[Fsuk-manchester] [GeekUp] OTish: Convention on Modern Liberty

[Simon Ward]

I haven’t seen anyone else post this yet.  I’m thinking I’ll be at the
Manchester conference, and have no plans for London, but if a few want
to go we could share transport.

Simon

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Subject: [GeekUp] OTish: Convention on Modern Liberty
From: Rob Knight <address@hidden>
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Has anyone here seen this[1]?

It appears to be a gathering (or set of gatherings around the UK) of various
civil libertarian type people, including NO2ID, Open Rights Group and, err,
the Countryside Alliance.  Basically a grand coalition of everyone who feels
that, perhaps, ID cards, CCTV on every street corner, secret coroners'
hearings, ever-longer detention without trial, extended emergency powers for
ministers, restrictions on human rights and FOI only a few years after the
relevant acts were introduced, state-sanctioned snooping on private computer
systems without a warrant, national DNA databases of innocent and guilty
alike and, well, the long list of other things that the government is trying
its luck with might just be a bit of a bad idea.

I've tagged this as OTish because I know that this isn't always the place
for political debate, but given that so much of this has implications for
both the IT sector as an industry and geekness as a way of life, and is
being picked up by some tech blogs[2], I thought it'd be worth posting about
it here.

Now, the important thing:  the main conference is in London and will have
various politicians, campaigners and the odd C-list celebrity with a
conscience speaking.  Various satellite conferences are being held,
including one here in Manchester, being organised by NO2ID.  Is anyone on
the list planning on attending this?  It's on Saturday February 28th, for
pretty much a full day.  Apparently the satellite conferences will have
access to live video feeds from London and will be able to submit questions
and participate online.

I'm trying to decide between attending the Manchester satellite or going to
the London one (perversely, despite living in Manchester I know more of the
people who will be attending in London).  I'm leaning towards Manchester on
the basis that it would be good if we could have almost everyone who cares
about these issues in the North West to gather together and get to know each
other in order to spark future initiatives.  What does everyone think?  In
the meantime, blogging or Twittering about the event would be great!

Regards,

Rob



[1] http://www.modernliberty.net/
[2] http://uk.techcrunch.com/2009/01/09/the-uk-governments-plans/

-- 
Rob Knight

http://robknight.org.uk

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