politics

  • European Parliament adopts open data strategy

    EU flagYesterday, in the final stage of the EU approval process, the European Parliament formally adopted updated EU rules on the re-use of public sector information.

    The Council of Ministers had already agreed to the new rules at last week’s Telecoms Council.

    European Commission Vice-President Neelie Kroes said: “Today we can celebrate our efforts to bring government data closer to citizens and businesses in Europe. We are finally getting the much needed legal framework to boost the economy and create new jobs.”

    After this final endorsement, the Commission will start developing a series of guidelines on the most relevant elements addressed in the Directive, such as licensing, datasets and charging arrangements (it’s public sector information produced with taxpayers’ money; it should be available free of charge. Ed.).

    Member States will have 24 months from the date of entry into force of the revised Directive to implement it in domestic legislation. Once fully implemented, the Directive will boost the data market in Europe by making all the generally accessible public sector information available for re-use. Developers, programmers, creative citizens and businesses will be able to get and re-use public sector data at zero or very low cost in most cases. Prospective users will also have access to more exciting and interesting content since materials in national museums, libraries and archives now fall under the scope of the Directive.

    Neelie Croes has also written a post on this topic on her blog.

  • Dossier of evidence: Capita’s failure to supply interpreters

    CAPITA: Translation and Interpreting (TI) (formerly Applied Language Solutions)

    Instances of failure to supply interpreters or to comply with the Ministry of Justice contract and Framework Agreement

    Volume 2: 1st February – 31st May 2013

    The reports contained within this dossier describe justice sector interpreting failures from 1st February 2013. This is the second year of the Ministry of Justice’s Framework Agreement and contract with Capita Translation and Interpreting (formerly Applied Language Solutions) and the variety of failures reported span the following complaints:

    • Failing to supply an interpreter
    • Supplying under-qualified interpreters
    • Providing interpreters with no legal or criminal experience
    • Providing interpreters without assessments
    • Providing interpreters with inappropriate Tier allocations
    • Providing interpreters without CRB checks
    • Unethical practices by CapitaTI and its linguists
    • Breaches of the Ministry of Justice Framework Agreement (FWA)

    Evidence has been compiled from various sources including:

    • Online at http://rpsi.name/default
    • Online at http://www.linguistlounge.org
    • Via Twitter.com
    • The Professional Interpreters against MoJ outsourcing in GB Facebook Group
    • Witnessed reports by public service interpreters present at court hearings
    • Reports passed on by members of professional interpreters’ representative bodies, including APCI, SPSI and PIA
    • Reports from solicitors, barristers, judges
    • Court correspondents and press articles

    READ THE DOSSIER HERE (PDF)

    Originally posted on Linguist Lounge.

  • 86 civil liberties and internet companies in USA demand an end to internet surveillance

    online spying imageWhilst I was away at Barncamp (posts passim), I missed all the furore when awareness of the NSA’s Prism programme broke in the news, along with revelations that the surveillance information gathered was also shared with foreign governments, presumably including the British government, despite the pie-crust assurances of British Foreign Secretary William Hague.

    In response to the revelations, two days ago 86 civil liberties organisations and internet companies in the USA wrote to Congress to demand an end to internet and communications surveillance in the USA, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) reports.

    The letter is reproduced in full below.

    Dear Members of Congress,

    We write to express our concern about recent reports published in the Guardian and the Washington Post, and acknowledged by the Obama Administration, which reveal secret spying by the National Security Agency (NSA) on phone records and Internet activity of people in the United States.

    The Washington Post and the Guardian recently published reports based on information provided by a career intelligence officer showing how the NSA and the FBI are gaining broad access to data collected by nine of the leading U.S. Internet companies and sharing this information with foreign governments. As reported, the U.S. government is extracting audio, video, photographs, e-mails, documents, and connection logs that enable analysts to track a person’s movements and contacts over time. As a result, the contents of communications of people both abroad and in the U.S. can be swept in without any suspicion of crime or association with a terrorist organization.

