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Maybe the USA has had time to cool off. Me? I'm betting he'll be over there within three months.

I doubt it.

Guess what? It's only been hours and he's already been arrested "on behalf of the United States", extradition warrant and everything.

He didn't even have to pass through Sweden first.

http://news.met.police.uk/news...

PS: Has he committed any crimes in the USA?

(apart from embarrassing them)

Not the most informed statement from the UN there, or from Snowden for parroting it. Yes, he would have been arrested had he done so, but Assange could have left the embassy at any time; he was there of his own volition having skipped bail, which is *a crime in its own right* in the UK legal system, and that's what the UK initially arrested him for this morning. That's an important distinction, because the UN is basically saying that Assange should be above sovereign UK law in the matter of skipping bail because reasons. Motivations for seeking asylum aside, he basically went from being a suspect for rape and assault to actual wanted felon all by himself, and at the very least there's a case to be made there.

I'll grant there are differing - and potentially quite valid - opinions on the motivation behind the Swedish cases and the US' extradition request (for which he's now also been arrested), but the UK's charges are about as black and white as they come.

We're probably going to find out in the next few days whether the US has a good reason for extradition or not, because the extradition request has already been formally made to UK authorities. You can probably forget the "not a US citizen" angle though, because there are multiple high-profile instances of the UK extraditing people to the US when they are a citizen of some other nation over the last few years alone and, other than re-issue his passport recently just in case he was evicted from the embassy, Australia doesn't seem to have done a thing to help him since his legal issues began.

The only question now is will the UK send him to Sweden first (apparently they are planning on re-opening the rape case) so they can wash their hands of any potential issues with the US' more draconian sentencing and let the Swedes deal with that legal quagmire instead, or just rubber stamp the paperwork and have him on a transatlantic flight ASAP.

Apparently, the US does think they have something they can extradite him for, because he's now been arrested under the extradition act on behalf of US authorities. The Swedes seem to be planning on re-opening their assualt charges as well, so there's a potential he'll be making a detour to Scandinavia before crossing the Atlantic, which might not be all that unlikely if the objective is about keeping him bottled up as long as possible. Given he's now a proven flight risk I suspect his chances of bail while all this drags on through the appeals courts (which has taken years in other high profile cases) are pretty slim, so even if he ultimately prevails and avoids extradition it's likely to be quite some time before he's getting out of custody.

This is an outrage!

This is also becoming increasingly common.

London police are using unmarked facial recognition vans right now to identify Christmas shoppers on 17 and 18 December 2018.

Even though Big Brother Watch claims the tech had 100% fail rate since May, UK's London Metropolitan Police are deploying the tech today and tomorrow in three tourist hotspots - Soho, Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square.

References:
Statement from Metropolitan Police
The Register article
Metro article (London newspaper)

But against unarmed victims, they all work great. Nice, France: 86 killed with a truck. Manchester, England: 20 killed with a homemade bomb.

But those are OK because nobody used a gun, right?

London is cracking down on KNIFE ownership. You ban the guns but still allow criminals to walk the streets? They don't join a quilting circle: they use a different weapon. The homicide rate in London recently topped that of New York City. So, clearly they need to ban another weapon instead of actually doing anything about the criminals.

Get rid of the weapon, and you still have dangerous criminals.

Get rid of the criminals, and the weapons don't matter.

https://www.met.police.uk/Stop...

Funny how the most armed country in the world still has a relatively low homicide rate. There are plenty of countries with very strict gun laws that have a much higher homicide rate. Even in this country, try doing a scatter plot of gun ownership percentage compared to homicide rate. Yeah, there is not much of a correlation, but the general (weak) trend is more guns == less murder. The most likely explanation is that, as the homicide rate rises, more gun laws are enacted that prove ineffective, thus lowering the gun ownership rate, but doing nothing to save lives.

So, if four people were stabbed, would you want fewer knives in this country? No, I am not being sarcastic. In England, they have "sane" gun laws, but now they are cracking down on knife ownership. You can't make this stuff up!

https://www.met.police.uk/Stop...

