The Pin Factory Blog

According to a six-month review carried out by the Police Federation, detectives are being taken off serious cases to clear up minor crimes so that government targets can be met. Members of the public are being advised to report missing items as 'lost' rather than 'stolen' in order to keep theft figures low. Police are forced to focus on 'easily solvable' crimes rather than serving the public interest.

Why am I not surprised?

Whenever a public service is controlled by politicians, it will be run for political purposes – to provide good headlines and statistics for the government to show off about. As long as the service remains under political control there is no way around that – it's the nature of politics.

What's the answer? Since policing cannot easily be privatized, the best option is to make the police directly accountable to the communities they serve. Directly elect police commissioners in each constabulary and give them control of the police budget, directing operations and setting priorities.  

With accountability at such a local level, the police would quickly stop persecuting motorists and start focusing on the crimes people really care about. The Conservatives' police reform commission, to their credit, proposed just such a scheme earlier this year.

Another problem highlighted by the police federation is the amount of paperwork with which the police are burdened. Much of it can surely be eliminated but why not employ civilian staff to do what remains? It seems ridiculous to have untrained special constables patrolling the streets while real police officers sit inside doing paperwork.

It transpires that HM Revenue and Customs has "lost" the details of 25 million child benefit recipients in the post. The records included the names and addresses of parents and their children, dates of birth, child benefit and national insurance numbers, and – in seven million cases – bank and building society records. The data was contained on two discs, which were sent to the National Audit Office by unrecorded delivery. No one knows where they ended up.

To his credit Paul Gray, the chairman of HMRC, has already resigned. But this incident should raise much wider questions about the extent to which we are prepared to trust government with our personal information. Surely this sort of thing provides the single greatest argument against ID cards and the central ID database the scheme would entail?

Factor in civil liberties concerns and spiralling costs, and the case against ID cards looks pretty conclusive. Of course, the government tells us we can trust them, that they have our best interests at heart, and that ID cards will make the world a safer place. I'm sure they believe it. But does anyone believe them?

I've been waiting, with bated breath, for that delightful example of bureaucratic competence, the losing of 25 million records, to be used as an example of how ID cards were even more important. Not just important, necessary even, for, in some magical manner, the fact that the information on them will be much more important, means that the possibility of normal levels of bureaucratic competence is simply impossible.

Lo and behold, we actually have this argument being made by David Blunkett in a letter to The Times. On first reading my favourite part was this:

The first, as I have discovered in the three years since I was Home Secretary — including as the honorary chair of the Information Systems Security Association Advisory Group — is the astonishing lack of understanding about the necessity of security in the transfer of data.

Perhaps I'm being picky but shouldn't we be choosing our Home Secretaries from the pool of people who already understand these basic facts before their appointment, rather than those who find them out after their resignation? 

As the day went on I found Dizzy's refutation of his points on security. ID cards will be plagued with exactly the same problems for the system will still contain that most fallible of instruments, human beings. Mr. Blunkett's testament here is, in Dizzy's view, testes.

I then found Mr. Eugenides who has something else very interesting to point out. Mr. Blunkett is a paid advisor to a company which operates ID card systems and that company has registered an interest in contracting for parts of the UK one.

So the thought of said Mr. Blunkett telling us all that the ID card system will be quite different, indeed, super-secure, so much so in fact that the recent gobsmackingly awful security shambles shows just how vital it is that we get cracking on the new system toot sweet, doesn't surprise me.

As the risk of getting all Mandy Rice-Davies on you, well, he would, wouldn't he? 

According to the LA Times, welfare officers in San Diego, California have the authority to search through the homes of benefit recipients to root out welfare fraud. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals (the regional court one level below the Supreme Court) ruled against an American Civil Liberties Union suit in favour of San Diego County. Yesterday, the Supreme Court declined to hear the case.

This issue raises some interesting points. First, the prohibition of government officials from searching private homes without cause is protected by the US Constitution and considered one of the cornerstone civil liberties of the nation. But to what extent do individuals give up some of these rights when they receive public funds? If the government pays your rent, does your home belong to you as a private residence or to the state? Government handouts complicate civil liberties because those liberties are fundamentally based on the rights of autonomous individuals from state intrusion, not individuals living off state funds.

Nevertheless, setting a precedent that eroding the liberties of those receiving state funds is permissible is dangerous, especially given the growing number of people who receive benefits and might now be subject to warrant-less searches.

In the San Diego case, county officials claimed that their searchers did not violate the 4th amendment because they were not searching for evidence of a crime. Police in Boston used a similar argument when trying to convince parents to allow them into homes to search for guns hidden by teenagers. Police argued that they would not charge the teens, just remove the guns in an effort to get them off the street. These are the classic arguments of government, which naturally seeks to expand its own powers.

The libertarian solution would be to end welfare benefits, as they allow the state an avenue through which to constantly expand its power. For now, courts must prioritize the protection of civil liberties, even as they are complicated by the increasing role of the state in people's lives.

