ACTA, Transparency and the EU: Visible to the Naked Eye

There are many ways in which transparency can ensure the presence of the critical eye needed to guard against corruption. But it can all be for nothing if no one is paying attention.

The high profile international controversy surrounding the SOPA/PIPA Acts  are a perfect example. The act was followed swiftly by the ACTA treaty that faced numerous protests across Europe (BBC, 2012). ACTA now finds itself buried in EU procedures. There it is out of sight and out of mind - not due to any particular fault with the EU's processes - but rather due to an absence of interest in Europe's politics.

The Autumn 2009 Eurobarometer survey says that only 23% of people in the UK trust the EU, with 60% of people saying that they did not understand how the EU worked. In the Autumn 2011 surveys, it was also covered that 62% of UK citizens felt under-informed about the workings of the EU.

It is worrying when an issue of international law enforcement can slip by unnoticed because an organisation is little trusted and little understood.

In the case of ACTA - an attempt to create a multinational treaty to target copyright infringement - it reached the European Parliament with the backing of 22 of the EU's member governments. But upon arrival a number of countries backed away from ratification in the face of protests and ACTA was referred to the courts (Lee, 2012). Now it is being deemed unlikely to see the light of day due to the current 'political reality' (Arthur, 2012).

This disparity between government backing and public opposition shows the real importance of democratic institutions being visible and their processes being understood. When there is a lack of visibility, it creates a democratic deficit - which tips the balance of power away from those not paying attention and towards those who make make and pass our laws.

What can be done is to ensure that this crucial part of the UK's checks and balances plays its part?

One certain distinction to make would be differentiating between disinterest and disaffection. Just because people have become disaffected with the trasformismo occurring within modern British politics, this is no reason to conclude that there is also a disinterest in being engaged with politics.

Every protest, march and sit-in of the last 24 months have been testament to this. Further they declare something to be fundamentally wrong. Either our political process is broken and has found itself rejected - and therefore needs to be updated and improved. Or, as young people grow up, not enough is done to demonstrate the importance and functions of, nor the reasons behind, our political process.

Transparency

Recently the word transparency has been a major driving factor behind much in the political world. Transparency demands that the Lords be reformed to lay its power before democracy. Transparency demands the boardroom must engage with democracy in its dealings. And transparency is blowing the winds against journalism's rather mysteriously clouded world.

But why all of this focus upon pulling back the curtain that shields these dark deals devised over dirty dinners from the public gaze?

'Where the people fear the government you have tyranny. Where the government fears the people you have liberty.'

So as the first round of charges are levelled over phone hacking (Greenslade, 2012) and the government tries to clean up politics and open it up to greater scrutiny, it would seem that battle is being won.

Yet as the veil that shrouds the transactions and interactions of people in public life has been further and further the rolled back, it has been met - step by step - with a similar demand for encroachment upon the lives of individuals.

Why should that warrant a note aside - especially in a world rolling on with full disclosure - you may well ask?

Consider again the quote above.

If a government knows everything there is about you - because it is all there for easy and palatable consumption - what more is there for a government to worry about from its people?

If a government, or its officials, do not even need a court order to investigate your most personal habits, or even your person - since that information has become free - what more is there for a government to worry about from its people?

The great personal freedom of individual privacy is the final bastion against the power of the collective will.

But the power it wields, and a government should fear, is not sedition. Nor terrorism. Nor a chequered past, nor religious affiliations - and certainly not your sexual habits.

The great power of personal freedom is in diversity. Specifically: the ability and safety of all individuals to think freely - free from the pressures of conformity, that weigh so heavily upon the human mind when in the light of public disclosure.

For much the same reason that public actions face greater calls for transparency, we should not be so quick in the repeal of individual privacy. Disclosure of public acts and the privacy of the individual combine to protect the individual liberty - through the assurance that individuals will be able to make up their own minds with all of the facts at their disposal.

'Like other tyrannies, the tyranny of the majority was at first, and is still vulgarly, held in dread, chiefly as operating through the acts of the public authorities. But... when society is itself the tyrant its means of tyrannizing are not restricted to the acts which it may do by the hands of its political functionaries. Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practises a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself.' (Mill, 1859)

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References:
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+ Roy Greenslade's 'Rebekah Brooks charges take the phone-hacking scandal to a new level'; in The Guardian; 15 May 2012.

+ John Stuart Mill's 'On Liberty'; 1859.