So, you go after the weapon, and the criminals choose another weapon. In France, they had a HIGHER death toll that America's worst mass shooting using just a TRUCK! If only they had sane truck laws, with mandatory training and licensing, that would not happen, right?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

It's in the UK, plenty of surveillance.

That doesn't deter, does it? Isn't there a lot of crime in London despite the surveillance?

http://www.met.police.uk/pcso/...

Ah, ok - you just want black cabs... fine...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new...

http://content.met.police.uk/N...

Again, 2 minutes of google.

Why so defensive of black cabs ?

Oh, you guys have "Free Speech Zones" as well?

I think the restriction is on a procession/march near Westminster Palace. You can still make a static protest.

http://content.met.police.uk/Article/Organising-a-protest-march-or-static-demonstration/1400002380711/1400002380711 suggests that's correct.

Oh yes, and another quote, apparently this parody is a hate crime:

Modern Leftist @ModernLeftist 14 Dec
@mgedmin @bitbucket http://bitbucket.org/ has servers in UK and the material is illegal. Report it here https://secure.met.police.uk/hatecrime_internet/

If I see police walking round this bit of London I wonder what's happened. This is a nice bit, there shouldn't be any street crime! I don't see the police in the same places, so I think they're good at patrolling everywhere rather than a fixed route.

(We have a map of crime rates in different areas of London: http://maps.met.police.uk/ )

Gun laws are an oxymoron. Criminals, by definition, do not abide by the laws. So it is only the good people that do not have guns in gun free zones. I do have strong feelings about gun laws but I do not think that this is the time to air them.

I do. It's much more relevant now than any other time.

Criminals don't abide by the laws, but with good enforcement and harsh sentencing for criminals using a gun the chance they'll carry one (and use it) decreases.

Britain has harsh gun laws: it's pretty much an automatic minimum-five-year jail sentence if you handle a gun without a license. Shootings are rare, mass-shootings + suicide far rarer, and accidents (child getting gun, etc) very rare too. Knife crime is possibly more common that the US (I haven't checked), but I prefer it that way.

Some criminals have guns, but they're careful with them. They're kept hidden somewhere (hidden in a relative's house, and carried to and from the scene by a young gang member in an attempt to avoid the penalty for possessing a gun).

For example, 12 years for possessing a firearm, ammunition and knives with intent.

Or 18 months for a 13-year-old holding a gun for an older gang member.

I photograph the police whenever I see them as a matter of principle, due to this (and because they happily film/photograph the general public).

It's also legal: http://www.met.police.uk/about/photography.htm
It's also campaigned by pressure groups, e.g. http://photographernotaterrorist.org/
There's a healthy media oversight of the issue, e.g. http://www.bjp-online.com/tag/street-rights

The Guardian article you linked was part of the media coverage that led to the clarifications such as that Met police statement, so it was very helpful at the time, but is no longer completely accurate.

I think you mean: this.

CCTV pictures of especially wanted people.

Uhm, not in the UK it isn't - there are no laws forbidding you from photographing or videoing the police while on duty....

Members of the public and the media do not need a permit to film or photograph in public places and police have no power to stop them filming or photographing incidents or police personnel.

Source: The police themselves! http://www.met.police.uk/about/photography.htm

Which makes it even worse that people are routinely arrested for it. What was your point again?

Members of the public and the media do not need a permit to film or photograph in public places and police have no power to stop them filming or photographing incidents or police personnel.

Source: The police themselves! http://www.met.police.uk/about/photography.htm

CCTV cameras 'help solve' 2,500 crimes in London; 60,000 (council-operated?) cameras in the UK

estimate. 10,000 cameras in London (2008 figure - 7,431 [source]) So it takes 4 cameras one year to 'help solve' one crime.

There were 809,350 crimes reported in London in the 12 months to November 2010 [source: Metropolitan Police Service]. Of these, 2,500 were 'helped solved' by cameras. 0.3%. That's a fantastically small figure. Had the police, ten or twenty years ago, approached the Home Office for funding for CCTV with the claim that it would 'help solve' 0.3% of crimes in the capital, they wouldn't have received a penny.

