Civil liberties - new material (70)
01 January 2008
On "Terrorism" lists versus the rights to self-determination and democracy. Campaign Against Criminalising Communities, July 2007, pp. 4. This briefing by CAMPACC, which was launched in 2001 to oppose the Terrorism Act 2000, was published as a supplement to Peace News and examines the continuing criminalisation of those who resist totalitarian governments and anti-democratic legislation. The irony is that those who oppose detention without trial in the UK or the abduction of unconvicted citizens for the purpose of torture by the USA or the bloody suppression of Kurdish culture and politics in Turkey, now find themselves branded as criminals or terrorists. This supplement examines some of these issues and includes articles on the Terrorist List, detention without trial in the UK, the fate of British prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, the Friends of Kongra Gel (Kurdistan) and the criminalisation of Tamils (Sri Llanka). CAMPACC can be contacted by email: knklondon@gn.apc.org
La Farnesina e la sorte dell'italiano Elkassim, Claudio Gatti. Il Sole 24 Ore, 20.12.07, p.13. Article in which the author welcomes the Italian foreign ministry's diplomatic effort to secure the approval by majority of a moratorium against the death penalty by the UN General Assembly, described as "symbolic" but nonetheless "worth celebrating". After noting the lack of diplomatic action by the same ministry in the case of Abou Elkassim Britel, the Italian citizen and rendition victim of Moroccan origin who is on hunger strike in prison in Casablanca, Gatti asks: "how much value can this symbolic victory against the death penalty have when one does not manage to save our fellow citizen who was illegally deported, falsely charged and unfairly convicted from a possible actual death?"
Gypsy and Traveller Law Update - Part 1, Marc Willers, Chris Johnson and Dr Angus Murdoch. Legal Action December 2007, pp. 13-15. This article highlights the latest developments in policy and case-law relating to Gypsies and Travellers. Part 1 focuses on changes in relation to planning law and enforcement.
The new politics of personal information, Peter Bradwell and Niamh Gallagher. Demos December 2007, pp. 60. The most significant finding of this report is a call for "a serious, renewed debate about the identity card scheme, with the kind of engagement that should have happened at the start of the process. Otherwise the scheme should be dropped." It also recommends that the Information Commissioner's Office gets "greater capacity to cope with the range of demands of an information society, which continue to extend away from just security of data towards data use and the nature of information sharing." The report's recommendations came less than a month after the HM Revenue and Customers "datagate" scandal in which it "lost" computer discs containing data on more than 25 milliom UK citizens and around the same time as the
Information Commissioner, Richard Thomas, warned that a new wave of datagate scandals are likely to emerge once he has finished investigating a number of other breaches of data protection laws. See: http://www.demos.co.uk/files/Demos_FYI.pdf
Information law update, Dr David McArdle. SCOLAG Legal Journal issue 361 (November) 2007, pp. 265-266. This is a new feature in the journal and consists of a regular digest of information law. This article covers computer crime, data protection, freedom of information and privacy.