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UK Taps 439,000 Phones, Now Wants To Monitor MPs
JPMH writes "With the largest density of CCTV cameras in the world, and an increasing network of automatic number-plate recognition cameras on main roads, Britain has long been a pioneer for the surveillance society. Now new official figures reveal that UK agencies monitored 439,000 telephones and email addresses in a 15 month period between 2005 and 2006. The Interception of Communications Commissioner is seeking the right for agencies to be allowed to monitor the communications of Members of Parliament as well, something which has been forbidden since the 1960s. It must be that it is bringing their numbers down: on the law of averages they should be monitoring at least 5 of the MPs."
See how they like it.
liqbase
May I be the first to say holy fucking shit. I mean, I knew it was bad. I once counted three hundred or so security cameras on a trip around Liverpool but I never once suspected that we had it anywhere near this bad.
And these goons want a road-pricing scheme via GPS tracking? Jesus f-ing Christ. Next they'll want to photograph people in toilets in case they decide to take drugs in them. They really are that bat-shit crazy!
My Grandma died last year of cancer. She was one of the brave women that gunned down German planes over Widnes during World War II. Their generation's sacrifice, every single last one of them appears to be in vein. For we've become the very thing we fought sixty years ago. How did this happen? How did we let ourselves be cowed in to this?
The faceless little shits behind this will never be known. Their crimes will never go punished.
Any Canadians willing to sponsor a immigrating Brit?
Simon
Time to overthrow your government. Labor's shite; vote Lib-Dem.
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The figure seems particularly large when you consider that around 5,000,000 crimes were reported in England and Wales during the same period. Does one in twelve crimes require a wiretap? Or is it possible that at least some of the surveillance is politically motivated?
Know where everyone is.
Pick them up when the time's right.
I sometimes think freedom is simply a government not having the right to know where you are.
Is soon to be reality?
The thing that annoys me about this stuff is that the justificaiton for it seems to be mainly catching terrorists, but it will only catch the stupid or incompetant ones. So the government can catch some dissaffected and naieve youth with a half-baked plan that he may never commit and give it as an example of how they are winning the "war on terror".
I would of thought rule number one for any competent terrorist these days is "don't use electronic communications of any sort". We know that real terrorist cells can lie dormant for years - I'm sure they don't worry about the couple of days it might take to send a letter or spoken message.
This has bended my mind. My mind is now bended.
It's actually quite straight forward. If you were engaged in illegal activities and knew your phone was tapped, then you are not likely to use your phone to help in your illegal activities (unless your really dumb). However, if you didn't know that your email was also being monitored, then you are likely to use it for illegal activities. Ergo, it is in the best interest of those monitoring you to make sure you don't know through which channels you're being monitored (this is why intelligence agencies hate it when someone leaks the fact that Osama's phone is being tapped, what made it effective was the fact that he wasn't aware).
All they have to prove is that all these spying saves one child. Presto. Everything and anything can be justified under the slogan, "if it saves one child, it is worth it."
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Ugly words, but true. If the party in power in the UK wants to imprison everyone whose last name begins with the letter "A", there
is nothing to stop them, as long as they can win votes of confidence and continue to maintain a majority. There are no checks and balances at all, except for the control of the House of Commons.
Look at the Iraq War. Is there any public support for it in the UK ? Not much. Is there any chance of the public's will actually being
translated into a change in policy ? Not apparently.
And, as we are finding out in America, it's when your Government is headed by messianic war criminals that you really start to feel the need for
checks and balances.
Now that government officials find themselves questioning the suspiciousness of their words or actions, fearing misunderstanding at every step... well, they'll pass laws to make it perhaps less restrictive for themselves in subtle ways, while appearing to be under the same circumstances as everyone else.
What, do you expect empathy from a system that let things go this far? Once those in charge are comfortable with their own security under such a system, they're free to become increasingly afraid of change, of differences, of people interested in learning what they themselves don't wish to have looked into.
