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I never know what tone to take with writing letters to MPs. I don't want to waste a load of time on polite and subtly persuasive when they might be more influen

I never know what tone to take with writing letters to MPs. I don't want to waste a load of time on polite and subtly persuasive when they might be more influenced by the generic "angry voter". Equally, if I received some angry voter letter, I'd be inclined to vote against them just because I don't like angry people. This time I think I went too angry, because last time I think I was too polite: Dear MP, I sincerely hope you will be voting against the ridiculous "Emergency phone and internet data storage law" on Monday. Blanket surveillance of millions of innocent civilians is short sighted, reckless and dangerous. I am well aware that the excuse is to prevent terrorism, but is there any evidence at all that it will be key in terrorism prevention? We seem to be doing a pretty good job of preventing terrorism already, and any extra (possibly non existent) benefit this may bring is certainly not worth the MASSIVE loss of liberty of the people. I am disgusted and horrified that so many intelligent people in Westminster are so short sighted to think that surveillance, with is horrific brutal history, is going to "work this time". Yours sincerely, Me

pbhjpbhj 12y ago
>We seem to be doing a pretty good job of preventing terrorism already // The problem I see with your letter is that it may well be assumed [by your MP] that this law is merely codifying current covert practices in order to be able to force parties who have perhaps recently reneged on past agreements to allow "monitoring". In that case your statement makes a tacit approval of such codification. Also, we mortals don't necessarily have inside information of the current surveillance that is working, and so appealing to [recent] history can again seem to be an appeal founded on successful covert surveillance.
- pjc50 12y ago
  in order to be able to force parties who have perhaps recently reneged on past agreements to allow "monitoring" I'm not clear what this refers to? inside information of the current surveillance that is working This is a serious problem with the whole thing. It's very difficult to bring under democratic control because it's not public. There are a few convictions, but overall we have no idea how real the threat is. Some of us fear we're being sold the proverbial tiger-repelling rock. Then there's the abuses. Mostly these come out thirty years later, but there are currently questions of torture, of feeding data to the drone strike programme, of targeting nonviolent left wing protestors, etc. Then there's the apparent failure to prosecute serious crimes by members of the establishment, of which the latest is the alleged missing paedophile dossier that passed across Leon Brittan's desk.
philbarr 12y ago
Here's mine: Dear MP, I hope you will be voting against the emergency legislation being forced through parliament on Monday to make phone and internet companies log all information. As a software professional with over a decade's experience in the industry, I can tell you that logging all such data in this manner is not just an obvious abuse of UK citizen's rights, and most likely of citizens of other countries - it is also dangerous in it's own right. Specific questions need to be answered before any kind of mass storage of information such as this can take place. Things such as: - which "named" people will be responsible for collating this data at which companies? - where will this data be stored? - what are the security arrangements around this? - what are the repercussions for breaches of security? ... to name a few. Do not just assume that these questions have all been answered by the appropriate "techy", it is YOUR responsiblity to ask these questions and vote against any policy that does not provide appropriate answers. I quote the following examples of cases where proper consideration was not taken. These are from my personal experiences: - finding my National Insurance number and name in an "anonymised" freely available government dataset. And the NI of a friend. - working at a large blue chip company that required me to be escorted in and out of the server room and taken to a specific server, only for the person doing the escorting to get bored and prop the door open with some wood and say, "don't tell anyone". - being given elevated priviledges to a network simply to "get something done". (This one happens more than you'd think). - being asked for information for a security check by the Police only for the email to include private information such as the requester's ID code. Yours sincerely, Phil Barr.
- vixin 12y ago
  ' it is also dangerous in its own right.'
  - philbarr 12y ago
    Correct. And dammit, I hate making simple punctuation or grammatical mistakes.

pbhjpbhj 12y ago

>We seem to be doing a pretty good job of preventing terrorism already // The problem I see with your letter is that it may well be assumed [by your MP] that this law is merely codifying current covert practices in order to be able to force parties who have perhaps recently reneged on past agreements to allow "monitoring". In that case your statement makes a tacit approval of such codification. Also, we mortals don't necessarily have inside information of the current surveillance that is working, and so appealing to [recent] history can again seem to be an appeal founded on successful covert surveillance.

pjc50 12y ago
in order to be able to force parties who have perhaps recently reneged on past agreements to allow "monitoring" I'm not clear what this refers to? inside information of the current surveillance that is working This is a serious problem with the whole thing. It's very difficult to bring under democratic control because it's not public. There are a few convictions, but overall we have no idea how real the threat is. Some of us fear we're being sold the proverbial tiger-repelling rock. Then there's the abuses. Mostly these come out thirty years later, but there are currently questions of torture, of feeding data to the drone strike programme, of targeting nonviolent left wing protestors, etc. Then there's the apparent failure to prosecute serious crimes by members of the establishment, of which the latest is the alleged missing paedophile dossier that passed across Leon Brittan's desk.

philbarr 12y ago

Here's mine: Dear MP, I hope you will be voting against the emergency legislation being forced through parliament on Monday to make phone and internet companies log all information. As a software professional with over a decade's experience in the industry, I can tell you that logging all such data in this manner is not just an obvious abuse of UK citizen's rights, and most likely of citizens of other countries - it is also dangerous in it's own right. Specific questions need to be answered before any kind of mass storage of information such as this can take place. Things such as: - which "named" people will be responsible for collating this data at which companies? - where will this data be stored? - what are the security arrangements around this? - what are the repercussions for breaches of security? ... to name a few. Do not just assume that these questions have all been answered by the appropriate "techy", it is YOUR responsiblity to ask these questions and vote against any policy that does not provide appropriate answers. I quote the following examples of cases where proper consideration was not taken. These are from my personal experiences: - finding my National Insurance number and name in an "anonymised" freely available government dataset. And the NI of a friend. - working at a large blue chip company that required me to be escorted in and out of the server room and taken to a specific server, only for the person doing the escorting to get bored and prop the door open with some wood and say, "don't tell anyone". - being given elevated priviledges to a network simply to "get something done". (This one happens more than you'd think). - being asked for information for a security check by the Police only for the email to include private information such as the requester's ID code. Yours sincerely, Phil Barr.

vixin 12y ago
' it is also dangerous in its own right.'
- philbarr 12y ago
  Correct. And dammit, I hate making simple punctuation or grammatical mistakes.