On Monday evening the Oxford Union (OU) held a forum on free speech titled, "A Night of Discussion on Free Speech". Many of you may well be under the illusion that it was about something completely different due to the media coverage. Two of the speakers they chose were Nick Griffin, leader of the BNP and David Irving, the historian; both have a very close relationship to free speech.

They hold views that the majority of rational people would find distasteful. Irving has denied the scale of the Holocaust, whilst Griffin believes that immigrants (especially non–whites) should be returned to their homelands (we’ll leave aside the wide–ranging socialism of his party for now). They were not given a platform to vent on these issues though, and I suspect that even if they had then many in the audience would have easily deflated their arguments.

The alarmist nature of the media – mainly based on the shrill of those who despise different ideas and views being placed in the public domain – has, as always, meant that a logical and rational debate on free speech has had to be put aside. We should all be able to protect ourselves against the misuse of free speech. It is after all not a granted right; it is inalienable. The faith in our abilities should not be handed over to the government so that they may grant us the privilege of hearing, reading and seeing what they deem to be right. That is the path down which many of those bemoaning the invitation of those two speakers wish to take us. People are free to speak, as we are all free not to listen. We must have faith in all to ignore those with a message of hate.

The OU should be applauded for having the courage to specifically invite those two speakers to debate. They should be supported for believing that the students in attendance are rational and intelligent enough to make up their own minds.

It's unfortunately rare but it does occasionally happen. Someone makes a sensible suggestion for a government policy (err, writing for a think tank perhaps that should be sometimes people not working for this think tank also make sensible suggestions...).

Cocaine addicts should be prescribed the drug by chemists and nurses to help them overcome the habit, the Government’s drug adviser said yesterday.

If we're not going to be able to make people see sense on the liberty front (your body, ruin it as you wish) can we at least have policies which reduce the harm to the rest of society, of which this is obviously one. 

The ACMD also backed a change allowing nurses and chemists to prescribe diamorphine, cocaine or dipipanone to addicts under licence from the Home Office, in a bid to manage their problem. Ministers will now consider the proposal. But David Davis, the shadow home secretary, said: “If Gordon Brown signs up to this, it would show yet again that Labour merely seek to manage drug addiction rather than end it."

So yes, the idea is that this will be, for addicts at least, legalisation of a sort and thus a way to end some of the worst effects, impurities, disease, overdoses and the lethality of the scramble for profit in the illegal trade (btw, I looked it up: diamorphine for an addict would cost about £20 a day. Vastly cheaper for us as a whole than the current idiocy of the War on Drugs.).

My apologies to David Davis on this one (he is rumoured, as an ex SAS Territorial, to be able to kill me with a plastic spoon) but you're at the wrong end of the argument here. We've shown over the past few decades that we cannot end drug addiction (even if we were to destroy every vestige of liberty, as Milton Friedman pointed out) so all that is left to us is the possibility of managing it. We can do that sensibly, by making clean and pure drugs available to those who would take impure and grossly expensive ones if those were their only option, or we can carry on with the current policies which a) don't work and b) kill people.

Brett Stephens had an interesting column in the Wall Street Journal yesterday, discussing The Allure of Tyranny. Why did 80 percent of Russians vote for parties allied to Vladimir Putin's Kremlin (another 11.5 percent voted for the Communists)? Why did 49 percent of Venezuelans vote for Hugo Chavez's constitutional reforms, which would have established him as president-for-life? There are three usual explanations but, as Stephens writes, none of them is completely satisfactory.

The first rationalization of why people choose tyranny is culture. Some countries are too tribal, some too religious. Others, like Russia, demand an iron fist. But cultural determination can only explain so much – "China is counterexampled by Taiwan; Zimbabwe by Botswana; Jeddah by Dubai..." and so on.

The second explanation is manipulation – the tyrant is so tactically skilled, so adept at propaganda, that people are truly misled, and do not realize quite what they are voting for. Again though, this runs afoul of reality. Plenty of people vote for tyrants with their eyes wide open.

The other theory is that tyranny relies on intimidation and dirty tricks for its success. Yet this does not explain why some tyrants are so genuinely popular. Indeed, with each explanation you look at, you come back to the same point. Jean-Francois Revel put it like this:

[S[ome important part of every society consists of people who actively want tyranny: either to exercise it themselves or – much more mysteriously – to submit to it. Democracy will therefore always remain at risk.

This is why limited government is so important, and why the slippery-slope argument against infringing liberty is so valid. Put simply, democracy alone cannot be relied upon to maintain freedom. In an age driven by opinion polls and focus groups, we all need to remember that.

I received an interesting pamphlet yesterday from the Society of Conservative Lawyers. Entitled A Modern Bill of Rights, it contains extracts from the work of various Conservative lawyers on whether Britain should have a 'Bill of Rights' to replace the Human Rights Act (something David Cameron has pledged to do) and on what form such a bill should take.