Even if the result doesn't reflect the expected fictions, you can expect it will be harder than ever to reverse, or to justify a revolt against to fix. Now that it is becoming a fully ubiquitous part of your nation, it will become a point of your nation's pride. Hell of a legacy for the ultra-reactions from a four planes hitting three buildings in another nation, and its aftershocks.
Ryan Fenton
My definition of a police state: When the lawmakers exempt themselves from the laws they make and enforce on everyone else.
Transporter_ii
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
However, the biggest one I find is that your average citizen can be subjected to that level of invasion, yet it is illegal to do the same to a member of parliment. That is a travesty. They need to start showing parliment what the bugged life is like. Let a damaging private phone call be exposed by a system abuse. It's the very best thing that could happen. Perhaps after a parliment member actually has real stakes in what they are allowing to go on, the may make some more rational decisions about it, and they will back off their seeming lack of interest in the privacy of their constituents.
Why shouldn't MP's be treated the same as ordinary citizens? They are not above the law, and can be sued/tried etc like any other citizen.
When the next London bombings occur everyone will complain that nothing was done to stop anyone, and it will all be the security services fault. You people need to decide what it is you want.
I am not your blowing wind, I am the lightning.
I'm sorry what?
How in the world can intelligence that can't be used in court be very useful? even if you use it to stop a plot you wouldn't be able to hold on to these bad guys according to your own rules. Why can't our governments (the US and UK in this case) that all this crap does is erode there credibility and marginalize the one thing they are sworn to protect above all else.
President Bush once said "They hate our freedom" and I am beginning to think that his plan for combating this is to lower our freedom to a level acceptable to the "terrorists" (of course the definition of that word and how it is used by us and on us is a whole other discussion).
I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.
Mark Twain
Remember, remember, the fifth of November...
Caffeine is my anti-drug!
Duranin - A NWN2 Roleplaying Persistent World
You yanks are all bleating on about how bad this is and how high these figures are. What makes you think your own government is being any less nosy about your affairs? Ignorance is bliss
You are making the mistaken assumption that there was ever any intent to use the intelligence in court so that they can "hold on" to the bad guys. For that to be true, political leaders would have to view themselves as subject to the same laws that govern the citizens. What you OUGHT to be asking yourself is: If the government is willing to make consideration of such a polarizing issue public knowledge, what are they doing in PRIVATE that you DON'T know about?
GreyPoopon
--
Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
Wow, I'm surprised no one posted 1984 yet.
It was only 23 years early.
War is Peace
Freesom is Slavery
Ignorance is strength
... the question is who is doing the monitoring?
People are people and in any field of occupation there are good, bad and somewhere in between.
Information is power, but who is getting the information and how will they use it?
With this in mind, does monitoring improve society or just provide more opportunity to do others wrong?
I might be wrong, but 'can be used in court' != 'can be used by police in the course of their investigations'. A phone intercept might, for example, lead to a raid on a premises, which would then reveal evidence that could be used in court.
If you've nothing to hide then what's the problem? Lets face it, anyone who is against this is clearly on the side of the terrorismists, and actually WANTS us to get bombed.
They don't sit behind the screens watching thousands of people walking to their jobs or listening to every phone call. There is no reason for you to panic unless you are invoved in a crime and they need to find out evidence!
I wondered why Brits are bleating about how bad this is, when a) they know the scale, and b) that scale is probably smaller than in the US. Shut up an move to the US if you want real information awareness.
I find it highly unlikely that the people in power (yes, in power; not "representing") would tolerate being surveiled. It's been forbidden for 40 years FOR A REASON: they don't want to be watched. Nobody does: not MPs, not office or factory or construction workers, not layabouts, not housewives. It's offensive to any human because it's degrading and subordinating.
