Civil liberties - new material (37)
01 January 2000
Liberty, Autumn 1999, pp8. This issue contains pieces on the ECHR ruling that the MOD's investigation into the sexuality of four armed services personnel contravened Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights and government proposals on encryption in the Electronic Communications Bill. Available from Liberty, 21 Tabard Street, London SE1 6BP.
Rights, Scottish Human Rights Centre, January 2000, pp4. The latest bulletin contains articles on "the first steps to Scotland's own Freedom of Information Act" and the outlawing of the use of Temporary Sheriffs in Scottish courts which contravened the European Convention of Human Rights. Available from SHRC, 146 Holland Street, Glasgow G2 4NG, Tel 0141 332 5960
Spy TV, David Burke (ed), Slab-O-Concrete Publications 2000, pp160, ISBN 1 899866 25 6, £5.00. The editor is the founder of the UK section of White Dot, an anti-television campaigning group. His book considers the arrival of interactive, digital television and the ability of the service providers to record viewing patterns and lifestyle preferences to create psychographic profiles of users. "They sell you a society, you end up buying an identity" he suggests.
The effect of closed-circuit television on recorded crime rates and public concern about crime in Glasgow, Jason Ditton et al. Scottish Office Central Research Unit, (HMSO) 1999, £5.00. The authors, who include some of Britain's best known researchers on CCTV, considered various effects of the introduction of cameras into Glasgow city centre. Findings included one-third of 3,000 respondents to a public survey expressing "some or other civil libertarian reservations"; that the system "has been a qualified success" in its effect on crime rates but that CCTV's "contradictory" goals mean that "evidence of `success' usually relates to one goal at the expense of others"; and that civilian camera monitors "adopt police categories of suspicion when viewing the screens."
Warning! Strange behaviour, Duncan Graham Rowe. New Scientist, 11.12.99, pp25-28. Considers the development of intelligent surveillance systems that predict when a crime is about to be committed. Motion sensors are cross checked against patterns of "normal behaviour" (such as "the mathematically predictable" pathways people follow in car-parks) to highlight deviations (like people hanging-around, running or lurking in the shadows). The technology may also allow the possibility of tracking persons if used in conjunction with CCTV systems, as it would apparently be "relatively easy to tail people remotely" as they move from one camera to the next.
Parliamentary debates
Parliamentary Ombudsmen Commons 19.10.99. cols. 326-351
Home Office Issues Commons 26.10.99. cols. 813-868
Statutory Instruments and Human Rights Lords 10.1.99. cols. 470-485