Julian Huppert

Campaiging with Politicians

Still at orgcon14, the first session in the afternoon was titled “Campaigning with Politicians”. I wasn’t going to report this since on the whole it wasn’t that good, but it does set the scene for what may be coming and so I changed my mind. The chair opened the session by stating the session would be best used as a campaigning symposium and not treated as a hustings, he might have saved himself the trouble. The three speakers, Jullian Huppert MP (LibDem), Natalie Bennett (Green Party) and Claude Moraes MEP set out their (Parties’) stalls. …

Who watches the Watchmen?

In the continuing story of the NSA and their five eyes attempts to do to the world what the GDR’s Stasi did to East Germany, someone finally asks how did we let GCHQ capture and process the internet traffic of the British people, those using the transatlantic internet cables and using the decryption technology to spy on allies and diplomats engaged in economic talks and treaties. On the 31st October, Julian Huppert MP with cross bench support from Tom Watson MP and Dominic Rabb MP managed to get time in the Westminster Hall committee room to debate Parliament’s oversight of the Intelligence agencies, specifically GCHQ, but let’s not forget our old friends, the burglars at MI5. The debate was broadcast on Parliament TV, and transcribed in Hansard here. Both the Video and Hansard report the debate verbatim, and so if you want to hear what the MPs said, then you’ll have to use those resources. The rest of this article is a personal comment on the meeting. …

Digital Freedom, broad campaigns and the Liberal Democrats

I started to ‘follow’ Julian Huppert MP, the LibDem MP for Cambridge on Twitter. He was introduced to me by Tom Watson MP, at Orgcon 2010 as a new champion of digital freedom and free speech. I have been following him for a couple of days and while I recognise I need help, because the Labour Party is pretty poor on the subject, in the campaign for digital freedom and to fight alienation in 21st century information economy, Julian, unlike Tommy, John Grogan and Dianne Abbot, all Labour MPs who opposed the DE Act, seems to put his party before the cause. …