Spoke to the BBC yesterday, and the results are up online today. That’s nearly as fast a turnaround as blogging!

In case you’re curious as to what I actually said to them:

The main aims of the Open Rights Group are:

- to foster a grassroots community of campaigning volunteers

- to connect journalists and the press with digital rights experts and activists

At the moment the media rely very heavily on press releases from industry and government which results in biased or malformed reporting on digital rights issues. We hope to redress the balance by helping journalists more fully understand the issues and connect with the right experts who can explain alternative positions. We will be working alongside organisations such as No2ID and the Foundation for Information Policy Research (FIPR), who are already making good progress in the digital rights arena, to raise awareness of these very important issues in the media.

We will also be organising volunteer-led campaigns and creating a strong grassroots community, including activists, technical experts and lawyers, who can exchange expertise and provide support to the community at large.

We have had overwhelming support since we announced the Pledge, which indicates that the Open Rights Group is an idea whose time has come. Many people in the UK are fed up of the way that our civil and human rights are being run roughshod over by big business and the government, and they are keen not just to donate money, but also to take part in grassroots campaigns.

We are using Pledgebank.com/rights to provide a way for members to pledge their cash to the organisation, and once that matures - by reaching 1000 signatories - we will be able to properly ‘launch’ the Open Rights Group. However, the group is already ‘in beta’, if you like - we are already planning our first campaign and collaborating with other organisations on the issues we will be addressing.

There are a wide number of digital rights issues in the UK, ranging from privacy concerns brought up by biometric passports and vehicle tracking systems to free speech issues surrounding overly restrictive copyright law to the threat to our right to private life and correspondence from proposed data retention legislation.

We will initially be concentrating our efforts on Home Secretary Charles Clarke’s proposed draft EU framework on data retention for ISPs and telecommunications companies. We believe that the proposal is not only both unnecessary and unworkable, but that it may also contravene the European Convention on Human Rights.

We have never needed an organisation like the Open Rights Group more than we do now. The implications of the digitisation of information and the ease with which such data can be now moved about are vast, and where physical restraints - such as having only paper copies of medical records - once helped secure our privacy, now it is only through unwavering vigilance that we will be able to prevent the abuse of our digital rights.

They then emailed me back and asked me to comment on the article they’d written about it back in June:

> “Gail Bradbrook, director of strategy and partnerships at Citizens

> Online, said the new group needed a clear, distinct identity if it was

> to succeed and avoid confusing people about its aims.

The Open Rights Group is very much a developing project. When Gail was

first interviewed, we had no web presence at all other than the

pledge. We’re addressing that now with the blog at

www.openrightsgroup.org, and in due course will develop our own

website to help connect volunteers and activists.

> “There are all sorts of people working on rights around the internet, ID

> cards, freedom of speech and so on,” she said.

>

> Ms Bradbrook questioned the list of issues that the group could take on

> and said there was a danger that it would only concentrate on “middle

> class” issues and debates.

There are a large number of both organisations and individuals working

on digital rights issues. Our aim is to work alongside these people,

helping them to connect with each other and providing them with

whatever support we can. We do not wish to take on issues which are

being successfully addressed by other organisations, but would prefer

to collaborate and assist. For example, if a journalist came to us to

ask about software patents, we’d pass them on to the Foundation for a

Free Information Infrastructure, (FFII) who have done fanatastic work

in Europe and have a lot of expertise to share.

The ‘middle class’ lable is a red herring - digital rights are

important for everyone, regardless of age, background or location. We

all have mobile phones, medical records and the right to vote

anonymously, so we are all affected by the way that new technology is

being used by government and big business. Whether people are online

or not, it is vital that we protect their digital rights.

> She said there was no doubt that such things were important but there

> were other issues that needed to be remembered.

>

> “I can get a whole lot more impassioned about the vast number of

> internet sites that are not accessible for disabled people,” said Ms

> Bradbrook. “That’s a fundamental right, to access information on the

> internet.”

Accessibility is important, but it’s not a part of our remit. It’s

something that Citizens Online is addressing, and we give them our full

support in their efforts.

> “There are people that are fundamentally being left behind and want to

> get online and they can’t,” she said, adding that about a third of

> Britons had never used the net.

>

> “Is this going to be about social exclusion or protecting people that

> have quite a lot anyway?” she asked. ”

How much people ‘have’ is not the question. The right to privacy, to

free speech, to private communications - these are all fundamental

rights which are being threatened by ill-conceived legislation,

ignorance and aggressive business practices and they are entirely

separate from social exclusion issues.