Lets look at the 'serious' crimes.

4 murderers (out of 112 reported crimes, december 2009-november 2010)
23 rapists and sex attackers (out of 9285 reported crimes, december 2009-november 2010)

The figures are not prosecutions, not convictions, and are not even definitive pieces of evidence - the expression is 'helped solve'.

These are shockingly insignificant numbers and a convincing reason to remove all cameras and kill their associated budgets.

no way? I don't believe it! ;-) come on, you knew I was being ironic, didn't you?

In case you're interested: Scotland Yard might have been named as such because the kings of Scotland had their ambassador's residence in the area. But then again, maybe some property developer called the area Scotland Yard because he thought it sounded cool or it would impress people. A lot of streets in London, UK are named for that very deep reason too.

calling bs on this. Provide citations of ANY of the above happening.

Well, they issued new guidelines, relaxed restrictions on "registered photographers", stopped using section 43 and 44 of the Terrorism act, had a 'snitch campaign', hassle people with commercial permits, and even push people down stairs.

If you aren't aware of the myriad ways in which the London Police have gone completely batshit crazy with photographers .... well, you haven't been paying attention to the news. Do a google search for "london photography police", and read.

There are loads of documented cases of some cop or another deciding they have a law on their side which allows them to do almost anything to photographers. And, in fairness to London, I'm sure this isn't the only place this happens.

The citation for what the GP suggests is bloody easy to find.

There's nothing wrong with photography in public places although that doesn't stop Police from harrassing photographers. Perhaps people looking for "suspicious activity" are going to have an expectation bias when viewing innocent activity? Afterall, you could be a terrorist.

As to the OP's theory, what evidence do you need?

Cameras don't prevent crime. They may help solve a crime after the fact, but I imagine a camera means little to a crackhead wearing a ski mask.

London is one example of this. Total "violence against the person" rates are largely unchanged in the last 5 years. Similar statistics can be seen in Chicago, USA, despite thousands of cameras added in "high crime" areas over the last 5 years. The cameras have been a bonanza for local contractors who install and maintain them, but that's about the only benefit.

To paraphrase Bruce Schneier, replacing smart people with dumb technology rarely results in increased security.

That's a horrendously biased account that misses some extremely important facts, and you are outright incorrect in most areas.

Starting with SO15, it's not just a rebadged special branch at all, and your suggestion of special branches role is rather narrow so as to be utterly misleading. No, SO15's official name is "Counter Terrorism Command", see here for a list of their roles:

http://www.met.police.uk/so/counter_terrorism.htm

Note how they're entirely terrorism focussed nowadays, and have been since well before Damien Green's arrest?

Moving on from the role of SO15, the issue isn't the branch of police involved, the issue is the way they were involved, and to some degree, the fact they were involved at all.

If you agree that they should have been involved, then the question arises as to why due process wasn't followed, why despite initial denial that there appeared to have been contact between the police and the opposing (then ruling) party or at least some members of it, and why the police investigation involved searching for things clearly unrelated to the leaks but which are extremely suggestive of political motivation.

But there's a valid question as to whether the police should've been involved at all, because there was a clear public interest defence and the CPS would've hence never been able to pursue a case anyway, this adds further evidence towards the idea that the raid was entirely politically motivated- clearly no real prospect of a conviction, searches for and through unrelated data, then why bother? This is ultimately why the case was dropped, your theory about MPs standing together makes no sense, because the vast majority of Labour were very much interested in a prosecution and they held the majority of seats in parliament.

Realistically it was almost certainly another one of Jacqui Smiths grossly authoritarian moves, and it failed miserably. It's not a case of one rule for them, one rule for everyone else- the public interest defence which would've defeated any charges with ease in this particular case (you're right there was plenty of evidence he did it, that wasn't in dispute, there was just no evidence is wasn't in the public interest) applies to anyone. In fact, to prove this point this is also why the people involved in the MP expenses leak last year avoided any charges or prosecution too, because despite pressure from MPs to act, the police also dropped that investigation because there was no way they could defeat a public interest defence against that act of leaking those documents. The evidence they did it was there, the evidence it wasn't in public interest simply didn't exist. The people responsible for that leak weren't politicians or anything of the like, they were normal citizens yet contrary to your point, public interest prevailed in their favour.

