On the 27th of March next year all UK households will be compelled by law to fill in a Census.

I admit that I get more worked up about this sort of thing more than most people. The arrogant presumption that we are somehow state property, the compulsion to complete it & the sheer impertinence of the questions being asked are all things that stick in my craw.

With all else that’s going on – ID cards, mass surveillance, not to mention badly written laws made to put minority interests ahead of the citizenry – it seems that the census hasn’t yet appeared on the radar of most civil liberty campaigners.

However, as with previous years the number of questions has increased (34 in 1991, 41 in 2001). This year, there will be 56 questions prying into every aspect of your life.

Ostensibly a census is about resource allocation, but if that was the case the only question the government can legitimately ask is “How many people live in your house?“.

Gender is irrelevant as this is more or less going to be an even split. Birth rate isn’t going to suddenly shoot up so there’s also need to ask about the number of children.

I’d argue that even this one question isn’t really required as any areas which have resource problems can be identified more readily (and I’d argue more accurately) by deriving the information from other sources – class sizes, waiting times at hospital etc.

Some of the questions being asked

Further details of the census can be found here.

Many of the questions being asked certainly do not have anything to do with resource allocation.

For the first time you will be compelled to disclose any other passports you may have. Also, if you’ve previously lived out of the country you will also have to say when you came into the country and for how long you intend to stay.

You will also be compelled to give the names and addresses of any guests you have staying over on the evening of the census, as well as their sex and date of birth – which has led some to call this the “Snooper’s census“.

Compulsion

You are required by law to answer these questions, and if you choose not to answer these questions – questions which in my opinion the government has no business asking – you will have committed a criminal offence and receive a stiff penalty.

Worse still, the contract for processing the data has been handed to the arms manufacturer and surveillance company Lockheed Martin, which has already raised some eyebrows.

So, it would seem that despite firm opposition by the Liberal democrats the utter abortion that is the Digital Economy bill has made it through the house of lords and has been passed back to the commons.

It is the government’s hope that MPs will not exercise their right to debate this bill further, and if the debate doesn’t happen the bill will be made law.

I can not express how bad this authoritarian and protectionist bill is or how much damage it will do to the UK economy.

It will increase the already disastrous brain drain, as well as losing any party which supports this bill the sizeable UK technical vote.

Please write to your MP now and ask that the bill is debated in full!

Image “closed” by Gill Holgate

So, I’ve been a little bit quiet over the whole Barcamp transparency thing in recent months for one reason or another – but not because nothing has been happening!

As the UK enters into an election year, and with legislation such as the infamous Digital Economy Bill being rushed through parliament, and all parties promising to clean up politics, 2010 looks to be an exciting year for transparency related issues.

I am therefore delighted to confirm that Barcamp Transparency will be happening again later this year, with more speakers, more interesting conversations and more beer afterwards!

Transparency isn’t just a hot topic in the UK of course, so we are currently actively putting together plans for holding similar events elsewhere in the world.  If you would be interested in helping out, please get in touch!

Finally, it has come to light from the conversations that we have been having that there is a need for an online community space to help organise these events and let people from around the world discuss and collaborate on transparency related issues.

Therefore, I am delighted to say that we are currently putting this together and that Ben Werdmuller (of Elgg fame) has agreed to become our Community Manager!

Get in touch and let us know what you want to see in the future!

There was a small ripple around the internet this morning caused by the Home office opening up the Beta terrorist reporting tool.

To what extent the reports from this tool are monitored is unclear, but I suspect this will cause more problems that it solves.

Even before we consider the rather broad definition the government has for illegal material (which on the face of it could cover a number of science and religious texts), I can see the tool quickly becoming buried under false positives – whether through over sensitive citizens or through plain vindictiveness – which would need to be investigated.

Even if no further action is taken after the investigation, the cost in both time and resources must surely represent a significant risk that things that are actually a threat will be missed.

Today saw the release of Data.gov.uk, the government data website spearheaded by Tim Berners-Lee which hopes to collate government data and make it available for people to build on.

Although it is clearly aimed at developers, it is my hope that innovative and genuinely useful tools will quickly start popping up as entrepreneurs get to grips with this new wealth of information.

The launch has triggered a fair amount of buzz, and a flurry of blog posts elsewhere which do a much better job at explaining the ins and outs of the site than I have time to.

Personally, I think this is a good step in the right direction. It is also good to see that they have opted to go ugly early – publishing the raw data so we can begin hacking straight away – rather than wait until their cathedral-like semantic web interface is perfect.

True, while the data is in this state it is not so useful to the wider world – yet. Projects such as Scores on the doors have proven that turning raw data into something useful can be a useful and profitable undertaking, so I’ve no doubt that this will change.

The biggest disappointment is the choice to release much of the data under crown copyright. While this was almost certainly a compromise to get anything to happen at all, it would have been nice if the government had taken the bolder step and released it unencumbered and let the economy profit from it.

I would also like to see more local authorities opening up their data, moving away from the idea that everything has to be centralised.

Still, the new site follows a general positive trend of data glasnost which has already seen the promise to open up the postcode database, and in that spirit I welcome it.

Image “New, Improved *Semantic* Web!” by Duncan Hull