WRITTEN ON September 30th, 2007 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Uncategorized

I’ve been doing all the party conferences with Open Rights Group, chairing their fringe meetings on e-voting. The LibDems are pretty relaxed, but elsewhere security has become really oppressive. Now, we all remember the Brighton bomb, but at the same time these events have a responsibility to set the tone for the open and courageous sort of society we want to maintain.

The Labours want photo ID, details of your car (even if you dont drive there), proof you work for the organisation doing the event (which I don’t of course). Why isn’t my email address an ORG email address, they ask? Finally they faff about so much there’s no time to send me the pass (this process started in August). So I show up to a deserted front desk in Brighton, get a pass. The place is full of sinister looking men in black uniforms with heavy-looking machine guns. I put the pass in my pocket and it’s not once checked or used.

The Tories want the same level of intrusive and pointless detail, from a sinister-sounding organisation called “Fingerprint Events” (what next? Retina-Scan Events? Rectal-DNA-Swab Events?) The actual physical day-to-day hassling of delegates has been outsourced to another sinister-sounding outfit called G4S. G4S’s assessment of the situation is

Given the wide and varied nature of security threats outlined above, the implementation of strong security measures is a foregone requirement. Nonetheless, even with strong measures in place, organisations…must anticipate casualties, loss or damage to equipment and infrastructure and make allowances accordingly.

Armed close protection support, convoy protection, effective static guard forces, constant threat analysis and rigorous ongoing security risk assessment methodologies, sufficient physical security and protective equipment and vehicles are all essential requirements. Additionally, a flexible yet detailed crisis management plan should be in place and fully tested/rehearsed prior to deployment, and suitable evacuation plans and measures should be available for each phase of the project.

Oh no, that’s their assessment of the post-invasion oil-world situation. Anyway, they’re clearly well qualified to make us all feel at home at Conference.

Someone called Mike Cunningham, assistant chief constable of Lancashire Constabulary (who face the unenviable task of policing the whole thing) evidently knows what’s best for us all:

Lancashire Constabulary wishes to assure delegates that all the security measures being used have been carefully considered and agreed as the most appropriate to protect your conference

Classic use of the passive tense to obfuscate. It doesnt feel as if anyone asked the conference delegates, or as if the process was co-created.

I should add that the delegates themselves, MPs, organisers, councillors are as normal and human as you could like. They’re just wrapped in this weird BAA/Halliburton-like shell of people who seem to think you make the world a better place by treating everyone like a potential murderous fanatic.