If you've been following our Twitter feed you've probably noticed a few links about electoral and governmental reform mixed in with the more directly relevant stuff lately. I've been spending some time over the last year looking in more detail at the processes and procedures that take place to bring into law stuff such as the swathe of 'anti-terrorism' legislation that we so often end up reporting abuses of, and the more I find out about how our government currently works, the less surprised I am that I felt the need to start this website. I'm also more and more convinced that some fairly fundamental things need to change about the way our political processes and organisations currently work before we will have fixed the actual causes of some of the problems we're facing, rather than just fiddling with the symptoms.

Expand freedom of information. No more ID cards. Stop the creeping intrusion of the database state. These ideas are often seen as exclusively the domain of civil liberties campaigners, who are considered by some politicians as just another vocal minority. The Power2010 deliberative poll put paid to this notion.

A public protest is planned outside the Home Office at noon on Tuesday 15th Dec against the imminent extradition of Gary McKinnon. Gary is being extradited to the USA, where he will face up to 60 years imprisonment for a crime which, if tried in this country, would very likely not warrant a custodial sentence at all.

There has been widespread criticism of the Government's Digital Economy Bill lately - political parties, campaigning organisations and some of the largest players in the online economy have taken turns in pointing out its flaws. A lot of the most vocal attention has been focused on the 'three strikes' provision, that threatens to disconnect (without trial) any household that record or movie companies accuse of unlicensed filesharing. However, there are clauses in the bill that make this 'guilty until proven innocent' approach to stamping out filesharing look subtle by comparison. Most particularly, Clause 11 and Clause 17 are really quite concerning to anyone with an interest in civil liberties.

IT industry news site Silicon.com has a piece about the National Identity Register and ID Cards project, titled ID cards: Seven years of missed deadlines and U-turns. In it they detail some of the delays and changes in the history of the ill-fated project so far. They don't draw any conclusions or pass any comment, but it's fairly obvious that the project, as with so many large government IT projects, is not going well.

In news that will shock nobody who has been following the aftermath of the April G20 protests, one of the senior officers in charge of the entire operation has been caught out lying in his evidence to a government panel, yet again. I was slightly surprised that it was Bob Broadhurst rather than Chris Allison (who seems to have been the Met's chief source of spin since the event), but both were frequently evasive and occasionally downright dishonest when they spoke at the MPA meeting immediately following the April G20, and their conduct since has been in much the same vein.

There have been several stories in the press over the last week or two showing that Britain's children are being caught in the increasingly wide-flung net of our state and its justice system, in fast-growing numbers and at ever younger ages.

Since we posted our summary of the issues surrounding the DNA database, media discussion of the new Home Office proposals has continued. The coverage raises some good questions, and makes some worrying revelations.

The Home Office has just announced its revised plans to keep the DNA profiles of innocent people on the National DNA Database, despite an EU ruling that this constitutes a breach of human rights. The new policy, under which DNA samples can be taken from any individual stopped by police for an arrestable offence, permits retention of these samples for six years regardless of whether the individual was convicted or released without charge. This directly contravenes the decision made by the European Court of Human Rights in the S and Marper case last December, in which all 17 judges unanimously ruled that the UK policy of indefinitely retaining DNA samples from people who had not committed a crime was illegal under EU law.

Police information gathering tactics have long-term consequences. Activists have been consistently stopped and searched while attending demonstrations in recent years. Some know their rights and refuse to give their details, which can result in the trumped-up temporary arrests mentioned in the previous post.