Civil liberties? So what!

As if anybody cared about civil liberties these days; the majority seem content with sleepwalking into a stasi state where everybody is a potential grass. Here is Dave’s record to date.

·         The promise to reduce the 28-day detention limit to 14 days has been kept

·         The promise to abolish ID cards has been kept, although they remain in place for foreign nationals

·         ContactPoint, the database that held information on all children under 18 was turned off in August last year

·         However, the Coalition has retained biometric identity cards for non-EU citizens

·         The Protection of Freedoms Bill, published in February made some progress towards deleting the DNA of people arrest for a crime but never charged.

·         The Protection of Freedoms Bill contained plans to remove stop and search powers granted by the Terrorism Act 2000, but further progress needs to be made

·         Control Orders have been replaced with Terrorism  Prevention and Investigation Measures, which are only a mild, incremental improvement

·         The government kept its promise to ban the use of powers given by the Investigation of Regulatory Powers Act, the law that gives council officers the ability to arbitrarily demand entry into private homes

·         The government has continued the Intercept Modernisation Programme, which allows the government to crack phones and store emails

·         The Summary Care Record, the NHS record database, is being continued by the government, despite both Coalition parties pledging to scrap it

·         CCTV usage has grown, despite research showing it has no effect on crime.