    Leaked reports also published by the Guardian and confirmed by the Administration reveal that the NSA is also abusing a controversial section of the PATRIOT Act to collect the call records of millions of Verizon customers. The data collected by the NSA includes every call made, the time of the call, the duration of the call, and other “identifying information” for millions of Verizon customers, including entirely domestic calls, regardless of whether those customers have ever been suspected of a crime. The Wall Street Journal has reported that other major carriers, including AT&T and Sprint, are subject to similar secret orders.

    This type of blanket data collection by the government strikes at bedrock American values of freedom and privacy. This dragnet surveillance violates the First and Fourth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution, which protect citizens’ right to speak and associate anonymously and guard against unreasonable searches and seizures and protect their right to privacy.

    We are calling on Congress to take immediate action to halt this surveillance and provide a full public accounting of the NSA’s and the FBI’s data collection programs. We call on Congress to immediately and publicly:

    1. Enact reform this Congress to Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act, the state secrets privilege, and the FISA Amendments Act to make clear that blanket surveillance of the Internet activity and phone records of any person residing in the U.S. is prohibited by law and that violations can be reviewed in adversarial proceedings before a public court;

    2. Create a special committee to investigate, report, and reveal to the public the extent of this domestic spying. This committee should create specific recommendations for legal and regulatory reform to end unconstitutional surveillance;

    3. Hold accountable those public officials who are found to be responsible for this unconstitutional surveillance.

    Thank you for your attention to this matter.

    Sincerely,

    Access

    Advocacy for Principled Action in Government

    American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression

    American Civil Liberties Union

    American Civil Liberties Union of California

    American Library Association

    Amicus

    Association of Research Libraries

    Bill of Rights Defense Committee

    BoingBoing

    Breadpig

    Calyx Institute

    Canvas

    Center for Democracy and Technology

    Center for Digital Democracy

    Center for Financial Privacy and Human Rights

    Center for Media and Democracy

    Center for Media Justice

    Competitive Enterprise Institute

    Consumer Action

    Consumer Watchdog

    CorpWatch

    CREDO Mobile

    Cyber Privacy Project

    Daily Kos

    Defending Dissent Foundation

    Demand Progress

    Detroit Digital Justice Coalition

    Digital Fourth

    Downsize DC

    DuckDuckGo

    Electronic Frontier Foundation

    Entertainment Consumers Association

    Fight for the Future

    Floor64

    Foundation for Innovation and Internet Freedom

    4Chan

    Free Press

    Free Software Foundation

    Freedom of the Press Foundation

    FreedomWorks

    Friends of Privacy USA

    Get FISA Right

    Government Accountability Project

    Greenpeace USA

    Institute of Popular Education of Southern California (IDEPSCA)

    Internet Archive

    isen.com, LLC

    Knowledge Ecology International (KEI)

    Law Life Culture

    Liberty Coalition

    May First/People Link

    Media Alliance

    Media Mobilizing Project, Philadelphia

    Mozilla

    Namecheap

    National Coalition Against Censorship

    New Sanctuary Coalition of NYC

    Open Technology Institute

    OpenMedia.org

    Participatory Politics Foundation

    Patient Privacy Rights

    People for the American Way

    Personal Democracy Media

    PolitiHacks

    Privacy and Access Council of Canada

    Public Interest Advocacy Centre (Ottawa, Canada)

    Public Knowledge

    Privacy Activism

    Privacy Camp

    Privacy Rights Clearinghouse

    Privacy Times

    reddit

    Represent.us

    Rights Working Group

    Rocky Mountain Civil Liberties Association

    RootsAction.org

    Samuelson-Glushko Canadian Internet Policy & Public Interest Clinic

    Sunlight Foundation

    Taxpayers Protection Alliance

    TechFreedom

    The AIDS Policy Project, Philadelphia

    TURN-The Utility Reform Network

    Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center

    William C. Velasquez Institute (WCVI)

    World Wide Web Foundation

    The letter was accompanied by the launch of StopWatching.us, a global petition calling on the US Congress to provide a public accounting of the United States’ domestic spying capabilities and to bring an end to illegal surveillance.

