Freedom of Information Requests

Jon Fuller, 28 Aug 2006 01:29:39

Hi all, sorry for the delay, and sorry this is long.

I don't get on well with posting info to the website, nor for that matter to
the SmartGroup - but here goes.


I submitted three FoI requests with my original response to the consultation
document (this can be viewed on the website). I didn't receive a reply,
despite 2 reminders and so called in the Information Commissioner. The IC
extracted a response from the Home Office.

I can provide copies of everything upon request but I'll summarise the
position now.

Like many others I was really angry with the proposals, recognising that
they would destroy the lives of very many people - driving a small but not
insignificant number to suicide. I was also really annoyed with the
manipulative, dishonest and inaccurate consultation paper and RIA. The civil
servants who produced the RIA should be ashamed of themselves.

After making my submission l wrote to the Strasbourg HR Court, informing the
Home Office of my actions (the legislation would drive people to suicide
and, I argued, was therefore an infringement of article 2), and I wrote to
every member of the Public Accounts Committee - demonstrating what a waste
of public money the consulation was (nobody knew exactly what would be
criminalised & what wouldn't - it was ludicrous).

I have been involved in a good deal of correspondence with all involved.

Anyway - to get to the point.

I asked 3 FoIs: -


Q 1: Request for information which demonstrates that a request has been
issued to a foreign government to investigate an alleged sexual assault or
rape.


The consultation paper suggested there were real time rape videos which the
Home Office wanted to crack down on. I was cocnerned that the Home Office
has claimed material exists which doesn’t (for some years an “urban myth”
was in circulation of the existence of “snuff videos”).

Given that the consultation paper suggested that virtually all such sites
are based abroad, it seemed reasonable to expect that, if such a site had
been found, and the Home Office had reasonable grounds to suspect that a
real rape had occurred, the Home Office would have asked a foreign
government to investigate. I therefore asked for a copy of any letter to a
foreign government which demonstrated that the Home office had asked another
government to investigate an allegation of rape.

The response to my FoI request shows that Home Office staff had not issued
any requests to other countries to investigate an allegation of rape. So,
this led me to ask two obvious questions of the staff that referred to this
type of material in the consultation paper: -

1. Did you come across material, when conducting your background research,
which you believed to depict a real rape? If you did then you had a duty to
report that to the relevant authorities abroad. Failure to do so was both in
breach of your duty to uphold the administration of justice and profoundly
immoral.

2. Is it not the case, that the material which was said to depict rape was,
in fact, clearly acted by paid pornography actors, which no reasonable
person would conclude represented a real non-consensual rape?

This is important, because if I can show that Home Office staff encountered
violent material that depicted rape scenes, but which they knew was not a
real rape (where a real victim had not given consent), then it is reasonable
that pornography consumers would reach the same conclusion.

I dare say I'll have to wait another 6 months to get a reply to those
questions.


Q2: Request for any legal advice which confirms that the possession of
consensual sado-masochistic violent sex can successfully be prosecuted and
that Article 8 does not apply.

I asked this question because the HRA altered the relationship between the
state and the individual - guaranteeing people legal protection from brutal
intrusion into their sex lives, as is inherent in the proposals outlined in
the consultation paper.

I asked to see the legal advice. This request is even more relevant now that
we have what we have from Rabinder Singh QC.

The Home Office refused to let me see the advice saying "legal advice is not
normally released to the public" and noted that a summary of that advice
appears in the consultation paper.

I have appealed against their decision and asked that my request be referred
to the Home Office Information Policy Team.

I have made a “public interest” case for release.


Q3: Request for sight of any research which demonstrates that children may
be more harmed by access to explicit Internet based material, that is:
material more explicit than that which is permissible within the R18
category.


This was an area where I felt the consultation paper was manipulative -
indeed downright dishonest.

The Home Office has confirmed that they have no evidence to support the
contention made in the consultation paper. But they did tell me "we would
not undertake such research in view of the ethical considerations of showing
such material to children”.

