Open Rights Group | ORG files Judicial Review intervention

ORG files Judicial Review intervention

By Peter Bradwell on Mar 01, 2011. Comments (0)

Early last week Open Rights Group filed and served its intervention into the Judicial Review of the Digital Economy Act. You can read our intervention here.

It is an important step for us to be intervening in the Judicial Review. We are aiming to contribute an important bank of expertise and evidence to the considerations of the court that might otherwise not be heard. This is not just a 'me too' exercise - we believe we have information that can be useful to the court. And we haven't said everything we could have, focusing on what we saw as the gaps in the arguments being put forward that we could help fill. Our perspective is one of the likely impact on individuals of legislation about digital issues, which is informed by an understanding of the relationship between technology, human rights and civil liberties.

The excellent Francis Davey put together our submissions. The witness statement from Executive Director Jim Killock touches on the impact on public wifi provision, the harm to individuals of a reliance on IP address evidence, and some of the privacy risks associated with the Act. There is supporting evidence from Richard Clayton on the possible weaknesses of IP address evidence and the ways that people can avoid detection. We would like to thank Francis and Richard for their very valuable contributions. You can download these documents here.

The hearing itself takes place on 22nd March, lasting 3 days. It was raised by BT and TalkTalk, with the court will be considering a number of grounds covering compliance with European privacy and e-commerce legislation and the 'proportionality' of the Acts provisions. There is more background about where the Judicial Review came from here.

This is our first intervention of this kind, but we don't want it to be the last. Taking on dangerous legislation directly and insisting on our rights in the courts is critical if we want to succeed.

Our ability to take on work like this is dependent on the donations of our awesome supporters. And because there aren't many voices out there like ours, those donations are vital if these issues are to get a fair hearing in policy debates we all care about.

So if you feel as strongly as we do about legislation for the digital age that respects human rights and civil liberties, have a think about  becoming an Open Rights Group supporter. By donating, you'll help make sure we can continue to get stuck in to Judicial Reviews while at the same time taking on work on issues like open data, privacy, and net neutrality. If that's not enough in itself, you can also get a free book, Bound by Law. What more reasons you possibly want? You can sign up here.

via openrightsgroup.org