  • Councillor in gay brown stuff shocker!

    Sean Benyon, Labour councillor for Bristol’s Southville ward, has either bought fellow councillor Gus Hoyt’s old mobile phone (posts passim) or has fallen into the same predictive text trap as his Green colleague down the Counts Louse.

    The tweet is depicted below. You decide. 😉

    screenshot of tweet by Cllr Sean Benyon
    Ooops!

    Since that unfortunate incident, Sean has announced he’s buying a new phone. Turning off predictive text is cheaper, Sean. 🙂

  • Norwich Judge refuses to believe Capita

    The post below is reposted from Linguist Lounge and shows that the MoJ’s interpreting contract is continuing not to work and that judges are now starting to get very angry indeed with Capita Translation & Interpreting’s excuses. The ‘explanation’ of an interpreter being booked for a certain time and not turning up until later, if at all (posts passim).

    The information comes from a barrister identified as JF.

    Case details:

    Date: 28/05/13
    Place: Norwich Crown Court
    Interpreter: Not Known
    Interpreter booked through the sole contractor
    Case: R v Morkūnas T20127248
    Noticed by: Defence Counsel

    What happened:

    The above case was listed at 9.30 for custody time limit (CTL) hearing. The interpreter should have been there for a conference at 9.00 but did not arrive until 10.30.

    The case was called on twice but the court could not proceed as no interpreter was present. The defendant had to have a conference with the instructing solicitor in English. The solicitor, having had many hours in conference with the defendant, was able – just – to adapt to his limited vocabulary. Fortunately, for complex reasons, the outcome had no practical implications for him.

    My comments:

    This is the usual. The explanation given by Capita was that she, the interpreter, had been booked for 10.30. No member of the Norwich CC staff would have made a booking for 10.30 as it is established over many years that CTL hearings are at 9.30 and need to be preceded by a conference. The knock-on effect was that the trial in which I, Defence Counsel, was committed in an adjoining court, was delayed. Fortunately there was no practical loss as late disclosure aborted the trial. The learned Judge did not appear to believe the explanation of the interpreter being booked for 10.30 and said enquiries would be made.

    Under the old system there were a number of excellent Lithuanian interpreters who lived within 40 minutes of the court, were familiar with its practises, and have never, in my experience, been late.

    The above information I have supplied is true
    *Barrister name and contact details withheld by RPSI Linguist Lounge*

  • Anonymous writes from court

    The mainstream media are now (finally) beginning to pick up on the asset stripping and hatchet job on the British justice system being perpetrated by Chris Grayling, Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor.

    Earlier this week, Fleet Street Fox of the Mirror posted a piece entitled ‘What could possibly go wrong?’ It’s a pretty comprehensive analysis of what Grayling et al. are planning and the likely implications of their plans.

    Included amongst the comments on the post is the one below from ‘Anonymous’ who’s a civil servant working in the courts service. I’ve taken the liberty of tweaking the formatting and capitalising the start of sentences (which the original author failed to do). The quote itself is reproduced by kind permission of Fleet Street Fox.

    I’d really like to put my name to this, but as I’m a serving civil servant working within the court service I’m banned from saying anything about my job online (yes really). For the last 5 years the way the courts have been run borders on the imbecilic. I work in a fines dept and have been moved so far away from my original office I now have to commute for 3 hours a day. I’m not management, just regular bottom of the rung, admin worker. They’ve spend obscene amounts on consultants and “LEAN agents” while the actual work that needs to be done piles up because there simply isn’t the staff to do it. I despair of what this government is doing to public services.

    The general sense of despondency that emerges from the comment is almost tangible, whilst the amount spent on consultants and their ilk and the general mismanagement both go to reinforce a couple of findings about the Ministry of Justice that are already in the public domain: firstly that the MoJ is not an enjoyable place to work (posts passim); and secondly that the MoJ is not an “intelligent customer” in the words of the House of Commons Public Accounts Select Committee (posts passim).