OpenRightsGroup, ORG, BBC, BBCi, digital rights

Charles Clarke manages to misunderstand his own EU data retention proposal and thinks we have too many rights anyway.

From Sky News:

[Charles Clarke] told Euro MPs at the parliament in Strasbourg: “Of course criminals and terrorists use modern technology - the internet and mobile communications - to plan and carry out their activities.

“We can only effectively contest them if we know what they are communicating. Without that knowledge we are fighting them with both hands tied behind our backs.”

The data retention draft framework would require telecos and ISPs to retain traffic data - traffic about where you were when you made a call, and who you called, for example - not the actual phone call itself. Even if this legislation makes it on to the EU books, Clarke still won’t be able to listen to your mobile phone conversations, although I suspect he’d really like to.

As for human rights, well, Clarke seems to think we don’t really need them:

He stressed that a rethink of the [European] Convention [on Human Rights] - which prevents terror suspects being deported to countries where they may face persecution - will be central to the EU’s response to the bombings.

He also made a dig at the reluctance of Euro MPs to agree access to information technology used by terrorists because of fears of breaching human rights.

He warned: “This European Parliament, as well as national parliaments, needs to face up to the fact that the legal framework within which we currently operate makes the collection and use of this intelligence very difficult, and in some cases impossible.”

The legal framework which protects citizens from undue harassment, invasion of privacy and loss off free speech? That framework? I rather liked it, myself.

The BBC, meanwhile, tells us that according to the Home Office, data retention won’t really cost all that much, honest guv:

A Home Office dossier published on Wednesday - entitled Liberty and Security: Striking the Right Balance - hits back at industry fears the cost of retention would be excessive.

It says that a government-funded project by a mobile phone company to keep data for 12 months had cost £875,999 (1,291m euros).

I’d like to see independent and comprehensive studies completed for a number of telecos and ISPs before I believed that this isn’t going to put smaller ISPs out of business and increase our phone bills.

After six weeks locked in the shed at the bottom of the NTK garden, wherein much deliberation, discussion and a small amount of bodily harm (non-grievous) took place, we finally have a name. I bring you… The Open Rights Group.

We were going to scribble it on the back on an envelope and pass it round, as per our normal working methodology, but we figured that this temporary blog could possibly do the job just as well. We will set up a permanent home on the web, so until then this rough and ready lean-to I whipped up just now will have to do.

So, what news of ORG, as we now like to be called? Whither our efforts this last few weeks?

Well, pretty much the first thing that we did was rope in a bunch of co-conspirators, so we now have on board:

• Danny O’Brien
• Ian Brown
• Cory Doctorow
• Rufus Pollock
• Louise Ferguson
• Stef Magdalinski
• Suw Charman

We’ve also been having surreptitious chats with a few other people, twisting a few arms, and hope to announce some more names soon, just as soon as the plaster has set.

High on our agenda has been figuring out what it is that we’re actually going to do. Pledging to ‘fight for your digital rights’ is all well and good, but it does sound a bit like a second-rate Beastie Boys track. We want to do something a bit more substantial than throw tantrums and nick VW badges, so here’s our back-of-the-napkin manifesto for reclaiming you digital rights:

The Open Rights Group is committed to protecting your digital rights, to fighting bad legislation both in the UK and Europe, and to fostering a grassroots community of volunteers dedicated to campaigning on digital rights issues.

Your civil and human rights are being eroded in the digital realm. Government, big business and industry bodies are taking liberties with your digital liberties, actions they could never get away with in the “real” world.

Our goals are:

• to raise awareness within the media of digital rights abuses
• to provide a media clearinghouse, connecting journalists with experts and activists
• to campaign to preserve and extend traditional civil liberties in the digital world
• to collaborate with other digital rights and related organisations
• to nurture and assist a community of campaigning volunteers, from grassroots activists to technical and legal experts

Your right to privacy is being eroded by the government’s ill-conceived ID card scheme, by biometric passports and the threat of vehicle tracking systems. Your right to free speech and freedom to use digital media is under threat from corporations who believe that ‘fair use’ of copyrighted works should exist only at their sufferance. Your right to private life and correspondence is under threat from a proposed European directive to log traffic and geographical data for every call you make, every SMS you send, every email you write, every website you visit.

It is essential in this time of international tension and uncertainty that we vigourously defend our digital civil liberties, ensuring that the our hard-won freedoms are not taken away simply because they’ve moved to the digital world.

We still have a lot to do and a lot to sort out, before the pledge matures, but we’re on the case. I’ll be posting here with news to keep you up to date with what we’re doing, and will be keeping my eye out on the digital rights issues that come onto my radar.

Er, hello? Can you hear me at the back there?