No Passport For Britons Refusing Mass Surveillance

UpnAtom writes "People who refuse to give up their bank records, tax records & details of any benefits they've claimed, and the records of their car movements for the last year, or refuse to submit to an interrogation on whether they are the same person that this mountain of data belongs to — will be denied passports from March 26th. The Blair government has already admitted that this and other data will be cross-linked so that the Home Office and other officials can spy on the everyday lives of innocent Britons. Britons were already the most spied upon nation in Western Europe — more so even than Sweden. Data-mining through this unprecedented level of mass-surveillance allows any future British government to leapfrog even countries like China and North Korea."

Comments

This is news?

[Anne Thwacks]

As a UK resident, all I can say is "that is what we have come to expect from this government". It seems they thought George Orwell's 1984 was a manual on how to govern.

However, we do have one advantage over North Korea: Blair has less credibility than Kim Il Jong. And unlike most facist governments, they can't get the trains to run on time either.

Re:This is news?

[bfree]

Is the ongoing threat of far right political parties in Europe (the BNP, Le Pen, etc) the reason why Europe's socialist governments sink so much money into subsidizing their rail systems, whereas the United States has no need, and therefore couldn't care a whit about poor Amtrak?

Take maps of greenhouse gas emmissions, signatories of the Kyoto protocol and a comparison of petrol prices and maybe you'll come up with a different reason.

Re:This is news?

[Spad]

That's cute, you think the current British government gives a flying fuck about protests, or indeed, what "the people" think.

Re:This is news?

[TobascoKid]

We will be a Nation of Suspects, watched.

We already are a nation of suspects, being watched. All the recent alarm bells about "sleep walking into a surveillance society" have been too little, too late. The UK is a already a surveillance society, that we slept walked into. Now it's just a matter of degree.

Re:This is news?

[MrSteveSD]

If you UKers really cared about it, you'd go into the streets and protest.

Depends what streets you are talking about. If you mean out of the way streets that the media would not be very interested in, then yes. If you are talking about protesting within a kilometre of Parliament, then no. Protests have effectively been made illegal outside parliament and no satisfactory reason has been given. I suspect the real reason is the million strong anti-war march that occurred. That rattled them and they do not want a repeat performance. You can apply to protest, but they give you all kinds of conditions such as you can only have a small group, your placards can only be so big etc etc. Basically the kind of mass protests we have seen in the past will be no more. Not so long ago, a young woman was arrested for simply reading out the names of dead soldiers outside parliament, so they really are enforcing it.

You have the power, you elected those people. Well only 35% or so actually voted for Labour, but due to the crazy "first past the post" system, they won. The problem is that many peoples votes count for nothing if they live in the wrong area. Labour once promised to change the system, but have gone quiet about it.

The other problem is that privacy issues are not really protest material, although they should be. The best we can hope for is lots of negative coverage about it in the press, and other parties coming forward opposed to the measures.

Re:This is news?

[Flavio]

While I understand your point about feeling the "vibrant essence of life itself", it's one thing to take a trip to Bolivia, and it's another thing to have this experience every day of your life.

I've lived my whole life in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and while conditions here are nowhere near what you've described, the general population's lack of commitment and accountability eventually gets to your nerves. What impressed me most is this part of your comment:

Here in the US, people seem to have what I call a hysteria of action. If something bad happens to anyone , Sometime Must Be Done, so that nobody ever has to suffer ever again. If a child dies in a shooting, all guns everywhere must be registered and locked up. If somebody gets food poisoning, we must institute totally new rules and procedures about handling food. If somebody dies in a car accident, we have to put air-bags on the roofs of all new cars. If somebody dies of a rare, expensive disease, we must establish a new non-profit so that nobody ever need suffer this disease again. If something bad ever manages to happen again, it was because somebody was lazy, not doing their job, and they must be fired. America is a paradise, and if bad things happen, it's somebody's fault for not doing their job.

I greatly admire The Something Must be Done philosophy. It suggests a degree of discipline that pushes society as a whole to improve itself, act on its problems and not try to excuse itself as a victim of circumstances. It shows people value personal responsibility and back their feelings with real actions. And while in some aspects this may be an idealization, it shows a set of values which are lost on the general Brazilian culture.

Re:What does the average citizen get from this?

[pilgrim23]

If you live in a society that lives by the credo of "Stay in line, this is your number" and where the most common expression is "May I see your Papers Please?" you accept the paranoia of those in charge as an immutable natural law and go on from there. So how to live with it? Protest or work against it? -easy way to get a larger file, that.
No, the best way is to always smile, say "Yes Sir" and do exactly as you please while APEARING to be a common little proliterait. I once knew a janitor who told me that every time he had a kid born he applied for and recieved at least 20 social security cards. The pencil pushers are used to the paperwork and just roboticlly fill in the correct blanks. This way, he had at laset 5 his kid could use, 2 or three he could use, and he could sell the rest. I always thought this fellow a smart man; trading paranoia as a commodity. Spys call it a "legend"; Building up a absolutley solid ID that is totally different from you. I would suggest anyone itnerested in freedom investigate open literature on how this is accomplished. f you are unwilling to stray that far from the matrix, try this: Always lie, always typo, always answer with a smile and a mis-spelled name. such mistakes are expected, forgiven and never result in problems for you but if ENOUGH do it, the monkey wrench colides with the machinery in such a way as to render the whole thing disfunctional,. Do your part to show the insult to individualism and freedom it truely is.