  • A response to knee-jerk calls to revive Snooper’s Charter

    image of Theresa May
    What is it about being Home Secretary that turns people into control freaks?
    In a typical knee-jerk response in the wake of the barbaric murder in Woolwich last week of Lee Rigby, allegedly by a couple of religious extremists, Theresa May, the UK’s control freak Home Secretary has threatened to revive the so-called “Snooper’s Charter” (posts passim).

    In this move she has been joined on the bandwagon by a couple of former Labour Home Secretaries, Lord Reid and Alan Johnson, who have backed her proposals. Furthermore, Alan Johnson suggested she should resign if she could not get cabinet backing for the stalled Communications Data Bill, as the Snooper’s Charter is better known in official circles.

    In addition, these authoritarians have been joined by Liberal Democrat peer Lord Carlile, who has been making some very illiberal noises indeed and attacking his party’s defence of civil liberties: “The reason [the Bill] was vetoed, as Nick Clegg, the leader of my party, knows very well, was purely political because of demands from inside the Liberal Democrats.”

    Let’s face it, the logic of those politicians mentioned above is flawless: a man hacked to death in the street therefore we obviously need more internet surveillance.

    However, political commentators on both the right and the left remain unconvinced by such flawless logic.

    Writing in The Spectator’s blog on Sunday, Fraser Nelson states:

    Crucially, we have seen nothing in the last few days to suggest we need a Snooping Act. And although power-hungry ministers never admit it, MI5 and MI6 already have full legal powers to intercept anything that can be described as a ‘communication’- from smoke signals to SMS. The Snooping Bill was more about granting espionage powers to the taxman and other nosy government agencies.

    Meanwhile at the other end of the political spectrum, The Morning Star also commented as follows on Sunday:

    In truth, state agencies such as GCHQ, MI5, MI6 and Special Branch have no need of additional powers.

    They have all the means required to monitor actual or wannabe terrorists in Britain, buttressed by the issue of 500,000 intercept warrants each year.

    We also know that in practice the security and intelligence services have no compunction about acting outside the law should it be deemed necessary.

    The insatiable nature of the UK’s law enforcement and security services for communications data is further reinforced by the fact that UK law enforcement made more requests for user data from Skype last year than any other country. In 2012 the UK was the source of 1,268 requests for Skype user information, while the whole of the USA (population 316 mn., 5 times that of the UK. Ed.) made only 1,154 requests and German police made a paltry 685. The UK was looking for information on 2,720 different users in its requests.

    When will the UK’s law enforcement and security services for surveillance be satisfied? When they have reached the ultimate Orwellian scenario of state CCTV in every building in the land and all communications being monitored and their contents archived by the state?

    The murder of one man – no matter how brutal – should not be used as the excuse to treat all of the 63 mn. citizens of the UK as criminal suspects.

  • Grayling – contempt and abuse

    image of Justice Secretary & Lord Chancellor Chris Grayling
    Justice Secretary & Lord Chancellor Chris Grayling
    Former BBC producer and current Secretary of State for Justice Chris Grayling MP is the first non-lawyer to serve as Lord Chancellor since the earl of Shaftesbury in 1672-3.

    His lack of legal training could explain lots: he’s been brought in to do a hatchet job on the justice and legal system; some of the changes he’s planning to implement would never be contemplated for an instant by lawyers.

    Whilst in opposition, Grayling became known as a national politician through his “attack dog” pressure on leading Labour politicians.

    It would appear that Grayling is still on the attack if an interview in the Law Society Gazette earlier this week is examined.

    Grayling seems completely unworried about removing the right of the accused to pick an advocate of his/her choice under the criminal legal system. Indeed, he’s positively contemptuous of those that end up in the dock!

    ‘I don’t believe that most people who find themselves in our criminal justice system are great connoisseurs of legal skills. We know the people in our prisons and who come into our courts often come from the most difficult and challenged backgrounds.