Here's the test:
If this push is rebuffed, that's MASSIVE and blatant hypocrisy on the part of the lawmakers of the land. They tolerate and directly facilitate the surveillance of their constituents, but consider themselves above their constituents, and thus above such proletarian shackles. That's the status quo, and has been since it became technologically feasible to surreptitiously monitor them 40 years ago. Even if they don't allow this, it's a small news item in a world of bigger things to spin, so not many people would notice, let alone think about it enough to care, let alone act.
If they cave in, I don't know what to think. In my opinion, the public should at least be able to monitor the actions of its government and its agents, but it is abundantly clear that MPs at large disagree emphatically with that notion. Therefore, they'd have a different motive. Placating the public? "See? We're under a microscope too, the humans were meant to live!" I doubt that. The public may have the power to unseat them, but it desperately lacks the will to do so. Just don't care? Not a chance (remember: humans hate this). Just hard to imagine this outcome.
Finally, the footsteps in the night are coming for them, too.
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Sort of like all of the info that J Edgar Hoover accumulated as head of the FBI? Not very useful in court but great for ruining lives, political careers, etc.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
They've just seen too many movies.
In the original Day of the Jackal, the inspector is trying to determine the source of a leak, probably coming from someone at the highest level. He finally determines that it's come from one of the ministers on the board that oversees his investigation. After announcing which minister was the source of the leak by playing a tape from a wire tap, one of the ministers asks "How did you know whose telephone to tap?"
His response, "I didn't, so I tapped them all."
UK residents, welcome to the Day of the Jackal! Don't worry, the US isn't far behind you.
-JMP
Because nice sugar daddy Government will keep you warm, fed, and safe from all the nasties out there in the big bad world like football hooligans and terrorists. All you have to do is be amenable to a few, um, proclivities that your sugar daddy has. Now, close your eyes and think of England.
There were NOT 439,000 requests to tap phones. There were 439,000 requests for "communications information". This includes requests for lists of e-mail addresses, lists of numbers called, etc, in addition to taps.
I'm not saying that is a good or bad thing, just that the headline is incorrect and sensationalist.
SirWired
Not really. Wiretaps are only going to reveal what people are talking about doing. Better to keep them under surveillance until they actually try to do something, don't you think? That way it's easier to prove and they get put away for longer. Furthermore, if they are all talk, arresting them won't make the public any safer, but if you don't arrest them, they might lead you to people who are more serious.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
Instead of using security cameras, which have a bad public perception, we could instead mandate that all television importers be required to install cameras inside their sets. This way we could have nearly 100% coverage, even inside people's houses (where most crimes are committed), yet not be so obviously pervasive as to give citizens discomfort.
Naturally there would be a public concern of targeted "viewing", so we just have to hire people to monitor these sets and do it at random. That way, people won't actually know if they're being monitored or not.
We could call these modified TV's... telescreens.
After all the the talk about "Sleeping Walking Into A Big Brother Society", a proper Big Brother is finally being discussed. Big Brother in 1984 didn't give a damn about the "proles" (which is what all the other Big Brother threats up until now were about), all the surveillance was for making sure party members kept in line.
That must be why there has been proposal after proposal for more and more big brother style policies, few if any of which are/would be effective. It was to get to the point where the government could monitor itself, which is far more likely to succeed, as there are a lot less people to watch.
At some point, somewhere, the entire internet will be found to be illegal.
...and the lampposts have terahertz imaging scanners.
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
We need to develop a new coded speaking language. That way we don't need any expectation of privacy.
