Here’s this month’s Supporters Update, including good news from the Electoral Commission and two new tools we need your help developing.

Supporters Update - August 2007

Update: Supporter meetup venues and dates now confirmed - see you there!

ORG will tour the 3 major English political party’s conferences this Autumn, spreading our message that e-voting and e-counting systems are unwelcome developments in UK democracy. Ministers and representatives from the Electoral Commission will attend our fringe events to join a lively debate on electronic elections. But we need your help. We need you to invite your MPs, MEPs and councillors to discuss the issue and share their views. It took me less than 10 minutes to use writetothem to invite my MP. Event details are copied in below, and we also have letter-writing guidelines to help you out.

Party conference events are restricted to holders of expensive tickets, but ORG couldn’t miss this opportunity to meet up with local supporters, so we’re organising meet-ups in Brighton, Bournemouth and Blackpool. Please get in touch if you can join us, especially if you know a suitable venue! In addition, we need local volunteers to help flyer conference delegates and encourage them to join our fringe events.

ORG fringe event at Liberal Democrat Autumn Conference 2007 - Brighton

When: 13.00 – 14.00, Sunday 16 September 2007
Where: Glyndebourne 2, Holiday Inn Hotel
Panel: Jason Kitcat, Jon Pugh MP and Tom Hawthorn (Electoral Commission)

Supporter meetup: 16.00, Sunday 16 September at The Black Lion, 14 Black Lion St, Brighton

ORG fringe event at Labour Party Annual Conference 2007 - Bournemouth

When: 20:00 – 23:00, Wednesday 26 September 2007
Where: Bay View Suite, De Vere Royal Bath Hotel
Panel: Michael Wills MP (Invited), Andrew Scallan (Electoral Commission) and Jason Kitcat

Supporter meetup: Thursday 27 September. 1800-2100 at The Inferno, Holdenhurst Rd, Bournemouth.

ORG fringe event at Conservative Party Conference 2007 - Blackpool

When: 19.30 – 21.00, Tuesday 2 October 2007
Where: New Victorian Bar, Winter Gardens
Panel: Jonathan Djanogly MP, Andrew Scallan (Electoral Commission) and Jason Kitcat

Supporter meetup: 1900-2100, Monday 1 October, The Saddle Inn, 286, Whitegate Drive, Blackpool

DRM protesters Defective by Design braved the drizzle today to make their feelings known about the BBC iPlayer. I went down to join in, and found Hazmat-suit clad protesters calling for the BBC to reconsider its decision to use Microsoft DRM on the new online catch-up service, released in beta at the end of last month. You can see more photos of the protest in the Open Rights Group Flickr photo pool.

The 10 Downing Street iPlayer petition now has over 15,000 signatures. If you haven’t already signed - hurry: there’s less than one week left before it closes!

The House of Lords Science and Technology Committee have published their fifth report today, which makes a variety of recommendations to legislators, the police, businesses and citizens to improve personal security on the internet. The full report is now available to download.

Much of this morning’s media coverage is focussing on recommendations to create a dedicated e-crime unit, or to develop BSI kitemarks for security in internet services. But the report makes other recommendations too. For example, the Committee recommends introducing some kind of liability regime for software vendors, although it recognises the potential side effects this might have on innovation, or on open source software. The report sets up an interesting debate on this issue between some of the Committee’s expert witnesses - including Bruce Schneier, Jonathan Zittrain and Alan Cox - which is well worth reading (go to para 4.25).

The report also makes some radical recommendations for network level security, suggesting that Internet Service Providers’ traditional defence against liability for bad traffic on their networks - that they are “mere conduits” - should be looked at again. But any re-examination of ISP liability needs to be handled very carefully. As notice and takedown practices tied to suspected copyright infringement have shown, ISPs are not best placed to police the network, and can be expected to react to this kind of pressure by knocking users off the network without appropriate levels of investigation into those users’ actions.

Other recommendations include more research funding for computer security groups and a re-examination of the Computer Misuse Act. The Committee also adds its voice to the chorus of people calling for greater powers for the Information Commissioner’s Office. While such a detailed, considered and well-informed report should be welcomed, the digital rights community needs to pay close attention to how policy makers choose to interpret its recommendations.

More analysis of the report here and here.

The Electoral Commission released its official evaluation of the 3 May electoral pilots in England this morning. Among their key recommendations, they advise that:

“no further piloting should take place in the absence of a robust, publicly available strategy that has been subject to extensive consultation.”

We’re pleased that the Commission has recognised the desperate need for public debate about the role technology might play in our electoral system. We’re also satisfied that the detail of the Commission’s reports on pilots in Bedford, Rushmoor, Sheffield, Shrewsbury, South Bucks, Stratford and Swindon confirm the experiences of our own election monitoring teams. But we’re disappointed that the fundamental challenges in using computers for elections have not been fully recognised by the report.

The Commission has produced detailed reports of each pilot area, as well as technical reports, and summary recommendation reports. You can download all of them from the Electoral Commission website. The Ministry of Justice will now respond to these reports and recommendations, although no timescale for this response has been set.

The Open Rights Group will be touring the Liberal Democrat, Labour and Conservative party conferences in the Autumn, when Jason Kitcat, ORG’s e-voting campaign coordinator, will be joined onstage by front bench MPs and representatives from the Electoral Commission, to debate the question “Should we trust electronic elections?“. Jason will also be appearing at the Green Party conference, and we are currently trying to secure an event at the Scottish National Party Conference too. But we need your help. Please help us get as many of your elected representatives involved in this debate, by writing personally to invite each of them along. We’ve provided guidelines on how to do this.