unscrupulousness easier. Beyond waiting for professional standards departments to uncover misconduct and release it via the Freedom of Information Act, though, the Internet also offers citizens the opportunity to monitor police activity on their own. A piece from the Atlantic presents iPhone apps like “OpenWatch” and “CopRecorder” as story sources “for investigative reporting in an age when newsrooms are shrinking.” This may be one of their merits. The more obvious is their capacity to help keep the police honest.

CopRecorder has already been downloaded by over 50,000 users, and has spawned a webpage to which anyone can upload audio and video files of police encounters. The cynical take is that the chance of catching something truly horrendous is infinitesimal. That’s fair, but the likelihood without such programmes is much smaller. OpenWatch improves upon camcorders by allowing users to record and immediately upload files on a device to which most of us are conjoined, our mobiles. The Internet is a tool, and ultimately is what we make of it. Some police officers will abuse it, but misconduct is nothing new. More exciting are innovations that finally let the public counter-survey authority figures. Watching the watchers, indeed.

Steel Bonnets and property rights

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I've been reading George MacDonald Fraser's "Steel Bonnets", the history of the Anglo Scottish Border reivers. Yes, I do know it's nearly 40 years old, it just takes me some time, OK? I also came across this new paper:

Suppose that you took a freely available resource, but that now anyone can contest your ownership of that resource. Depending on the consequences, you may not want to extract in the first place. It thus matters in which way the state is weak. If it is weak in that it gives away rights to natural resources, then there will be over-exploitation. If it is weak in that it cannot enforce property rights in general, and in particular when it comes to bring product to the market, then it is the Wild West and under-exploitation may ensue. Theft is a powerful mechanism to kill markets.

The underlying economic problem in the Borders was exactly that the State was too weak. It could not provide the rule of law nor punishment of the thieves. Thus there was no or little incentive to invest in the land, thus little way of making a living other than stealing what someone else had.

I think that it's this sort of issue that distinguishes the classical liberla from either the anarchist or the libertarian (OK, certain extreme forms of libertarianism). There are certain things that have to be done and some of those certain things have to be done by the state. Criminal law being one of them (we can think up ways in which it's not the current form of the state which enforces such but I'd claim that whoever imposes criminal law is in fact the state).

We can all have lovely fights about which those things are which both must be done and must be done by the state: certainly I'd agree that the proper list is a lot shorter than the number of things that the state currently tries to do.

On the same point, there's a Thomas Sowell quote out there about how the caveman had access to exactly the same natural resources we do. Our vastly greater wealth comes from the knowledge of how to exploit them rather than anything else. And one of those things we know is that the incentives to exploit such wealth, to create wealth by exploitation, comes from a legal system which enable us to enjoy the fruits of that exploitation.

Which is indeed one of the things that the state has to provide us with.