V: Good evening, London. Allow me first to apologize for this interruption. I do, like many of you, appreciate the comforts of every day routine- the security of the familiar, the tranquility of repetition. I enjoy them as much as any bloke. But in the spirit of commemoration, thereby those important events of the past usually associated with someone's death or the end of some awful bloody struggle, a celebration of a nice holiday, I thought we could mark this November the 5th, a day that is sadly no longer remembered, by taking some time out of our daily lives to sit down and have a little chat. There are of course those who do not want us to speak. I suspect even now, orders are being shouted into telephones, and men with guns will soon be on their way. Why? Because while the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth. And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn't there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who's to blame? Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn't be? War, terror, disease. There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. Fear got the best of you, and in your panic you turned to the now high chancellor, Adam Sutler. He promised you order, he promised you peace, and all he demanded in return was your silent, obedient consent. Last night I sought to end that silence. Last night I destroyed the Old Bailey, to remind this country of what it has forgotten. More than four hundred years ago a great citizen wished to embed the fifth of November forever in our memory. His hope was to remind the world that fairness, justice, and freedom are more than words, they are perspectives. So if you've seen nothing, if the crimes of this government remain unknown to you then I would suggest you allow the fifth of November to pass unmarked. But if you see what I see, if you feel as I feel, and if you would seek as I seek, then I ask you to stand beside me one year from tonight, outside the gates of Parliament, and together we shall give them a fifth of November that shall never, ever be forgot.
BRILL: I was a traffic analyst. I intercepted phone calls. DEAN: How'd you get around the tap orders? BRILL: They can tap anything as along as it's an airwave intercept. Cellulars and pagers your kid can do. Hard-line calls we'd pick off the relays as they were being fed into ground cables or fired up to the SATs. We'd suck in everything. All foreign, most domestic. Domestic was my group. Druggies, radicals, loud-mouths. Anyone we wanted. DEAN: How'd you have the manpower to-- BRILL: Meade has 18 underground acres of computers. They scan every phonecall for target words like "bomb" or "President". We red-flag phone numbers or voice prints...whatever we wanted. When the computers found something, it was bounced to comparative analysis.
Help! I've fallen in a karma hole and I can't get up!
Who voted for Blair without checking his CV? Blair is a Fabian. Fabianism is like Stalinism but slower. (Don't check Wikipedia yet because I haven't changed it). The use of secret police is an essential feature of this ideology and is for your own good. Without the secret police we would have all sorts of revolutionaries and terrorists running around with guns, downloading porn, not paying their congestion charges, and all the things terrorists do. Come on people, tow the party line!
"How did we let ourselves be cowed in to this?"
The U.K. has a long history of having a government that's of the bureaucrats, by the bureaucrats and for the bureaucrats. In case you haven't figured it out yet, the people don't matter, except to pacify with the facade o f lip-service you call your elections.
Until you realize that the masters of real power in your country are those nameless, faceless paperpushers, who are really answerable to no one but themselves, your country will continue to slide downhill in a fashion which best serves them.
And unfortunately, your country is a role model for every other bureaucrat the world over
It's actually quite straight forward. If you were engaged in illegal activities and knew your phone was tapped, then you are not likely to use your phone to help in your illegal activities (unless your really dumb).
Unless you were really dumb, you'd always assume that your phone was tapped and your emails were being logged. I guarantee that any career criminal already makes this assumption and finds ways to stay off the radar. You would never know for certain that you were not being investigated.
In other words, the only point in keeping wiretap evidence secret is to try to hide how widespread it actually is. Today, storage technology is sufficiently advanced that there is no need to assign a "KGB" man to everyone you want to monitor. You just record everything you can, and then when you find someone you want to investigate, your "KGB" guys go through the recordings of that person looking for evidence. Flies in the face of "get a warrant first" laws... but laws don't apply to some Governments.
OK lets break this down 795 which are empowered to get access to communications data made 450,000 requests over 15 months, lets have a think shall we 795 bodies, not just MI6 and GCHQ. These requests include requests for email addresses and phone numbers. Hrmm what groups could be doing this perhaps the TV licensing people? Perhaps the tax man wants some details? Not made any Student Loan payments (SLC)?oh wait one of the listed bodies was the serious fraud office and Financial Services Authority. SO lets get this right 795 bodies made requests for contact information (sometimes they wanted more than that) for what's probably completely legitimate reasons (for example last time I had contacted the Pensions office was two houses ago, so the nice informing letter about the state of my state pension would have required a request for contact information because I've given them none.) They've also been used for crime fighting from serious fraud (personally I'm against fraud) and finally the media grabbing fight against terror.
