UK Citizens: Please Write to Your MPs Today about the Big Brexit Votes

There's an important series of Brexit votes taking place tomorrow.  The UK government will seek to overturn some sensible amendments made in the Lords, allotting just a few hours to consider many important issues. 

If you can, please write to your MPs today urging them to support amendments that will minimise the damage caused by the self-harming hard Brexit. 

You can write to your MP using the excellent WriteToThem service, which is quick and costs nothing.  Here's what I've sent - please feel free to draw on it, but do use your own words and thoughts to increase the impact. Thanks.

I am writing to you in connection with the votes on the EU Withdrawal Bill. I am very concerned about the destructive effect that a hard Brexit will have on this country, its economy and particularly those who are already struggling to make ends meet.

As every credible analysis shows, a hard Brexit will cause huge damage to the UK economy, and inevitably lead to an impoverishment of the vast majority of people in this country. For those who have little, that will be a serious blow.

To avoid that, I would urge you to vote for Amendments 1 & 2 (to continue in a customs union), Amendment 51 (to participate in Europe’s economic area) and Amendment 19 (to allow for a proper and meaningful vote in Parliament on any Brexit deal).

The votes on these amendments represent a unique opportunity to minimise the damage caused by Brexit and the UK government's incompetent handling of the negotiations. Please take full advantage of it for the sake of those most vulnerable in our society.

Incoming: Spare Slots for Freelance Work in 2018

I will soon have spare slots in my freelance writing schedule for regular weekly or monthly work, and major projects. Here are the main areas that I've been covering, some for more than two decades. Any commissioning editors interested in talking about them or related subjects, please contact me at glyn.moody@gmail.com (PGP available).  I am also available to speak on these topics at relevant conferences.

Surveillance, Encryption, Privacy, Freedom of Speech

For the last two years, I have written hundreds of articles about these crucial areas, for Ars Technica UK (http://arstechnica.co.uk/author/glyn_moody/), Privacy News Online (https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/author/glynmoody/) and Techdirt (https://www.techdirt.com/user/glynmoody). Given the challenges facing society this year, they are likely to be an important focus for my work in 2018.

China

Another major focus for me this year will be China. I follow the world of Chinese IT closely, and have written numerous articles on the topic. Since I can read sources in the original, I am able to spot trends early and to report faithfully on what are arguably some of the most important developments happening in the digital world today.

Free Software/Open Source

I started covering this topic in 1995, wrote the first mainstream article on Linux for Wired in 1997 (https://www.wired.com/1997/08/linux-5/), and the first (and still only) detailed history of the subject, Rebel Code (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebel_Code) in 2001, where I interviewed the top 50 hackers at length. I have also written about the open source coders and companies that have risen to prominence in the last decade and a half, principally in my Open Enterprise column for Computerworld UK, which ran from 2008 to 2015.

Open Access, Open Data, Open Science, Open Government, Open Everything

As the ideas underlying openness, sharing and online collaboration have spread, so has my coverage of them. I wrote one of the most detailed histories of Open Access, for Ars Technica (http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/06/what-is-open-access-free-sharing-of-all-human-knowledge/).

Copyright, Patents, Trade Secrets

The greatest threat to openness is its converse: intellectual monopolies, which prevent sharing. This fact has led me to write many articles about copyright, patents and trade secrets. These have been mainly for Techdirt, where I have published over 1,500 posts, and also include an in-depth feature on the future of copyright for Ars Technica (http://arstechnica.co.uk/tech-policy/2015/07/copyright-reform-for-the-digital-age/).

Trade Agreements - TTIP, CETA, TISA, TPP

Another major focus of my writing has been so-called "trade agreements" like TTIP, CETA, TPP and TISA. "So-called", because they go far beyond traditional discussions of tariffs, and have major implications for many areas normally subject to democratic decision making. In addition to 51 TTIP Updates that I originally wrote for Computerworld UK (http://opendotdotdot.blogspot.nl/2016/01/the-rise-and-fall-of-ttip-as-told-in-51.html), I have covered this area extensively for Techdirt and Ars Technica UK, including a major feature on TTIP (http://arstechnica.co.uk/tech-policy/2015/05/ttip-explained-the-secretive-us-eu-treaty-that-undermines-democracy/) for the latter.

