Since its election last year the current Labour government has been waging war on the right to freedom of speech and right to privacy. This unprecedented attack on civil liberties is driven by the fears of the billionaire class who are alarmed at the rising tide of discontent in society.
The war on British civil liberties began in earnest earlier this year when the Labour government sought access to the encrypted messages of people who use Apple devices. It imposed a gag order on Apple preventing it from telling the world about the government's desire to access the private messages of millions of UK citizens. The UK government was forced to back down due to opposition from the Trump regime acting at the behest of the billionaire tech oligarchs.
As this was taking place Labour sought to continue with the Tories war on the disabled by making highly damaging cuts to universal credit with more cuts in the pipeline. This war on the poor, sick and disabled has been accompanied by a denial of claimants right to privacy. Big brother watch recently issued a damning report which describes the secret spying on benefit claimants which is currently taking place at the behest of a Labour government.
Matthew of Big Brother Watch, explained to me the dangers this poses to vulnerable disabled people in this country:
The government is ramping up its use of AI to search for fraud in benefit claims, but how its AI tools work, the data used and the logic underpinning them remain a closely guarded secret. This means that the people affected have no idea algorithms are being used to influence decisions about whether they are investigated, or whether their benefits are delayed – and as a result are in a difficult position to challenge these decisions. We have seen DWP data show that many of their AI models contain significant algorithmic bias, even beyond what officials expected - and there is a risk that mass use of AI models to profile will embed those biases and flaws in the model on an industrial scale.
Not content with this, the Labour government has sought to let police forces and even supermarkets use facial recognition technology on a massive scale against an unsuspecting population.
For many decades the police have taken photos and video of peaceful protests from demonstrations to strike picket lines. Now due to the advance of technology protesters face the roll out of facial recognition cameras across country. There are over 6 million surveillance cameras in the UK making the UK one of the most watched nations on earth.
Now police and private companies are using facial recognition often without consent. As Big Brother Watch explains this technology;
works by creating a face print of everyone who passes in front of a camera taking data as sensitive as our passport photos.
Big Brother Watch has been leading the fight against the roll out of facial recognition technology across the UK. On this issue Matthew from BBW told me:
Big Brother Watch is not a claimant in any ongoing facial recognition case, although we are supporting a [legal] case brought by Silkie Carlo, Big Brother Watch's director, and anti-knife crime campaigner Shaun Thompson. They have filed a complaint against the Met. They have been granted permission to take the Met to the High Court in January, and the Equality and Human Rights Commission is intervening as they believe the Met are using facial recognition unlawfully.
Facial recognition technology is opposed by rights and equalities groups around the world due to huge concerns over the detrimental impact on people’s right to privacy, freedom of expression and its well known gender and racial biases.
International research, such as that conducted by the highly respected journal Nature, together with internal police research have highlighted how facial recognition technology has substantially higher inaccuracy rates when attempting to identify women and people of colour. In October 2022 the journal Nature carried an article which commented;
Amid what can feel like overwhelming public enthusiasm for new AI technologies, Buolamwini and Gebru instigated a body of critical work that has exposed the bias, discrimination and oppressive nature of facial-analysis algorithms.
Labour’s attack on civil liberties has reached new tyrannical heights with the recent proscription of Palestine Action as a terrorist group. Here in the UK there is no written constitution that guarantees any democratic rights. Instead ordinary people over the centuries have had to fight long and hard for the democratic rights British citizens currently enjoy.
Since the start of the Israeli genocide in Gaza there has been a coordinated crackdown, in the UK and internationally, on freedom of speech when it comes to people criticising the government of Israel. Many people see the recent prescription of Palestine Action as being motivated by the governments desire to try and deter people from continuing with their protests over Gaza.
The chair of Big Brother Watch, Lord Strasburger, issued a statement on the proscription of Palestine Action, which said;
the government has failed to publicly justify the designation of Palestine Action as a terror group or to present the public or Parliament with any evidence that the group intentionally causes injury to people rather than damage to property.
Whatever one’s views for or against Palestine Action’s cause, it would be Orwellian in the extreme to treat peaceful protestors as terrorists.
Over the last few 5 years since the pandemic we've seen increasing censorship of the Internet especially of social media. Certain types of speech have been designated as a threat to society by both government and sections of the media. Anyone criticising Covid lockdowns or the western proxy war in Ukraine have been denounced by most sections of the media and most politicians and faced censorship on social media. Since October 7th 2023 voices opposing the Israeli genocide in Gaza have also faced the same kind of treatment but on steroids. Here in the UK the government is attempting to regulate and police the Internet with its Online Safety Act. Matthew from Big Brother Watch explained how this type of governmental censorship poses dangers to freedom of speech:
While many of the supporters of the Online Safety Act have laudable intentions, they overlook the unintended consequences of online speech regulation and the nuances associated with content moderation. Very little speech is harmful by definition. A piece of content that might be harmful in one context (e.g. A bully posting a humiliating video of his victim to TikTok) might be helpful in another (e.g. An anti-bullying charity using the same video in a fundraising appeal). We have already seen that when faced with significant OSA fines online platforms are embracing an abundance of caution and taking down or age-gating troves of speech that is legal and valuable. Such speech includes political content, which is especially bizarre given that the current government supports the OSA's age verification requirements while also supporting lowering the voting age to 16.
Since its election the current Labour government has sought to carry out repressive measures the likes of which no Tory Government would have dared to try and introduce. The trade union movement must wake up from its self imposed slumber when it comes to these issues and campaign strongly in defence of civil liberties.