What's the article actually about? The amount of communications data requested and intercepted has not increased, Tony Blair has actually taken note of the ID card E petition and given people who cared a response even if he disagrees with them(28,000 is a small number when compared to 60 million), Sir Swinton the guy who stated last year that the UK was a surveillance society doesn't like the fact that surveillance hasn't decreased (but supports the current system to stop terrorism) and is calling for the policy of no bugging for MP's be lifted to promote transparency and fairness, oh and a knee jerk sensationalist call from a Tory shadow secretary.
Yes Britain has moved into being a surveillance society, but shall I tell you what I don't care. I can't find CCTV camera unless I really look for them and they have come in handy for me personally in the past, the automatic number-plate recognition cameras are a good idea, you know its handy being able to catch people who are driving without road tax or insurance as well as people who speed. But then again maybe I'm the only one who thinks banned drivers should be caught and kept off the roads? Yes I know speed cameras are bad, but watch how a particular road is handled when those cameras are turned off for a week, there are times when their actually a good idea (radical I know, I still admit many are stupid) When measures which are truly invasive are proposed I'll care and be out there marching for it. I don't support things for terrorism but I do like to see government working together to catch the benefit fraud and serious criminal.
In short sensational article designed to make predominantly American site start ranting about privacy caused people to rant about privacy.
I may be loosing it, but did anyone else read that as "UK Taps 439,000 Phones, Now Wants To Monitor MP3s" Here I was thinking why can't they just DL iTunes like the rest of us?
>> anyone who is against this is clearly on the side of the terrorismists,
>> and actually WANTS us to get bombed.
To quote Pastor Martin Niemöller:
You'd think history would have taught you better than to say something that naive and cowardly. For comparison, there are probably as many serial killers in the wild as there are terrorists in the United States. Would you so easily give up your rights to catch these serial killers as well? Do you honestly think the government will give you back these rights once the serial killers or terrorists are caught?
Sacrificing the rights of millions of people to catch a small handful of "potential" criminals is a ridiculous price to pay. You scare far too easily.
How will it stop the next time? How many video camera's, wiretaps and emails didn't stop July 7th from happening? How fortunate for leaders that men do not think.
OTOH, what is the use of quoting a random slogan if you don't really have anything even remotely interesting to embed the quote in?
One might even argue certain quotes are overused, or that certain people are overquoted (every time after the first time someone quoted Ayn Rand comes to mind here), or (more controversially) that quotes from 'authorities' do not a truth make
(which seems especially true if you're just throwing the quote out there without really stating how it applies.. clichés, though being what they are, are mightily less tiresome and/or trite if they're used in novel ways)
anyway, WRT surveillance societies, one might even throw Bentham's name out there, if only because his Panopticon Isn't mentioned often enough (no thanks to Foucault though, tiresome fellow that he was)
having however just tried to point out quotes can be quite pointless, i will refrain from quoting anyone else, and in stead just read on happily knowing noone has decided to throw bits of verbal flatulence by Ayn Rand yet.
sadly, with the sheer amount of discussion items like this that have popped up over the last couple of months, I find there's little in people's comments that actually goes beyond what's been said before, and i can't really think of anything original to say about it myself either, so i guess i'll just stop now.
(Note, one might even draw the conclusion something needs to be Done, rather than Said about it? oh, well, i guess i'll just be thankful that I live in continental europe for now)
I figure at least some of the spam in my inbox is coded messages to terrorist cells. Think about it: steganographic images, code words in seemingly-random text, etc, mass-mailed to millions of people. It's easy to get on spam lists without raising suspicion, and those that send out spam are already on the legal fringe, and so try to avoid being noticed.
