One Nation Under CCTV No Longer?

Posted by Aaron Massey on 25 May 2010

The the UK coalition government may be dramatically improving the state of civil liberties for its citizens. I don’t agree with everything in the policy statement, but these points would be a step in the right direction:

We will scrap the ID card scheme, the National Identity register and the ContactPoint database, and halt the next generation of biometric passports.

We will outlaw the fingerprinting of children at school without parental permission.

We will further regulate CCTV.

We will end the storage of internet and e-mail records without good reason.

We will create a level playing field for open-source software and will enable large ICT projects to be split into smaller components.

It’s easy to write a policy statement, and actions definitely speak louder than words. However, the unusual political situation may mean there’s reason to hope.

[![Banksy graffiti][3]][3]
[![Creative Commons License][4]][4] [photo][4] credit: [miguel77][5]

[]: http://www.flickr.com/photos/25591852@N00/2531207041/ “Banksy graffiti” []: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/ “Attribution-NonCommercial License” [4]: http://www.photodropper.com/photos/ [5]: http://www.flickr.com/photos/25591852@N00/2531207041/ “miguel77”