I have had car drivers cross the double yellow line to pass my bike while I am slowing down to stop at a red light. This saves them what, three seconds?

Today I had one give up overtaking when he saw the lights ahead were red. (Although thinking about it, if he hadn't started to overtake I'd not have noticed at all.) That balanced out the 4x4 (SUV) driver overtaking me before getting stuck ahead of me on a narrow road.

Also today, a lorry driver held off overtaking on a left-hand bend (UK here). He overtook on the wide, straight bit a few second later :-)

In the last 18 months (6000km) I've reported two drivers to the London police online. I don't think much happens for a first report (possibly they get sent a letter), but if a driver gets multiple reports the police should investigate. I've only done it when I genuinely believed the driver was dangerous.

(The first, a lorry driver who overtook on a left-hand bend on a narrow bit of road under a long bridge, then -- at the red lights -- shouted at me for going "too fast".

The second, who overtook on a short single lane road, then stopped ahead and shouted at me for going "too slow" -- on a narrow, residential road past a school?!.)

I'm going to call you out on the Police's ability to find out who you are when making a stop and search. The right the search you does not normally extend to opening and searching your wallet. You also don't have to identify yourself verbally when stopped and searched.

Just check and found this page from the Metropolitan Police: http://www.met.police.uk/stopandsearch/what_is.htm

A Quote from the page describing a stop and search:

"STOP AND SEARCH - when a police officer stops and then searches you, your clothes and anything you are carrying."

This seems to imply they can search your wallet. I would be very surprised if they neglected to do so since it is a likely place for drugs to be found. There is certainly no legal exemption to prevent them from using stop and search to obtain your identity via your wallet. so yes, you do not have to identify yourself verbally, but they can search you to get around this providing they can find some legal grounds. The problem is that you have very little recourse after you have been searched to appeal if the grounds they used were somewhat spurious.

I don't have a problem with a drone recording it.

I would. It would be fun if the public gets access to the video recordings. I'd set up a website offering a £1000 prize for the first beating caught on video.

Excellent news, how about I shoot out a drone from the sky with my rifle. I am still an awesome sniper and can hit a target within a 7 inch radius consistently from 500 yards. Poor poor drone, it will not see it coming, but I would love to see it short circuit. I also have some 800 MW lasers to twat it with. This is truly unacceptable having drones in the sky. I promise I will shoot a few down. If you do not like it revoke my FAC (FireArms Certificate) http://www.met.police.uk/firearms_licensing/faqs.html I do not want to see footage of me having sex with my girlfriend by a drone. BASTARDS!

Murders rates for the most recent year I could find.

Atlanta: 129

[1]

London: 130

[2]
 

So after regression analysis, you've shaken the statistical tree to discover the only difference between the two cities is gun laws and population? Remarkable.

Seriously? You are trying to compare a city of 500,000 with a city of 8.5million? Well, still it fails. Yes, the situation in America really is that bad.

Murders rates for the most recent year I could find.
Atlanta: 129
[1]
London: 130
[2]

Yes, that's right, a city with 17 times the population has the same number of murders in a year. That's 17 times lower murder per capita. And the rates for murder are highest in London, they are practically zero elsewhere in the country. It's the same in any other civilised nation where the gun lobby doesn't have control of the legislature and gun laws are actually somewhat sensible.

It's because the UK's e-crime unit is part of the Metropolitan Police. I guess it doesn't make sense for each police authority to have it's own e-crime unit.

PCeU - Police Central e-crime Unit

Police search through safety-deposit boxes. On the day of the raid 3554 boxes were seized. Although 2457 boxes have now been restored, there are 1068 active enquiries and £15.5m is currently detained under POCA legislation. £300,000 has been confiscated while the courts have forfeited a further £1.5 million. Read more via http://cms.met.police.uk/news/major_operational_announcements/raid_on_safety_depository_business_leads_to_over_1000_investigations "The Met Police are committed to taking the cash out of crime and investigating those criminals who seek to abuse the system. We are delighted to announce today that over 1000 investigations are in progress for Operation Rize."