That's just one idea for using electronic communications. There are many others.
If the government were serious about combating terrorism, it would shut down the spam networks post-haste. Of course, a war on spam would certainly be as effective as a war on drugs, or a war on terrorism, so my inbox feels better already.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Your post makes no sense. I never said people have no privacy, nor should they expect it. I said if you're exposing your secrets to the world, don't expect them to be private. I don't want my genitalia on the web, so I wear pants. Amazing feat of security that. Kudos on trying to embarrass me though. Your AC troll-fu is just too weak.
If you're walking about, in public, in plain view OF EVERYONE, expect no privacy in terms of your whereabouts. That's just common sense. Even the common criminal knows that.
Next time you try to come up with an argument, think it through first.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
> Fabianism is like Stalinism but slower.
Utter bollocks. The Fabian society might be socialist, but it is nothing like Stalinism. Do have a look at their (awful) website to see where they are positioned.
How about "All capitalists really want a fascist society" or "libertarians are really anarchists", see anyone can just make stuff up without any evidence.
I think that eventually, when the culture of surveillance gets bad enough, I, along with many of my friends, will become terrorists in the government's eyes. I will make an effort to fuck with every surveillance system I can, I will use forged ID's, and I will hide my face from every camera I see. Why? Not because I have something to hide, but because I don't trust the flesh and blood behind the electric eyes.
The yippie movement was ahead of its time... we need a leader like Hoffman NOW!
Right now I (and I suspect most people) feel free to leave the house without worrying that the government (or anyone else) will be watching me the entire time and compiling a dossier on my movements for later possible use against me. I (and again, most people) would like to retain that freedom.
You don't know what you've lost until it's gone, and when the day comes that you have to think through the potential political implications of leaving the house every morning, you'll really miss your old de-facto privacy.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
There's also a constitutional right that says you can't be fined without going to court.
That makes all those on the spot fines unconstitutional, it didn't however stop the government from passing laws and implementing them.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
I don't need advanced CCTV cameras to violate your rights. Get that through your head.
People were being unlawfully detained althrough history. CCTV is not an enabler of this.
Yes, be angry at the CCTV, but not because it violates your privacy, but because it's a waste of money.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Of course, if you're British and you care about your every move being monitored by the government, you should sign the official petition against the GPS tracking of every single UK vehicle for the purposes of the new "pay as you drive" scheme.
This petition has been in the news a lot this week, but if you've not already signed it, you should consider doing so as it's due to close TODAY (20th Feb). So far, an incredible 1.7 MILLION people have signed.
Take a look at the research papers linked here and this one in particular:
The Economics of Mass Surveillance and the Questionable Value of Anonymous Communications (PDF)
by George Danezis and Bettina Wittneben.
You may think that half a million phone tapped is not that much... well think again, the social network effect is probably exposing all of Britain. Ask for your rights to be respected now.
That's just the reaction I expected from you, Tom. You're apparently both a hypocrite and have a short penis. You claim that privacy is not important for others, yet you insist on it for yourself. Furthermore, you seem to fear that showing your small genitals to the world will result in ridicule. I am not impressed with you, Tom. I am not impressed.
Of course not. But it sure makes it a lot easier to do it wholesale.
In the real world, things aren't determined by what is theoretically possible, but by what is economically feasible. Ubiquitous CCTV cameras make wide-scale person tracking economically feasible, and that is the key.
By analogy: You don't need a nuclear bomb to kill everyone in Chicago.... given enough time and effort, you could do it with a machete. But once you have a nuclear bomb, it becomes a whole lot more likely that you can pull it off, and thus a whole lot more likely that you will try.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Not what your mother said last night.
..., kid.
HEHEHEHE LOL I MADE A PEEPEE JOKE I R FUNNY.
Wake me up when you're not a kid,
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
So you're saying the goverment will start to wholesale doctor up evidence against random citizens? To what end?
