The Liberty Conundrum (or a US cultural imperialism I really approve of)

 cultural dissonance, England, free press, free speech, freedom of expression, Freedom of Information, libel law, unclassifiable, USA  No Responses »
Nov 202012
 
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Yesterday, I wondered if the problem we’re now facing as far as our laws online are concerned relates to US cultural imperialism.  I remember tweeting the following two tweets. First, this one:

I’m seriously falling in love with my perception of the advantages of the US Constitution. We have a lot to learn, I think.

Then, this one:

Problem with the US is that they export their freedoms, but not their rights. No wonder we get so darned confused.

And I think it’s true.  As it slowly dawns on me that we in England – and when I say England all these times I do of course refer to English and Welsh legislation – really do not have too many cast-iron freedoms to speak freely, so I become more enamoured by the American way of enshrining such freedoms in a testable constitutional arrangement.

The truth of the matter, however, is that whilst we have become so very used to the US wanting to export us its mindset of liberty, it has been manifestly incapable of embedding elsewhere the rights I mention above – at least with any permanence, at least here in England.  So we as citizens of foreign countries learn to yearn for the opportunities to participate more vociferously in our democracies – even as our own politicians and political institutions prefer far more for us to dutifully listen than engagedly participate in significant debate and public oversight.

Yes.  This is one example where I would welcome – and I think so would you – the complete and utter consummation of a US cultural imperialism.  If only they could send us, whole and complete, not only their goals but also the tools to achieve them – that is to say, not only the desire for liberty itself but also the rights which accompany its implementation – life would become so much less confusing than it currently is.

As it is, we’re really not sure if we’re in an American frame of fair comment and free speech or in an English (and Welsh) context where we must not only step on linguistic eggshells but must also self-censor ourselves with ever greater care.

A Liberty Conundrum if there ever was one.


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Behind closed doors, inside closed minds: the con that is Freedom of Information

 a con, Freedom of Information, News Corp, News International, News of the World, police, police force, police service, police state, policed state, Sun  No Responses »
Sep 122012
 
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Steve is an expert in Freedom of Information requests.  He does a damn good job of trying to wheedle out of generally unforthcoming institutions the kind of information we need to run a democracy properly.  He does more than most of the rest of us manage together.  He deserves a medal.

He is, however, operating under a conceptual con – a con I am sure he is aware of.  Douglas Adams had it best described when he gave us the answer to the Ultimate Question.  This, of course, if I remember rightly, being the number 42.

The problem, of course, if I remember rightly, being the question which 42 was the answer to.

In fact, if truth be told, we know the answers for most of our important life issues.  We knew the reality behind, for example, the Hillsborough tragedy way before its facts were published today.  We just couldn’t prove it.

That Rupert Murdoch’s publishing empire was in some way mixed up in the governance of the nation was also patently obvious to so many citizens – and yet very little could be done before a phonehacking tragedy, and a very small group of convinced citizens, served doggedly to uncover an awful trail of behaviours and apparent cover-ups.

The burden of proof that our legal system requires is based on providing hard evidence.  But what if the citizen’s right-to-know is deliberately tied down by strategies designed to make it far easier and safer to declaim answers in private than ask any daring and appropriate questions in public?

It’s not Freedom of Information we need: not that terrible game of often half-blindly identifying the areas of thought which might be in play.  It’s the whenever-and-wherever right to see the questions and assumptions that lie behind the answers.  It’s the frankly democratic right to know what their goals really are when our governors cross the thresholds of a supposedly representative democracy.

It’s the mindsets they hide which we should have every right to access.

It’s what they say behind closed doors and really think inside closed minds which – in the 21st century – needs to be in the public domain.

Not Freedom of Information processes which allow us to ask the questions we may already know the answers to but, rather, a much wider right: a right we could term a Freedom of Anytime Access to the documents and strategies of state which invisibly underpin our lives and our futures.

The con is the game that is Freedom of Information – clued-up citizens playing an intellectual cat-and-mouse with poker-faced upper-handed leaders.

The solution must surely lie in that Freedom of Anytime Access I mention above.  By default, an inside track on the real intentions of the powerful.

Only then can there be any chance of any kind of reconciliation between those who know what they’ve done but so frequently don’t admit it – and those who damn well know the truth but are unable to prove it.


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What’s really expensive is not Freedom of Information but government’s desire for secrecy

 a con, civil service, Freedom of Information, Ministry of Justice, open government  No Responses »
Feb 142012
 
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The issue of Freedom of Information today can be summarised in the following question: whenever did it mean placing a civil servant between the data in question and the citizens with a right to access it?  Answer that question – and you’re a big part of the way along the path to answering the issues of modern democracy.

Freedom of Information legislation exists in many countries in the world.  Where it exists – and this involves mediating via the civil services of such regimes a relationship between such data and the citizens looking to use it – I’d be inclined, however, to see it becoming a failure and bulwark against a proper and structured connection between voters and the acts and decision-making processes of their governments.

With online access becoming so cheap and efficient, as well as so broadly available (and even as we must not neglect the possibilities for a digital divide arising), surely it is now time to reconceptualise Freedom of Information legislation in terms not of the rights to and costs of requesting access to an expensive and overburdened civil service but – instead – more in relation to analysing the technological opportunities now available in assigning the flow of information – that is to say, the “when” and “how” – to an entirely voter-controlled sequence of processes.

In order to achieve this we would, of course, have to classify by default the vast majority of government information to the setting of “open”.  But as the world outside traditional governance is becoming accustomed to the idea of a total lack of anonymity and privacy, surely it is time we became more consequential in relation to what should be the foundations of good governance: as both a reflection of and a leader for all that is current in human trends.

If, in the outside world, governments will wish to begin eliminating privacy from all the exchanges that take place using the Internet, for whatever the reasons and rationales they offer (whether copyright or terrorism, whether cyber-crime or cyber-bullying), it would only be just and right for similar moves to take place with respect to our relationships to governments.

Which is why I strongly do feel the Ministry of Justice is wrong to say Freedom of Information is getting too expensive and needs to be charged for.

It should, on the other hand, be arguing that what’s really becoming too expensive is government’s fanatical desire to maintain privacy in a 21st century environment where openness, everywhere else, is becoming the desired norm.

Perhaps a classic example of blaming the interested voters for the self-inflicted costs of an unresponsive – as well as possibly self-interested – administration?


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