In the UK this is done centrally, not by the operators individually. Consequently, most nicked handsets get shipped abroad...

London's crime rate hasn't gone down with the many cameras they have.

Yes it has.

http://www.met.police.uk/crimefigures/

More widely, crime in the UK has dropped by more than 40% in the last decade according to the British Crime Survey. And detection rate for those crimes that have happened are well up.

http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs08/hosb0708.pdf

It's like when you walk into a Tube station and see ten of the Met's finest standing there. In theory you ought to feel safer, but in practice you wonder what's happening that you don't know about.

See, I had this image of a bunch of guys dressed like the Three Tenors standing around in a subway, and couldn't figure out why that would make someone feel safe...

I guess the Met makes more sense than the Met.

wow, and here I was thinking of The (New York) Mets http://www.mets.com/ ; seeing as this is story from New York and all...

It's like when you walk into a Tube station and see ten of the Met's finest standing there. In theory you ought to feel safer, but in practice you wonder what's happening that you don't know about.

See, I had this image of a bunch of guys dressed like the Three Tenors standing around in a subway, and couldn't figure out why that would make someone feel safe... I guess the Met makes more sense than the Met.

I was wondering how anyone but an opposing team would feel safer facing 10 Mets. Of course, I'd definitely be confused about their appearance in England, though. For that matter, I'd be confused about my own appearance there...

I guess the Met makes more sense than the Met.

Or the Met. I read your post and couldn't figure out what the Three Tenors would be doing in an art museum.

It's like when you walk into a Tube station and see ten of the Met's finest standing there. In theory you ought to feel safer, but in practice you wonder what's happening that you don't know about.

See, I had this image of a bunch of guys dressed like the Three Tenors standing around in a subway, and couldn't figure out why that would make someone feel safe...

I guess the Met makes more sense than the Met.

Not a huge surprise. They already have the "If you suspect it Report it" campaign.

Not to mention good old "Secure beneath the watchful eyes".(yes, they are actually serious. As in, that poster is not ironic.)

http://www.krages.com/phoright.htm

The general rule in the United States is that anyone may take photographs of whatever they want when they are in a public place or places where they have permission to take photographs. Absent a specific legal prohibition such as a statute or ordinance, you are legally entitled to take photographs. Examples of places that are traditionally considered public are streets, sidewalks, and public parks.

The general rule in the United Kingdom is that if you take photos then you're a terrorism suspect

Bugger! Mistyped a tag. The UK government's parody-defying "anti-terrorism" posters are here.

Honestly - an Anti-Terrorism hotline? Are they so swamped with calls that they need to filter them off from regular police calls?

Somewhat anecdotally, I developed a little something for London's Metropolitan Police that would've been a lot easier if their nearly 52,000 employees had access to Flash. Met systems don't use it; I'd speculate that most government systems here don't and won't.

City of London Police - 900 officers.
Metropoliltan Police - 32,000 officers.

There's no problem in doing that, you just have to fill in a form. Indeed, this is the biggest weakness in the system as we can just clog up the system by submitting lots of forms (do ten 10minute protests on the same day, and that's 10 forms the police have to process; get 10 people to do the same thing...) more here

'Isn't there now an add compain going on in radio and TV over there telling you if you see strange activity in a house, a person with too many cell phones, or just strange behavior on the street to call a national hotline for terror?'

Indeed there is:

http://www.met.police.uk/so/at_hotline.htm

http://observers.france24.com/en/content/20080307-terrorist-campaign-photographers-searched-london

Examples of terrorist paraphenalia include cameras, credit cards, mobile phones, computers, suitcases, cell phones and, err, vans.

This is from the same people who brought us my all time favourite 'public security' campaign:

http://www.art-for-a-change.com/News/eyes.htm

'Aren't there cameras that talk back if you get unruly on the street?'