While I agree that government needs more accountability, I just don't see the V for Vendetta future. No supreme rule ever lasts.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Thank god (or good school teachers) for people like you.
No, but I think it would be very tempting for the government to start using the data it gathers on everybody(!) for political purposes. (e.g. "Joe Schmoe goes to AA meetings on Thursdays and is having an affair with his secretary; they meet at the No-Tell Motel every other Friday night and prefer their sex doggy-style. We'll just file that information away for now, in case Joe Schmoe ever runs for office or ends up in a position of power and we need to 'lean on' him a little"). Blackmail can be a very effective way of getting people to do what you want without anybody else ever knowing about it. Or the government can just use it to keep tabs on the whereabouts of their political opponents... in fact they do this already, just on a much smaller scale because they are limited by available manpower.
While I agree that government needs more accountability, I just don't see the V for Vendetta future. No supreme rule ever lasts.
V for Vendetta was indeed overstated (it was based on a comic book for heaven's sake!) but history has shown over and over again that left to their own devices, governments can and will do all kinds of nasty things. Power corrupts, and giving the government unrestricted access to everyone's personal details gives them a lot of power.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
He probably does have a ASBO, but remember they are trophies. No-one really expects him to obey it!
Honestly.
As regards the GPS tracking of cars, over 1.7 million people have now signed the petition against it. Sign up here:
http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/traveltax/
Cheers,
Paul.
--- Band: Joey Ultra
Agreed. If the government disobeys the United States Constitution and treats me and all other citizens like criminals, then the government is my enemy and it is my Constitutional duty as a member of "We the people" to take every opportunity to resist, maim, and if possible destroy the government that would enslave us by presuming everyone to be guilty until proven innocent, even if it is our own. Soldiers swear to "defend the United States from all enemies both foreign and DOMESTIC," and it's time they started taking that oath seriously. The only effective way to get the message across that the American people won't take the kind of shit that the Brits and Aussies put up with so submissively, is by individual acts of vandalism against government facilities and violence against government "officials." See the (as yet) fictional novel "Unintended Consequences" by John Ross for details of a possible scenario.
~30 terrorism related arrests.
That's a ratio of worse than 1:10,000 arrests per request.
Of those ~30 arrests, have any led to a successful prosecution yet?
Assuming they successfully prosecute someone, we're looking at roughly a one in half a million success rate. For pure fiscal efficiency, just throw random people in jail. It costs less and, statistically, you'll probably violate the rights of less innocent people anyway.
makes me wonder why so many people start comments with "in soviet russia the government is watching your ..." should be "in the uk the government is watching your ..." soviet russia is harmless in comparison
I'd call this "blair watch project", if I wasn't sure all those 439.000 people were reasonably suspected of terrorism or child pornography - what other reason would a government have, to spy on 0.73% of their citicens (every 137th person) ? http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=terrorstorm
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
One thing you are overlooking is that those numbers are the sum for the entire UK law enforcement apparatus, not just terrorism-related investigations. No conclusions can be drawn from those numbers as to how useful the requests have been.
SirWired
"The amount of communications data requested and intercepted has not increased,"
1. The article says that this is the first time this number has been released, so how can you know it hasn't increased? (Well unless your a turfer).
2. There were no email intercepts in 1990 or ISP Internet intercepts, so there must have been an increase in those.
3. There are 10x as many mobile phones now, so it's likely, no extremely likely that those have gone up.
4. The legislation to allow the coast guard to intercept the email of say, a reporter (yes they made that legal), was brought in by Blair. So virtually all of these agencies never had the ability to spy on people before. So there must definitely have been an increase there.
Why should the TV License dept be able to obtain a persons email records? Why should the coast guard be able to obtain your internet surfing records? Why should anyone except a judge under verifiable evidence of criminal behavior be able to obtain those? What is the list of these 700+ agencies that can do this.
Privacy is written into British law, it's considered a fundamental human right. You may not care, but you have no right to speak for others and the collective view of people is privacy is a fundamental human right.
