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Over at his blog Heresy Corner, the Heresiarch has an excellent overview of the continual erosion of our civil liberties (Remember what he said about "British liberty"?).

The article is framed over a series of points made by Gordon Brown in a speech delivered shortly after he took office as Prime Minister.

The former chief of MI5, Dame Stella Rimington, has warned that the UK risks becoming a police state (The Daily Telegraph, "Spy chief: We risk a police state").  In the interview, she accuses ministers of interfering with people's privacy and playing straight into the hands of terrorists.

This is a theme that I've returned to on numerous occasions over the last few months: that the UK Government has used (and, I believe, mainipulated) the terrorist "threat" to force through draconian measures that threaten out civil liberties and right to privacy.  From extended detention periods, to the increased databases held about (and following the Coroners bill, increasingly joined together), the general drift is to a situation where the state has uprecedented access to out communications and other aspects of out private life.Rimmington says

"It would be better that the Government recognised that there are risks, rather than frightening people in order to be able to pass laws which restrict civil liberties, precisely one of the objects of terrorism: that we live in fear and under a police state" 

As the article points out, Dame Stella has previously weighted in with statements on Government plans for further control:

In 2005, she said the Government's plans for ID cards were "absolutely useless" and would not make the public any safer. Last year she criticised attempts to extend the period of detention without charge for terrorism suspects to 42 days as excessive, shortly before the plan was rejected by Parliament.

Her latest remarks were made as the Home Office prepares to publish plans for a significant expansion of state surveillance, with powers for the police and security services to monitor every email, as well as telephone and internet activity.

The Government response is as follows:

A Home Office spokesman said: "The Government has been clear that where surveillance or data collection will impact on privacy they should only be used where it is necessary and proportionate. The key is to strike the right balance between privacy, protection and sharing of personal data.

"This provides law enforcement agencies with the tools to protect the public as well as ensuring government has the ability to provide effective public services while ensuring there are effective safeguards and a solid legal framework that protects civil liberties."

But the problem here is who decides what the proper balance between privacy, protection and sharing of data should be?  My own view is that the dangers from terrorism are vastly overstated and don'r merit the institutionalised trawl through data generated during our everyday lives.  And who sets up the supposedly effective safeguards?  A state systme which an appalling record of IT mismanagement and data protection blunders.

The UK Government really needs to take stock of these criticisms - they are valid concerns, held by individuals and organisation who know what they are talking about.  And this only touches the UK Government machinery.  The private sector data intrusion industry seems to be officially sactioned to run pretty close to the wind as regards legality - witness the entire Phorm saga, and the EU's opinion of the Government's management of that situation. 

The Guardian reports today (UK mobile phone firms to sell data about customer activity) that mobile telecomms firms have been harvesting data about their customers web browsing habits, and that they plan to uses these data to increase advertising revenues.

The GSMA's chief marketing officer, Michael O'Hara, said: "We can see the top sites, see where people are browsing regularly. See the time that sites are being viewed, the number of visits, the duration of visits and we can also get demographic data so you can have age ranges, male/female ranges. 

 They've been collecting this information for about a year now, and claim that this has been above-board as regards EU and UK legislation.  But then again, the same sort of claims are made by BT and their partners in (probable) crime, Phorm.  At least they appear to be aware of the opt-in requirement:

O'Hara stressed that any advertising service that relied upon tying traffic data with personal demographic information would be done on an opt-in basis. 

But this is deep packet inspection, as the following paragraphs make clear:

In its trial, the UK's five networks - 3, O2, Orange, T-Mobile and Vodafone - used deep packet inspection technology to collect data covering about half the UK's entire mobile web traffic.

The trial results, to be released today, show that 68% of mobile phone users visited their network's online portal while the top "off-portal" destination was Google.

Users spent most time on Facebook, clocking up about 24 minutes a day, compared with 27.5 minutes by computer users. Mobile users visited the social networking site an average of 3.3 times a day, more often than their counterparts in the fixed-line internet world.

Mobile web usage peaks between 7am and 10am, according to the data.

Well, it's all very well having the system as "opt-in", but even when BT customers have opted out of the Phorm system, their web browsing still gets routed through Phrom's hardware.  Will this also be the case for the mobile telecomms data bandits listed above?

Perhaps I won't be renewing my Vodafone contract when it finishes.

See also:
Chris Williams' report at The Register: Mobile operators combine to flog customer data

The journal Current Biology invited a number of prominent biologists from a number of disciplines to re-read Darwin's On the Origin of Species, and to write commentaries - they can be found at (Re)Reading The Origin.

Charles Darwin's 1859 book On the Origin of Species is much referenced, especially in this double anniversary year. But, does anyone still read it? And, if so, what is the book itself like as a text? We have asked biologists from a range of fields evolutionary biologists, but also geneticists, ecologists, paleontologists and molecular biologists to re-read (or read) The Origin for Current Biology. Below are the responses, contributed by: Andrew Berry, Matthew Cobb, Simon Conway Morris, Jerry Coyne, Hopi Hoekstra, Peter Lawrence, Robert May, Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard, Mark Ptashne, Matt Ridley and Marlene Zuk.

Actually, there was a diversity of take-up there.  Peter Lawrence enthuses not just about the breadth of evidence but at the writing style, contrasting it with the dry and dusty writing style of modern scientific publications.  This is possibly a false comparison, as Origins was written for a publi audience.  In contrast, Mark Ptashne seems to have disliked the Victorian style, preferring to access a condensed version which in his view brings Darwin's work to life rather better.

Simon Conway Morris makes a confession many might truthfully share: that in his youth he dipped into te book rather than read it in its entirety.  Andrew Berry and Hopi Hoekstra, rather than re-read the work themselves, has a group of students work through it on a chapter by chapter basis.  Anonymous feedback seems to be quite polarised!

And on a final note, John Whitfield's blog Blogging the Origin  has been a virtual book club, and a pleasant read.

Now, I must pull my copy from the bookshelf and start my re-reading of The Origin of Species!