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Total Phone and Email Database Proposed In UK
mishmash writes "The Times of London is reporting a proposal for a massive government database holding details of all phone calls, emails, and time spent on the Internet. This is to be justified as being 'part of the fight against crime and terrorism.' Quoting: 'Internet service providers and telecoms companies would hand over the records to the Home Office under plans put forward by officials.' If you want to write to representatives to let them know your views, contact details are available at Write to Them." UK telecoms are already required to keep records of phone calls and text messages for 12 months, accessible by subpoena; the requirement is already slated to expand to records of Internet usage, emails, and VoIP. This new proposal aims to centralize all that information in a single database in the Home Office.
Mr.Orwell! A telephone call for Mr.Orwell ....
But how about a much cheaper and effective method of keeping the UK safe from Teh Terrorists:
1. Stop supporting Israeli terrorism
2. Stop acting the lapdog to the United States rampaging through the Middle East in an effort to secure oil resources and pipelines and wacky Christian end of world judegement day type crazyness.
When doing something that is both unpopular and demonstrably ineffective, the obvious solution is to do more of it. Those clever Brits! A perfect model for the future of U.S. legislation!
If the British Government had any balls, they'd build their own version of the Great Firewall and log everything that goes through a node on their national infrastructure.
That way you can call it what it is.
Instead, the ISPs are being pulled into doing the dirty work, which means the gov't gets shielded from some of the heat.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Often the fact that you communicated with a certain individual is suspicious enough, especially if encryption was used. You don't necessarily need to know what was said to learn a lot of useful information.
In fact, if you can get enough people to write in fearing some sort of massive problem, any bill that can be seen to have the slightest association with that fear, no matter how much the original fear was inflated, will never come to pass.
My preferred name is frazz, but someone keeps taking it. If you see him, tell him I said hi.
Because history shows that a negative public reaction will make them think twice. The whole point of this "leak" is to test that public opinion, and allows MPs to avoid thorny questions. Frankly, being called a paranoid kook is preferable to being on a database.
insecurity asks the wrong question irritation gives the wrong answer
Being a U.S.-centric site, a lot of vitriol gets directed towards the US government around here (and so it should in relation to many laws and policies relating to "terrorism" and "security").
But what on earth is going on in the UK? Security cameras literally everywhere, compulsory DNA databases, laws permitting detention without charge or trial for long periods of time, that insane proposal for a law to allow laws to be made and abolished by regulation (i.e. without a vote in parliament), and this obsession with centralising government control over information, particularly insofar as it relates to the movements and communications of private citizens. The list goes on and on.
Britain stood virtually alone against fascism in World War Two, and was a bastion against the totalitarian Soviet bloc during the Cold War. Before then the UK resisted the power of the Catholic church, eliminated any real power for its despotic monarchs, and even briefly pioneered the field of total republican independence from hereditory rule, later embraced by some more celebrated republics. