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Thanks to Liberal conspiracy for highlighting protectionist amendments being sneaked into the Telecoms directive which MEPs will decide on tomorrow:

The amendments basically set the scene for forcing ISPs to monitor all their customers' traffic to catch them sharing copyrighted material on the web and to cut customers off if they keep doing it.

Over in the comments on Matt Wardman's blog posting the other day I suggested that this whole surveillance obsession smacks of "we do it because we can". Why should one's electronic communications, voice or data, be any more permissible to be snooped on than any other communication - snail mail, face to face or similar. Just because we can. For a variety of reasons electronic communications leave traces, and traces can always be tracked, but why should they be?

It is true that we need to have a debate about intellectual property and how, or indeed whether, it should be enforced in an era of global instant communication. It appears that the artists tend to be ahead of their production companies in exploring how to use the massive marketing opportunity that is the internet, such as recent experiments in releasing music for free, or on honesty box terms, on the web. But of course it is the media corporations and production companies that are lobbying for this sort of protectionist measure. The debate needs to be held much more widely than that though, and not snuck through where these measures were explicitly removed from the directive last time the European Parliament discussed it.

I have written to Sharon Bowles and Emma Nicholson. I suggest everyone take a look at the details of these amendments and give some thought to writing also to any of their MEPs. It is being debated tomorrow, so act fast!

I very fundamentally believe that the internet in particular is seen as a threat by both governments and corporations who feel they are not able to control it. For me, it is the greatest advance in people communicating with people and eventually needing far less "government" to broker their international relationships or trans-national corporations to broker their trade. But for it to bring about the vast benefits of voluntary co-operation amongst individuals around the world it needs to find its own rules, not have them imposed by those very bodies that are scared of it!

This idea of David Cameron's that we're living in "Broken Britain" and of the Sun that we are witnessing "Anarchy in the UK" has been eating at me a bit. And with Dave's essay in the Telegraph outlining his ideas for mending his broken Britain by branding ten year old boys as failures and keeping them down a year at school got me looking out crime statistics.

I suspect this might not be what Dave had in mind (no, really!), but one thing sticks out in the British Crime Survey attitudes to crime, and in particular fear of crime. That the better educated you are, the better the newspaper you read, the more you earn, the less likely you are to fear crime, and the more accurate a perspective you're going to have as to the real levels of crime and anti-social behaviour going on in Britain.

Another interesting thing is that when people are asked about their perceptions of levels of crime throughout the country compared with in their local area, all groups are about half as likely to perceive crime as a growing problem in their local area, where they have on the ground experience, compared with nationwide.

So, what can we conclude, if anything, from that? Clearly, where people rely on the national media, and particularly the tabloid newspapers, for news of what's going on around the country, they get the impression that there's a lot more crime going on "somewhere else" compared with what they see and hear about in their local area. Are they just wearing rose-tinted spectacles when it comes to their own area? Maybe - local pride and disbelief that "such a thing could happen here" might be very influential. But more likely we are being manipulated by the media for whom crime, and particularly the nastiest most vicious sort of crime, sells newspapers.

So yes, a better educated nation will be less fearful of crime because they won't have to rely so much on sensationalist news reporting to form their opinions. Better still would be if our politicians stopped pandering to this tabloid agenda and feeding their appetite for fear-mongering with populist speeches and snappy but misleading headlines.

The BBC reports a new scheme to encourage young school children to role play the effects of taking drugs: Pupils act out effects of drugs:

Primary school pupils will be encouraged to act out the effects of LSD and cannabis as part of an anti-drug programme.

Hmm - notice they didn't choose ecstasy. "Now children, I want you all to hug each other, make friends with someone you don't know yet, and share your sweets with the whole class. No, stay awake Johnny, you're not doing it properly!"

I do wonder about the cannabis one though - they're a bit young to stay up till 3am talking shit and sorting the world's problems out aren't they?

As to LSD - why not just watch the Tweenies instead!

Oops - see, it's happening already...

Earlier I wrote about an announcement that the Metropolitan police were to get a real time feed from London's congestion charge cameras, but only if they promise faithfully only to use it in the tracking of "car borne terrorists" (does that include those who support terrorism by selling the odd dodgy DVD do you think?. But it appears there's to be legislation to enable all police forces everywhere to use such a feed from their local cameras for any sort of crime fighting:

'Big Brother' plan for police to use new road cameras | Special Reports | Guardian Unlimited Politics:

· Home Office leak reveals clash between ministers
· Millions of motorists could be tracked

Alan Travi, home affairs editor
Wednesday July 18, 2007
The Guardian

"Big Brother" plans to automatically hand the police details of the daily journeys of millions of motorists tracked by road pricing cameras across the country were inadvertently disclosed by the Home Office last night.

Leaked Whitehall background papers reveal that Home Office and transport ministers have clashed over plans for legislation this autumn enabling the police to get automatic "real-time" access to the bulk data from the traffic cameras now going into operation. The Home Office says the police need the data from the cameras, which can read and store every passing numberplate, "for all crime fighting purposes".

Nick Clegg's on the case though:

The Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, Nick Clegg, said the "unintended act of open government" had revealed the disingenuous attitude of ministers towards public fears about a creeping surveillance state: "No wonder Douglas Alexander was keen to tone down these proposals, since he must know that public resistance to a road charging scheme will go through the roof if it is based on technology which poses a threat to personal privacy. Bit by bit, vast computer databases are being made inter-operable and yet the government seems to running scared of a full and public debate."

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