I have duly given them a bollocking and complained about the conduct of the
civil servants to Vernon Coaker MP (the new Minister). I've also told them
about the differnt regime in the Netherlands - where children have access to
explicit material (more extreme than the UK's R18 category) and yet appear
to be better adjusted sexually than UK kids (citing sexual offences and
child pregnancy data).

I have also been fairly tough with the civil servants - reminding them of
their obligations under The Civil Service Code (on Cabinet Office website):
-


“5. You must:

Always act in a way that is professional and that deserves and retains the
confidence of all those with whom you have dealings;” .

.On Honesty

“7. You must

Set out the facts and relevant issues truthfully….”

On objectivity:

“9 You must not:

Ignore inconvenient facts or relevant considerations when providing advice
or making decisions.”


I'll keep up the pressure.


While writing can I make two points: -

1. If what happened to Mrs Longhurst's daughter happened to mine, I might be
doing what she is doing now. We should not attack her, but we must argue
that her proposed legislation will do nothing to prevent such attacks in the
future. l ask all to go easy on her - let's focus our anger upon the
Ministers.

2. Alcohol.

For me, alcohol is a key argument we should be using. We know that a huge
proportion of violent crime, rape and murder is alcohol related. Yet no one
in Parliament suggests we should ban alcohol. The principle is that if you
commit an act of violence when under the influence of drink we prosecute you
- but we don't ban consumption because so many people enjoy it. Porn, and
BDSM porn, is very different in that no link between its consumption and
rape and murder has ever been proven. So, we should be using alcohol as our
moral benchmark - it directly causes harm but we don't ban it. No matter how
many women are raped and how many children are battered in the home,
government will never ban consumption. (Saudi Arabia and Iran have been
pretty succcessful with the ban !! )

I urge all to use the alcohol argument. The statistics are, again, on the
website - in my original response to the consultation paper.


Regards.

Jon


Graham Marsden, 29 Aug 2006 04:19:54

Hi there,

Jon Fuller wrote:

> Hi all, sorry for the delay, and sorry this is long.

You make some very good points and the responses you got eg "legal
advice is not normally released to the public" certainly ups the "weasel
rating" on the HO's part!

Do let us know how things continue to develop.

Cheers,
Graham.


deno, 29 Aug 2006 07:05:35

In a message dated 28/08/2006 08:54:14 GMT Standard Time,
jon_n_fuller@hotmail.com writes:

they would destroy the lives of very many people - driving a small but not
insignificant number to suicide. I was also really annoyed with the
manipulative, dishonest and inaccurate consultation paper and RIA. The civil
servants who produced the RIA should be ashamed of themselves>

Hopefully these civil servants have already left or been sacked! Still,
maybe they were functioning as normal for HO, condemned by their new boss, "Not
fit for purpose!"

You have very effectively rubbished the whole exercise all downside and as
usual, not fit for purpose. The alcohol analogy is very relevant as
experience in the States showed that the ban did not achieve it's objective. People
just brewed their own, had illicit stills or purchased on the blackmarket.
Porn would be just the same as I recall when young and it was not generally
available, we made our own, mostly typewritten, duplicated, and eagerly passed
around.
Seems Graham Coutts also started off on this obvious route with his nude
photo collection of old flames by drawing nooses around their necks with a felt
tip. Easy to imagine the rest, and the mental fantasy would probably be more
horrific and compelling than anything acted for a film. Poor Jane may have
been a proxy for an ex he especially hated and her fate
nothing to do with websites mentioned at the trial.

One can only hope that HO will see that the proposals are futile and if
there is a problem they would only exacerbate it by screwing down the safety
valve.

deno posted 28 August

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rovacs, 29 Aug 2006 21:42:47

What can be said but excellent work. Showing that the sweeping assertions this nonsense coasts upon(on the basis of which they propose throwing people into prison for years)are subjective twaddle without any evidential basis is very important.They propose legislation based upon subjective moral opinionating-not facts /evidence of harm. How tragic is that people have to spend so much of their time battling for their basic liberties against this rotten regime we are lumbered with. Liberty is under attack on numerous fronts from them-to get this nastiness withdrawn would be a small significant victory.


rovacs, 29 Aug 2006 22:14:12

" Q 1: Request for information which demonstrates that a request has been
issued to a foreign government to investigate an alleged sexual assault or
rape.