The problems with the Human Rights Act (HRA), which incorporated the European Convention on Human Rights into UK law, are encapsulated rather well by Jonathan Fisher QC in the pamphlet's preface:

In some instances the recognition of the Convention rights had led to absurd outcomes, whilst in other cases the Convention showed itself to be an inadequate protection against the anti-libertarian tendencies of an authoritarian government.

In a subsequent section, Martin Howe QC elaborates on the Convention's deficiencies. Since it is based on very broadly defined rights and exceptions, he says, with some rights conflicting with others (like privacy with freedom of expression), the Convention requires British courts to make political value judgements. This is anti-democratic (political judgements should be left to elected officials), and also threatens to politicize the judiciary, eroding its neutrality.

They build a good case against the HRA. But how should its replacement, the British Bill of Rights, be drafted? A written codification of our traditional liberties and common law rights (habeas corpus, trial by jury, etc.) would probably be the best option. As Dominic Grieve MP suggests, it should be exempted from the Parliament Acts, so that both Houses' approval would be needed to change it. All legislation would be have to be interpreted in accordance with it. Unavoidably incompatible secondary legislation would automatically be struck down, while primary legislation would be subject to judicial 'declarations of incompatibility' (as is currently the case under the HRA).

Such a system would protect liberty far more effectively than the present arrangement. And because those traditional liberties are so clear, well established and understood in English law, the courts would no longer be forced to make political judgements or encouraged to deliver perverse outcomes. That would be a definite improvement.

Various people are being uncomplimentary about the latest ideas for the abolition of freedom detention without trial as announced: constitutionally illiterate for example :

Proposals to extend the limit for pre-charge detention to 42 days are "constitutionally illiterate" as well as dangerous, critics warned yesterday, because proper parliamentary scrutiny would confuse the roles of MPs and judges.

The former attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, warned that such examination by MPs would be difficult, adding: "I think parliamentary scrutiny is hugely important and one of the great things we have in this country. But it isn't necessarily the right way to deal with individual cases, while they are going on."

At heart the idea is that, in order to make sure that someone isn't either released or charged (that is, they can continue to be kept in jail despite being, legally, entirely innocent), the Home Secretary should ask MPs for permission to keep an individual in custody for further questioning. 

I'm sorry? Politicians hold a vote as to whether a specific individual should be denied his freedom? That's dangerously close to a Bill of Attainder: further, it betrays a gobsmackingly awful understanding of what the "rule of law" actually means. Certainly, politicians get to decide what the law is but it then applies, evenhandedly, to all of us. For politicians to vote on whether that evenhandedness exists or not in individual cases replaces the rule of law with the rule of the mob, not, perhaps, a path we want to go any further down.

I'm reminded of Larry Flynt's words (and I paraphrase) after winning a First Amendment case in the US. If the law protects bastards like me you can be sure that it will protect you too.

Imagine, for a moment, a purely hypothetical: we have a one eyed, hook handed, benefits gobbling, bigamously married preacher, one who incites violence and is of dubious status as a British citizen (yes, this is a hypothetical). The Home Secretary asks for an extension of his detention. Does anyone really think that MPs will vote their consciences? On either the balance of probabilities or beyond reasonable doubt? Or will it be the Whips, or, worse, The Sun leader column that decides whether he continues to be denied his freedom?

And if the law will not protect him from politicians seeking votes, will it protect you? 

I'm entirely flabberghasted that (even) the current Home Secretary could think this an advance in freedom, liberty or security. 

Well, they are both on the minds of certain human rights activists and they are both sentinels of soviet-style denunciation because of anonymous bias-reporting systems in academia. These systems sprang from US universities (e.g. Virginia, Oregon State and Ohio State) and are spreading elsewhere. They are supposed to expose and punish people who make use of their free speech in a way the PC crowd regards as offensive and wants to be verboten. Their latest target is the well-known conservative publicist Mark Steyn.

The Canadian Islamic Congress has filed a "human rights complaint” against the prominent Canadian news magazine MacLean’s, because it published an excerpt of Steyn's book America Alone, considered by the plaintiff as "flagrantly Islamophobic". And at least two Human Rights Commissions are willing to hear those complaints. This is despite the fact that the book, which is published in the US, has already been best selling in Canada. Another way of looking at this attack on free speech is the worldwide rapidly growing list of Muslim Libel Cases.

In the meantime, many regard it as unfortunate that the erstwhile home country of individual liberty has become the "libel capital of the West" because in today's England the defendant in a libel case bears the burden of proof. The most notorious beneficiary of this is the Saudi Sheik K. S. bin Mahfouz, who has already filed 30 libel cases in the UK alone that usually result in banning books critical of Islam.

Steyn responds in the Weekly Standard:

The "progressive" left has grown accustomed to the regulation of speech, thinking it just a useful way of sticking it to Christian fundamentalist, rightwing columnists, and other despised groups. They don't know they're riding a tiger that in the end will devour them, too.