Generally only if the unruly behaviour is caused by mushroom intoxication. But we do have rather a lot of cameras:

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23391081-details/George+Orwell,+Big+Brother+is+watching+your+house/article.do

...it's about reducing the fear of low mod points.

http://www.met.police.uk/so/special_branch.htm Sorry, I forgot to provide the link.

BTW, I used to work for Logica, in the telecoms division, and have a LOT of knowledge of GSM systems, and how they work.

That's not really a good advertisement for Logica then.

The IMEI has next to nothing to do with any sort of security function of GSM. It only identifies your handset, and some countries have a registry that they'll put your stolen phone's IMEI on so networks can prevent the handset's further use in that particular country among the operators that signed up to the registry, but IMEI is not checked against your subscription. In fact, that's one of the primary design tenets of GSM; subscription data is contained in the Subscriber Identity Module; the SIM.

is simply not possible to associate a number with two SIMs. You can associate a SIM with two or more numbers, but not the other way round.
This is false. Many operators offer dual SIM cards; both cards contain the same subscription data, and usually the last one activated is logged on to the network succesfully to receive incoming calls. Both can make outbound calls.

If someone HAS cloned your SIM, and both phones are attached at the same time, the network would register a fault
No, it works, though you will notice only one handset receiving calls. It's not registered as a fault (though it is registered).

A SIM can only be "effectively" cloned if the original was never used afterwards. If both the Original SIM and the Clone was used at the same time, the network will try and continuesly switch between the two cells its registered to, unless both are on the same cell. if both are on the same cell, further issues would happen.
Again, not true.

In fact, if certain algorithms are used (IIRC, COMP-128) it's even possible to reconstruct the SIM's KI and clone it using information eavesdropped over-the-air (be afraid!).

- Maybe, if you visited another country (or performed roaming) there might be some residual temporary numbers assigned to your phone.
Which numbers would those be? The connection between your MSISDN and most-likely (or actual) away-network is always looked up via the home registry; the away-registry doesn't associate any temporary MSISDNs to your SIM, it doesn't need to. And if it did, and someone misdialed such a random number, how would they be supposed to get through to you? Their home registry simply won't accept entries for SIMs from your network.

However, the way the records are kept, you shoudl find that its pretty easy for the phone company to determine what happend. Who made the phone call, what handset was in use, where the call was recieved.
Spoken as some one who's never tried to get a phone company to look up something in their records. Good luck trying that. Yes, it's technically feasible, but that doesn't mean phone companies are organizationally capable of doing this.

Finally I do not know the laws of the US, but here in the UK, the first point of call if you think your phone has been cloned or if your believe that a crime has been committed regarding your phone is the POLICE.
No, first call the phone company to report fraud, so they can put restrictions in place (e.g. no international calls, no premium toll numbers) to prevent ongoing abuse and rising phone bills, and report and investigate at leisure.

In UK, if we recieve am abusive call, calling the phone company will not be any help. They will rightly ask you to contact the police first, and they will work with the police to resolve the matter.
Again, no; "British Telecom has its own unit, which deals with nuisance calls. If you have not already reported it to BT then contact them on 150. They will investigate first and if they can trace the calls, you will then be advised to make a formal police report to your local police station. Cable & Wireless and mobile phone companies require that it be reported to police before they will deal with it. Attend your

Contrary to popular belief amongst security professionals in the United Kingdom, port scanning is in fact illegal under UK law - Computer Misuse Act (1990). I am currently studying for an MSc in Information Security at the Royal Holloway, University of London and this matter actually came up during one of our lectures. It was hotly argued and debated, but our lecturer John Austen (Former head of the Metropolitan Police Computer Crimes Unit, New Scotland Yard) assured us that it was the case.

Warn those students not to scan UK-based systems, or they could end up in hot water. The UK's law states that either the offender or the system must have a "signifcant link" to the UK, so an American scanning a UK system but from the US would still fall foul of this law. The UK & US have a bilateral extradition treaty for computer related offenses, as has been demonstrated in the past.

hopefully it will become best practise and be sent across London

Thumbs up people!

http://www.met.police.uk/saferneighbourhoods/