Europe

As a glance at some of my 318,000 (sic) posts to Twitter, identi.ca and Google+ will indicate, I read news sources in a number of languages (Italian, German, French, Spanish, Russian, Portuguese, Dutch, Greek, Swedish in descending order of capability.) This means I can offer a fully European perspective on any of the topics above - something that may be of interest to publications wishing to provide global coverage that goes beyond purely anglophone reporting. The 30,000 or so followers that I have across these social networks also means that I can push out links to my articles, something that I do as a matter of course to boost their readership.

UK and US Citizens: Please Request Your Personal Data Held By Cambridge Analytica

By now, many people have probably heard about the company Cambridge Analytica.  By its own admission, it played a major role in the success of Donald Trump.  There are also numerous indications that it was involved in the Brexit campaign.

Because Cambridge Analytica is intimately bound up with the London-based company SCL it is possible to make a subject access request in order to find out what information is held about you.  This applies to both UK and US citizens. 

I therefore urge as many people as possible to ask for that data - it only takes a few minutes, and can be done with a simple letter.  Obtaining this information will help us understand what exactly has been happening. Here's what I have sent; please feel free to use and/or modify it:

SCL Group Ltd
c/o Pkf Littlejohn 2nd Floor,
1 Westferry Circus,
Canary Wharf,
London,
United Kingdom, E14 4HD

22.10.17

Dear Sir,

Subject Access Request

I have read numerous reports in the press that you and/or your subsidiaries in the UK or elsewhere hold data on UK/US voters, which may include information about me.

In accordance with the UK Data Protection Act, I am writing to ask you to supply me with a copy of  the information you hold about me, please.

If there is a fee or you require more information in order to fulfil my request, please let me know.

Thank you for your help.

Yours faithfully,

Glyn Moody

You may also wish to make a contribution to this crowdsourced initiative to dig even deeper.  I've given, FWIW.

The stakes here are incredibly high: it is really no exaggeration to say that our democracy and freedom are at play.  I therefore hope you can spare a few minutes to help shed some light on what has happened here.

Urgent: Please Write to MEPs to Stop Awful Copyright Proposals

Bad things could happen in the European Parliament next Thursday, when an important committee of MEPs votes on proposals for updating copyright for the digital age:

Today it was revealed that MEP Pascal Arimont from the European People’s Party (EPP) is trying to sabotage the Parliamentary process, going behind the negotiators of the political groups and pushing a text that would make the Commission’s original bad proposal look tame in comparison.

As that post from the Pirate Party MEP, Julia Reda, explains, there is an attempt to make two aspects of the copyright proposals even worse, using procedural tricks. The main threat is the imposition of blanket upload filters, with Internet sites essentially obliged to act as copyright police for everything. 

The other is to introduce a new ancillary copyright for publishers that would mean that they could demand licensing fees for using even tiny snippets from their articles for 50 years after they were published. Both of these would destroy the Internet as we know it.

I therefore urge you to write to all your nation's MEPs on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection (IMCO) Committee. You can find their names and nationalities here with links to pages that have ways of contacting them. Here's what I've sent:

This is just a quick email to ask you not to support Pascal Arimont's proposed amendments to the copyright directive. Leaving aside the general issue that they would undermine the authority and role of the IMCO committee, they would cause huge harm to the Internet in Europe and to EU startups in that field.

The amendments to Article 13 are, despite claims to the contrary, incompatible with recent CJEU rulings, and go against the E-commerce directive that has served the EU so well over the years. The proposals would be costly to impossible to implement, and would see startups flee the EU for more hospitable investment environments.

Similarly, the amendments to Article 11 make a bad idea even worse by extending the duration of ancilllary copyright, and narrowing the exceptions. The experience in both Germany and Spain has demonstrated beyond doubt that publishers will be harmed by such a move, especially smaller ones. The proposed amendments will make the damage to both them and to the Internet itself even more serious.

I therefore urge you to reject all of Pascal Arimont's proposed amendments, and to support Catherine Stihler’s compromise amendments on the copyright file.