The Wilson doctrine (no spying on politicians) was made because MI5 plotted to overthrow his government (according to Wilson and Peter Wright of MI5) and has stood the test of time for good reason.
(To be proclaimed in a sinister and suggestive voice)
Sorry, I just watched V for Vendetta :)
--Rob
Towards the Singularity.
What you're saying is, I should feel confident about a police officer who maybe just got married and gets his BJs regularly, and he's also just moved in to a new house bought by his rich in-laws, because he thinks life is groovy, man, and he's not in a mood to do harm to accidental citizens. And that I should, on the other hand, beware police officers who've been miserable ever since grade school for sundry and assorted reasons, once of them the fact they also happen to be incompetent.
You know what, I agree. You're probably right. So maybe we should make each "group" wear different color uniforms, or something, because I would really like to know which of my rights I can expect to be respected or denied, depending on the mental state of any particular officer.
"Only the small secrets need to be protected. The big ones are kept secret by public incredulity." - Marshall McLuhan
Er, given both the subject and the subject matter, can we be sure he sent the email? I thought England had been using hologrammes for PMs since Maggie?
US Constitution, Article I, Section 6:
"They shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the
Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of
their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for
any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other
Place."
The US founders were definitely not setting up a police state.
Police are from the executive branch. If the executive branch harasses regular citizens, it's misconduct. If they attack members of Parliament it's a constitutional crisis.
Go and read the civil contingencies act 2004 and then say what the government can and can't do.
l -contingencies-bill-revised.htm
In times of war and terrorism they can do what they please....
http://www.statewatch.org/news/2004/jan/12uk-civi
Thank you. I'm a little disturbed by this get-your-way-or-run-away attitude to democracy. Just remember that no matter how much we dissuade ourselves from taking action, we can change our governments (unless you're not currently in a functioning democracy). All we have to do is garner support for our cause.
And if we can't, (in only the most literal sense) who cares?
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
People shouldn't spam the term "law of averages" around as if it has some clear meaning. It's a statistical term and if it were used correctly it wouldn't appear it this article.
You yanks are all bleating on about how bad this is and how high these figures are. What makes you think your own government is being any less nosy about your affairs?
Because I encrypt my email... Learn how to secure *your* email on Mac OS X 10.3+ and Windows.
Private Eye - a political magazine - has revealed that Jim Hacker had been under secret surveillance while being in opposition. Furthermore, it has discovered that Jim's department is responsible for all bugging equipment, and this makes him the government's chief bugger.
Ohh, I'm so hoping someone gets this title in the UK tabloids as a result of this :-)
... wasa patriot!
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
I just met up with a bunch of expats, and at some point the discussion turned to why people left the UK for good.
Here's the summation:
- London: taxed off the road and out of the house, no decent public transport or breathable air.
- General:
. no freedom, being watched everywhere you go and no real idea how safe that information is held (conclusion was that no controls exist, and even if they existed the volume ensures that small breaches still make up for a large number of undesired snoops - plus people don't really like the fact that in 10 years time they can still look up that you met person X at time Y on location Z)
. again taxation: HUGE objections against the infernal stupidity of letting companies and consultants dictate how government funds are spent on themselves - no fear of bias then? IDcards listed as a class example because nobody believes in working Chinese walls if there's real money at stake (and that fiasco costed a fortune)
. theft of pension funds: any thickhead could have seen that taxing what should support peoples' lives when they retire would lead to disaster, and it has: pensioners have to choose between heat or eat. Meanwhile, the PM buys his third house.
But in the above summation, the combination of a near total loss of privacy and liberty seemed to be at the top.
So, from my simplistic sample it appears privacy damage means country damage: those who can, leave.
Excellent idea, but simply because it would make enforcing the TV Licence 100% accurate, since only those who actually own and operate a TV would be billed (and visited by the inspectors).
Stick Men