Accreditation Scheme half-baked

The BBC:

A scheme which gives “policing” powers to civilians in England and Wales has been described as “half-baked” by the Police Federation.

I object to the use of the word “civilian” – if you are non-military you are a civilian, so the police are civilian just like the rest of us. Remember the seventh Principle of Policing:

To maintain at all times a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and that the public are the police, the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.

Back to the BBC:

More than 1,400 people can hand out fines for littering, seize alcohol from underage drinkers and demand names and addresses of those who are anti-social.

…

Mr Smyth said the public did not understand why “someone with a small badge” was “telling them what to do”.

“I think it’s going to lead to confrontation,” he told BBC Radio 4′s The World at One.

…

“Are we really saying now that we’re going to put people out there with little or no training,” he asked.

Referring to the figures, he said 255 people “have the power to stop me while I’m driving my car when a plain-clothed police officer can’t do that”.

“That seems ludicrous to me,” Mr Smyth added. …

Of course, the Government’s solution would be to give the police officer that power as well.

Distributed authoritarianism

The Telegraph:

Despite lacking formal police training, hundreds of civilians have been made part of the “extended police family” by the Home Office under little-known legislation [Part 4 Chapter 1 Police Reform Act 2002].

They have not been asked to wear any special uniforms to identify themselves, but must wear only a badge that can be as small as 73mm x 80mm.

The disclosure that hundreds of civilians have been given enforcement powers drew accusations that the Government is encouraging the spread of unaccountable policing.

The Home Office revealed yesterday that more than 1,600 non-police officers have been given enforcement powers under its so-called Community Safety Accreditation Schemes.

The schemes, introduced in 2002 legislation, give chief constables the power to serve penalty notices for activities including disorder, truancy, cycling on pavements, littering and dog fouling. They can also be used for seizing alcohol from under-age drinkers and to demand people’s names and addresses.

The Home Office has carried out an audit of police use of the powers which showed that 23 police forces have Community Safety Accreditation Schemes in place.

A total of 1,406 staff from 95 “approved organizations” including local councils and private companies have been given enforcement powers.

Another 255 people have been given powers as Vehicle Operator Services Agency Inspectors, who are issued with the single power to stop vehicles for the purpose of testing.

In 2006, there were only 950 accredited workers for 71 organisations. …

AC Grayling in the Guardian:

In the Queen’s speech this autumn Gordon Brown’s government will announce a scheme to institute a database of every telephone call, email, and act of online usage by every resident of the UK. It will propose that this information will be gathered, stored, and “made accessible” to the security and law enforcement agencies, local councils, and “other public bodies”.

This fact should be in equal parts incredible and nauseating. It is certainly enraging and despicable. Not even George Orwell in his most febrile moments could have envisaged a world in which every citizen could be so thoroughly monitored every moment of the day, spied upon, eavesdropped, watched, tracked, followed by CCTV cameras, recorded and scrutinised. Our words and web searches, our messages and intimacies, are to be stored and made available to the police, the spooks, the local council – the local council! – and “other public bodies”. …

They say they are putting us all under suspicion for our own good. They wish to protect us against terrorists and criminals, and to make bureaucracy more efficient. The efficiency of bureaucracy has one of its finest moments in the neat and sorted piles of false teeth, hair and spectacles at the gas chamber doors. …

Well: the first duty of our politicians should be to protect our liberties, and to encourage us to see that liberty carries risks, which we should be trusted to understand and accept so that we can make our own lives our own way. But no: these politicians – Brown and Labour, once the party of the people – are going to keep us safe by not keeping our liberties safe; they are going to keep us safe by making us unfree. Yet the putative benefit of protecting us from terrorism and crime is unattainable. They themselves say ‘there is no 100% guarantee of safety’: but they are going to spy on us all anyway!

…

(More on that by Phil Booth.)

Surveillance function creep.

Local council abuses of RIPA snooping powers.

The UK is an “endemic surveillance society“.

Where are we going with this?

Where do we want to end up?

The ID card scheme debate

A comment I left elsewhere:

The debate is not just about the introduction of an ID card and what is on it, but also the National Identity Register, the database(s) behind the card, what will be stored on that, who will have access to it, and the extra costs and risks associated with the introduction of that particular scheme.

It is also about the alleged problems we are trying to solve, and whether or not they are best solved by this scheme or by some alternative(s), whether it’s worth doing anything about that alleged problem at all, or indeed whether there is in fact a problem.

Furthermore, one should also consider the proposal [indeed, any proposal] not only on its own but also in the context of the other means of population surveillance and control, and other civil liberties infringing measures, that have been or are seriously proposed to be introduced, where we are going with all this, and where we want to end up.

It seems to me that the more the UK public learns about the Government’s scheme, and its associated costs and risks, the more people are less inclined to support it. They are asking questions that Mr Briggs is not. Indeed, far from being “insular and ignorant”, they are educating themselves about the disadvantages as well as the supposed benefits, and concluding that it might well not be worth it.

In not touching on any of these issues at all, Mr Briggs’s article fails to do the subject any justice whatsoever. It would be kind to call his article ‘unpersuasive’.

Shocking news about ContactPoint

The Telegraph:

A flagship database intended to protect every child in the country [er - no] will be used by police to hunt for evidence of crime in a “shocking” extension of its original purpose, The Daily Telegraph has learned.

ContactPoint will include the names, ages and addresses of all 11 million under-18s in England as well as information on their parents, GPs, schools and support services such as social workers.

The £224 million computer system was announced in the wake of the death of Victoria Climbié,

[who it wouldn't have helped, as she wouldn't have been on it] who was abused and then murdered after a string of missed opportunities to intervene by the authorities [again, just as with illegal immigration, a big part of the alleged problem is a lack of enforcement of existing rules], as a way to connect the different services dealing with children.

It has always been portrayed as a way for professionals to find out which other agencies are working with a particular child, to make their work easier and provide a better service for young people.

However, it has now emerged that police officers, council staff, head teachers, doctors and care workers will use the records to search for evidence of criminality and wrongdoing to help them launch prosecutions against those on the database – even long after they have reached adulthood.

It comes amid growing concern about the increasing criminalisation of Britain’s youth and the extent of the country’s surveillance society. …

I’m being sarcastic when I say it’s shocking.  I don’t think it’s shocking at all that it turns out that a system sold to us as being for a particular purpose (and for the protection of “Just One Child!”, no less) has undergone “function creep”.

And It’s For Our Own Good.

Parliament, copyright and the FOIA

Martin Rosenbaum:

It’s not only Rother Council which has been quarrelling with whatdotheyknow.com. The House of Commons authorities are also involved in a continuing tussle over the site’s policy of automatically publishing responses to freedom of information requests.

This dispute has attracted the attention of Cabinet Office IT minister Tom Watson (himself an FOI requester when a backbench MP), who comments ‘Oh good grief’. Is it safe to assume that it is the stance of the Commons which is the cause of his exasperation?

In short, the House of Commons FOIA people are rejecting a request by asserting copyright.  But they don’t have to assert copyright – they can waive it.

(They of course unhelpfully neglected to provide the reason for not waiving copyright.)

The silly thing here is that FOIA is applicant blind, and the House of Commons seems willing to provide the requester this information – it seems willing to provide other requesters with the information.   So what is the practical difference between sending a hundred requesters the same information and allowing the information to be published on a website?

When will our employees could give up prevaricating and procrastinating and give us our information?

Update

A number of people have ended up here after visiting Tom Watson’s site.  Presumably they were prompted to go there by this recent Register article.  It is worth reading the comments.