The consultation paper suggested there were real time rape videos which the
Home Office wanted to crack down on. I was cocnerned that the Home Office
has claimed material exists which doesn’t (for some years an “urban myth”
was in circulation of the existence of “snuff videos”).

Given that the consultation paper suggested that virtually all such sites
are based abroad, it seemed reasonable to expect that, if such a site had
been found, and the Home Office had reasonable grounds to suspect that a
real rape had occurred, the Home Office would have asked a foreign
government to investigate. I therefore asked for a copy of any letter to a
foreign government which demonstrated that the Home office had asked another
government to investigate an allegation of rape.

The response to my FoI request shows that Home Office staff had not issued
any requests to other countries to investigate an allegation of rape. So,
this led me to ask two obvious questions of the staff that referred to this
type of material in the consultation paper: -"



If they cannot provide such evidence then to put it into an official document-even as a suggestion is deceit-lying. As you say if they have uncovered such material and it has not been either dealt with here,or officially reported to the foregn authorities this is very serious indeed. If the researchers/writers of the CP came across any evidence of a serious offense and did not report it to the relevant authorities,here or abroad they must surely be subject to criminal prosecution. I cannot believe that rules do not exist proscribing civil servants from including statements in official documents which are baseless. It might be interesting and of value to request a copy of the regulations governing the drawing up of such documents which include CPs. If it is clear that specified regulations have been ignored in drawing up the document,this provides more important ammunuition to bring this whole thing down. Has anything been done to unearth the name of the Home Office minister who proposed such legislation. Is there any way of discovering who drew up the CP-if these individuals have committeed a criminal offense-not reporting evidence of crime discovered while working on the CP,or if these individuals have ignored any regulations to which they must adhere by rules governing the production of official documents like a CP,it should be known who these persons were.
On the human rights angle,telling you this is dealt with in the CP is tripe. The whole matter is glibly covered in a paragraph merely asserting they don't think human rights obligations are trampled over by legislation like this. Mr.Ruddell at the Home Office wrote back to me when I queried the hunman rights angle saying he was sure it had been properly considered. I wrote back saying the CP gives no evidence this was a sound belief to hold and went into some detail as to how these proposals clash hugely with the Convention and this Government's own Human Rights Act, which cements the Convention into domestic law. This was in July and no "rebuff" has been fortcoming from the Home Office. I will venture a bold guess-the complete sloppiness of the Home Office on this leads me to doubt that they even bothered going properly into the human rights obligations when drawing up what is a shoddy and illogical CP with more holes in it than a sieve. Their inability/refusal to provide any details on legal adviice on this matter supports this view. The paragraph in the CP is merely a sweeping statement-not a detailed consideration with reference to the relevant Convention Articles as to how the invasion of privacy and criminalization proposed for "looking" at something actually can be seen to be quite acceptable with reference to Articles 8 and 10.


Paul C. Dickie, 31 Aug 2006 03:37:14

In message , Jon Fuller
wrote:
>While writing can I make two points: -

You may attempt to...

Whether or not you CAN successfully make those points is something else.

>1. If what happened to Mrs Longhurst's daughter happened to mine, I might be
>doing what she is doing now. We should not attack her, but we must argue
>that her proposed legislation will do nothing to prevent such attacks in the
>future. l ask all to go easy on her - let's focus our anger upon the
>Ministers.

Oh, quite.

Let's not be beastly to that sad woman, who seems to have spent much of
the past year making the patently false claim that it was Internet
access of 'extreme pornography' that somehow 'made' Coutts act as he
did.