Re:What does the average citizen get from this?

[VJ42]

making adults demand to be treated as children? I don't know if it's anything to do with socialism, but the adult population in this country (the UK) is substantially infantalised. No one is willing to accept responsibility for anything any more, everything is always someone else's fault; and it's usually one of a few narrow groups: "the government", "the media" or "do-gooders\Political correctness". Never "me", everyone thinks that they are totally helpless to change anything, and of course Big-brother takes advantage of this apathy. Personally, I'm working on leaving the country like a coward. I can still get to Eire without a passport, and they currently have a booming economy. Hopefully before that time comes we will have replaced this labour government, and ID cards will be no more (all major opposition parties have pledged to scrap ID cards and the associated database).

Re:"Sorry, you can't leave."

[blowdart]

There's a special arrangement between the UK and Ireland which means you don't need a passport to travel between the two countries. Even now. Getting into the UK from any other EU country does take a passport or a national identity card

I'm in the process of applying for an Irish passport, as I was born in Northern Ireland. I won't be renewing my UK passport this time around.

Re:And like Americans and frogs

[VJ42]

The point of terrorism is just that, to cause terror, not necessarily deaths. With the IRA, we never knew if a bomb would go off in our city for 30 years. They kept a lot of people scared for a long time. Al Quieda are no where near the league that the IRA was in. As a terrorist organisation, the IRA was very successful, Al Quieda has not been. During the recent Northern Ireland elections I've still been cautious and alert for IRA splinter group (such as the "real" IRA) activities; I haven't given a second thought to Al Quieda cells, everything I've seen and heard about them shows that they are both inept and that the security services seem to overplay their significance (almost all arrests seem to end with the vast majority of people being released).

Re:What does the average citizen get from this?

[makomk]

I once knew a janitor who told me that every time he had a kid born he applied for and recieved at least 20 social security cards. The pencil pushers are used to the paperwork and just roboticlly fill in the correct blanks. This way, he had at laset 5 his kid could use, 2 or three he could use, and he could sell the rest. I always thought this fellow a smart man; trading paranoia as a commodity. Spys call it a "legend"; Building up a absolutley solid ID that is totally different from you. I would suggest anyone itnerested in freedom investigate open literature on how this is accomplished.

One of the points of this whole exercise is to stop this sort of activity, by using biometric data to ensure that each person has only one identity - their own (whatever that may mean). So if this works, you can say goodbye to that idea...

It is our duty

[symbolset]

To get as much bad data into their database as we can.

Re:This sceptred isle

[the eric conspiracy]

Well, I've been around long enough to remember almost everything that is happening now from having happened in the past at least twice. During WWII there were plenty of abridgements of what most Americans believe to be due process. During the "Red Scare" ditto. It used to be illegal to be a member of the Communist Party. And of course during the Nixon administration there were plenty of problems. Now post-9/11 we see the same mistakes again. Eventually the pendulum will swing back, mostly because some serious abuses will be discovered.

What disturbs me most about all this is the failure to learn from past mistakes, and the possibility that it will take more time than it should for the reversal to begin. And of course maybe someday the reversal won't happen. That's when the Republic will be over.

An interesting thought from an Irish perspective

[Joh_Fredersen]

Ireland and the UK share a free travel area, exclusive of the Schengen agreement.

It is a well accepted fact here in Ireland that if the UK introduces mandatory identity cards, the Republic of Ireland would have to follow suit in the interests of maintaining the privileged position we have with respect to travel to the UK. The British are by European standards quite paranoid about border control but, Irish and UK citizens can travel within the UK & Ireland sans passport. This free travel area with the UK is of enormous benefit to the Irish economy, clearly.

Thus if the Blair/Brown government does indeed start to place tough requirements on obtaining a UK passport this means that defacto such a system will be introduced in Ireland, in order to guarantee Ireland can maintain it's privileged access to the UK border

The Irish government would no doubt claim that they *have no choice* and that, of course it's not their fault... it's Tony Blair's fault.... if we, the Irish government don't spy on you to British standards... we might have difficulty traveling to London and Manchester for our stag parties, football games and occasional golfing sessions...

Solution: Grow your hair, buy a log cabin in the mountains and a shot-gun and go wait for *the day* the "Feds" come calling... trying to take your fingerprints for your "biometric" passport.