    Yes, you did read that correctly. If you need to rely on legal representation funded by criminal legal aid, Grayling thinks you’re too thick to pick your own lawyer, so why not let the state pick one for you. Furthermore, by lumping together people who find themselves in the criminal justice system with those in prison, Grayling arrogantly seems to be equating being in the dock automatically with being guilty. What happened to the presumption of innocence, Mr Grayling?

    However, Grayling’s contempt and abuse is not confined solely to those unfortunates in the dock. Several times in the interview he refers to the provision of legal services as an ‘industry’.

    When I did economics 4 decades ago, the economy consisted of 3 sectors: primary (e.g. agriculture, mining), secondary (e.g. manufacturing, industry) and tertiary (e.g banking, insurance, legal services).

    By referring to the ‘legal services industry’ Grayling has moved legal services from the tertiary to the secondary sector. In so doing he has reduced the role of the skilled legal professional to that of a mere machine operative and that of their clients to the widgets that the machine produces. Grayling is thus guilty of treating people as objects, which is not just a retrograde step for justice, but for British society as a whole.

  • Top judge: “It has not worked”

    image of gilded statue of Justice on top of Old BaileyToday’s Express carries a story in which judge Sir Anthony Hooper – a former Court of Appeal judge – remarks on the Ministry of Justice’s proposals to auction off criminal defence work to the lowest bidder are recorded (posts passim). These proposals could ultimately see the criminal legal aid system run by corporations like London 2012 Olympics security fiasco specialists G4S and trucking giant Eddie Stobart.

    As a precedent for the kind of chaos m’lud foresees under the criminal legal aid proposals, Sir Anthony cites the disaster that is the courts and tribunals interpreting service farmed out to Capita Translation & Interpreting (posts passim):

    We have already seen what has happened when the Government appointed a single company to provide all the interpreters for courts around the country. It has not worked.

    Regarding the criminal legal aid proposals themselves, Sir Anthony doesn’t pull any punches and foresees miscarriages of justice ahead:

    The purpose of our criminal justice system is to acquit the innocent and convict the guilty. This requires a competent prosecutor, competent defence advocate and competent judge. If you take any of these elements away, the results will be costly and potentially disastrous, with innocent people being convicted and potentially dangerous individuals wrongly acquitted.

    Under the Ministry of Justice’s proposals (currently out for consultation. Ed.), misleading entitled ‘Transforming Legal Aid’, Justice Secretary Chris Grayling wants to cut £220 mn. from the annual £2 bn. legal aid budget by tendering contracts to 400 firms and mega law shops in England and Wales. People unable to afford their own solicitor will be allotted one by the state, thus removing the all-important element of choice (isn’t the government trying to increase choice in other parts of the public sector such as the NHS? Ed.). Legal advisers appointed under that system will receive a single fixed fee to represent a client, irrespective of whether the client pleads guilty, raising fears that there will be little incentive to conduct a defence properly.

    This was also criticised by Sir Anthony, who declared: “I’m afraid we are abandoning quality and replacing it with the lowest bid.”

  • Open source “strengthens democracy”

    image of Ivo Josipović
    Croatian President Ivo Josipović
    Open source strengthens democracy, according to Croatian President Ivo Josipović, as reported on Joinup, the EU’s public sector open source news website.

    Josipović appreciates the open source community’s creative and innovative spirit and is reported as saying: “What you are doing is something good, creative and innovative”, while opening the Croatian Linux Users’ Convention 2013 in Zagreb on Wednesday 15th May. As regards democracy, the President remarked: “Most importantly, open source helps to strengthen democracy.”

    President Josipović also expressed his “complete support” for the government plans to implement open source and open standards (what about open data? A stool needs three legs, not two! Ed.) in the Croatian public sector’s IT, according to the organisers of the Croatian Linux Users’ Convention.

    This is not the first time that Mr Josipović has shown his support for open source and open standards (posts passim)

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