The Problems in Hand

The Liberal Democrat commitment to Lord's reform has raised more than a few eyebrows - not to mention heckles - amongst political opponents and the public at large. Pressing economic concerns have provoked calls for these constitutional reforms to be relegated to the back-burner. So it comes as no surprise that its inclusion in the Queen's Speech has received coverage (BBC, 2012).

The Speech from the Throne - where the Queen addresses Parliament with the government's program of legislation for the coming year - is a very prominent place to promote prospective legislation. Including Lords reform in such a prominent announcement is quite a statement of intent.  However Lib Dem leader Mr Nick Clegg has reassured people that while the reforms are priority for him and the party, it is not taking precedence over the twin problems of the economic recovery and unemployment (Clegg, 2012).

This assurance is backed up by the presence of several bills on the program for 2012.

The first element are bills covering business reforms. Those bills aim to intervene in and clean up various industries; from seeking to 'ring-fence' the riskier elements of banking away from the high street, to the 'Groceries Code Adjudicator Bill' seeking to assure fair deals between producers and supermarkets.

The second element are the provisions to establish a number of investment funds. The Green Investment Bank included in the Queen's Speech, alongside the previously set up Regional Growth Fund (Mulholland, 2011), furthers the government's interventionist approach - in this case trying to open up access to credit for potential employers across various industries.

In all, those elements describe a strategy aimed at getting money flowing to new businesses creating jobs and to reorganise old businesses to prevent the mistakes of the past. Whatever your opinion of the quality of the government response to the UK's economic woes - and there is opposition - their strategy represents legislation aimed at the key issues. So why is reforming the House of Lords sitting alongside that strategy?

The answer would seem to be consistency. Or as Douglas Adams put it: 'interconnectedness'.

Lords reform is an attempt to establish some consistency in our political values - to create transparent democracy across the board. On the one hand to prevent the failures of the past, and on the other to prevent accusations of hypocrisy; particularly as the government continues to push matters like democracy in business boardrooms - with shareholders voting on executive pay and other previous recommendations.

The key now as the government drives forward with Lords reform has to be the making of clear arguments. Specifically, the government has to be clear about the essential role political and constitutional reform will play in an overhaul. To prevent the mistakes of the past - but also as part of the solution to the problems in hand.

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References:
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+ BBC's 'Queen's Speech: Battle begins over House of Lords reform'; 9 May 2012.

+ Nick Clegg's 'Local elections: this coalition is stable and the centre will hold'; 6 May 2012.

+ Helene Mulholland's 'Regional growth fund will create thousands of new jobs, says Nick Clegg'; in The Guardian; 31 October 2011.

False Dichotomies

Professor Charles Xavier and Magneto play out an important conflict that sits at the heart of the Marvel Comics world. As mutants - bestowed with amazing gifts - they debate, and often come into conflict over the way mutants and humans ought to live.

Xavier is an Utopian idealist, who believes in the peaceful coexistence of living things. His friend and opponent Magneto survived a childhood in Nazi concentration camps (Pak, 2009) to emerge as a powerful mutant - determined that mutants, this newly evolving branch of humanity, should never face the horrors he and others endured.

Over time both have fallen from their paths and approaches. Xavier the utopian fell to manipulation and coercion to bring about these ends (Kerouac, 2009). And Magneto the survivor, driven by pain and determination, began a campaign to establish supremacy over a humanity he had come mistrust, fear and hate.

And with that fall came the lapse of their leadership amongst mutants. Leadership then fell to Scott Summers - Summers better known as Cyclops, Xavier's premier student - who spent years as the leader of Xavier's X-Men, a self-policing force for mutants. In this position he tried to implement the vision of peaceful co-existence. Yet Summers was also a tireless tactical and strategic leader, as resolute in the defence of his people as Magneto.

Cyclops epitomises the moderate course - not as a 'weakened compromise' but as an improvement upon the exposed weaknesses of extremist solutions. This is an important point in exposing the flaws of extremism and its tactical antipathy towards the middle.

The problem with that antipathy is that it ignores the purpose of the middle ground - as the place where progress occurs.

It is the middle where the goals and methods of all sides are weighed up with the evidence and solution are devised. Solutions which aim at the best for all worlds - where all parties resolve to get the things they want with harming others - by the harm principle.

But it's more than that. The middle is the place where you can expose the failings of extreme courses; identifying the best parts of those courses and carrying on with them (sans their worst elements). Cyclops' course marks progress from the beliefs and ideals of both Xavier and Magneto - a whole new stage. In essence: evolution.

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References:
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+ Jason Kerouac's 'Retcon THIS! – Professor Xavier is a Jerk'; 8 March, 2009.