Striking the Balance 2

[Ian G Batten]

On Thu, 31 Oct 2002, Peter Fairbrother wrote:
> However, I have little interest in helping you spin a watered-down Part I
> Chapter II order through Parliament. Primary legislation is needed. There
> are too many flaws in RIPA.

I am in two minds about this process.  On the one hand, in principle I
agree with you.  On the other, pragmatically the chances of time being
cleared in the parliamentary timescale for fresh primary legislation are
approxomiately zero, especially given that it doesn't even get the ``we
are fixing the horrible mistakes of a previous government'' brownie
points.  And there is some mileage in the argument that the existing
situation, with information being passed around between government
agencies and CSPs subject only to the DPA, PACE and a melange (miasma?)
of ad hoc agreements, is less than perfect.  I don't think that, no
matter how much we protest, RIPA redux is on the agenda.  And I don't
have faith in the inability of the government to ram through a fairy
nasty SI.  Therefore, pragmatically I think that helping to draft a SI
which meets our concerns is the least unattractive of a set of
unattractive possibilities.

It's that old question: which is better, helping to do something
compromised, or taking a high moral stance and showing your hands are
clean afterwards?

ian