Instead, we should surely allow her to gain catharsis at the expense of
the liberty of everyone else, and to prattle the same nonsense as before
even though there is abundant evidence to shew that Coutts was obsessed
with asphyxiation long before he even got an Internet connection.

Is that really what should be done -- to allow lies to fester?

Or should those untruths be challenged and the real truths be told?

One does not need to call her a liar: misinformed, misguided, mistaken
or 'cluefully challenged' are perhaps better adjectives. But the false
claim that Coutts was somehow 'made' to kill her darling daughter
because he saw images that were a bit nasty really cannot be allowed to
stand, especially when there is abundant evidence that it's rubbish.

--
< Paul >


rovacs, 31 Aug 2006 19:14:29

I can have no sympathy for this profoundly stupid obsessive woman. To erect a "monument" to your offspring made up of lives destroyed unjustly is appallingly unforgivable. However I agree that the primary guilt rests with the Blair regime pandering to her pressure group piffle. If part of this was an attempt to get the tabloids singing their praises it has fallen flat. There is even an ominous silence from the "Mail". People all over of all stripes and beliefs are now beginning to get very scared and annoyed by this lot and wonder who they will persecute and criminalize and boss about next over something-it could be them. Something profoundly sinister is going on in this country,as our age old rights and liberties are stolen by Anthony "Asbo" Blair's control and surveillance obsessed regime. No if it was partly an attempt to have the tabloids cheering to provide a boost to their flagging ratings this doesn't seem to have worked well at all. The BBC,terrified for its funding after daring to call Blair a big liar over Iraq,was predictably fawning-but they are in the position of regime hirelings.
Police state authoritarianism is the lifeblood of this crew-led by a deranged character who now seems to think he can identify troublesome people before they are born and is going to get the fingerprints taken of every child in the country.

Deaths caused by religion and by "religious" types like Anthony Blair-millions.
Deaths caused by "violent internet porn"-none.
Guess which of these "cannot be tolerated in our society" in the phrase of Blair henchman "Croaker".






or wrote:
> In message , Jon Fuller
> wrote:
> >While writing can I make two points: -
> You may attempt to...
> Whether or not you CAN successfully make those points is something else.
> >1. If what happened to Mrs Longhurst's daughter happened to mine, I might be
> >doing what she is doing now. We should not attack her, but we must argue
> >that her proposed legislation will do nothing to prevent such attacks in the
> >future. l ask all to go easy on her - let's focus our anger upon the
> >Ministers.
> Oh, quite.
> Let's not be beastly to that sad woman, who seems to have spent much of
> the past year making the patently false claim that it was Internet
> access of 'extreme pornography' that somehow 'made' Coutts act as he
> did.
> Instead, we should surely allow her to gain catharsis at the expense of
> the liberty of everyone else, and to prattle the same nonsense as before
> even though there is abundant evidence to shew that Coutts was obsessed
> with asphyxiation long before he even got an Internet connection.
> Is that really what should be done -- to allow lies to fester?
> Or should those untruths be challenged and the real truths be told?
> One does not need to call her a liar: misinformed, misguided, mistaken
> or 'cluefully challenged' are perhaps better adjectives. But the false
> claim that Coutts was somehow 'made' to kill her darling daughter
> because he saw images that were a bit nasty really cannot be allowed to
> stand, especially when there is abundant evidence that it's rubbish.
> --
> < Paul >


deno, 08 Sep 2006 02:31:11

In a message dated 02/09/2006 02:40:34 GMT Standard Time,
mrlucky@fastermail.com writes:

Deaths caused by religion and by "religious" types like Anthony
Blair-millions.
Deaths caused by "violent internet porn"-none.
Guess which of these "cannot be tolerated in our society" in the phrase of
Blair henchman "Croaker".





Brilliant observation! They are the ones who should be locked up.

d

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Ben, 08 Sep 2006 13:08:30

Hi,

Are you allowed/able to publish your letter and this response online? If you can, please do.

Thanks,
Ben


> The response to my FoI request shows that Home Office staff had not issued
> any requests to other countries to investigate an allegation of rape.