International Law

UK Big Brother Awards - boos for NuLabour, hurrahs for Sarah Ludford, Phil Booth, Helen Wallace, Gareth Crossman, Becky Hogge and David Davis

After a 4 year hiatus, the ever bust Simon Davies, of Privacy International, has re-instituted the UK Big Brother Awards, to recognise some of the people who have been trying to keep the monsters of state and corporate mass surveillance , snooping and control at bay.

At a ceremony held at the London School of Economics, despite the looming presence in the background, of the NO2ID / ORG photo collage of surveillance cameras etc. in the shape of Prime Minister Gordon Brown, it was good to hear Simon Davies express some cautious optimism, that perhaps, we are starting to push back the attacks on our privacy and security which the Labour Government, the bureaucracy and others have inflicted on us in recent years.

The evil Big Brother Award, with the boot forever stamping on the human face, was awarded simply to New Labour.

The 2008 UK Big Brother Awards Roll of Honour

• Baroness Sarah Ludford MEP - one of the Liberal Democrat Members of the European Parliament whose Human Rights Committee has been trying to stem the onslaught of necessarily repressive legislation in the past few years.

• Phil Booth, the National Coordinator of the cross political party
  NO2ID Campaign -against the Database State. Phil was recently described as the "hardest man in NGO-world".

• Helen Wallace from GeneWatch UK, who did so much to help educate politicians and lawyers and the media about the counterproductive evil policy of keeping innocent people's DNA tissue samples and DNA profiles, seemingly for ever, This has been overturned in the very recent European Court of Human Rights judgement in the Marper case.

• Gareth Crossman - retiring Director of Policy at Liberty Human Rights

• Becky Hogge - retiring Executive Director of the Open Rights Group

• Rt. Hon. David Davis MP, the fomer Conservative Shadow Home Affairs spokesman, who was re-elected as the Member of Parliament for Haltemprice and Howden, on the principles of freedom and liberty.

Given the recent arrests of whistleblowers, journalists and now opposition Members of Parliament, we felt it important to give David Davis MP details of Spy Blog's

Hints and Tips for Whistleblowers: Technical Hints and Tips for protecting the anonymity of sources, for Whistleblowers, Investigative Journalists, Campaign Activists and Political Bloggers

Full post as published by Spy Blog on December 11, 2008 (boomark / email).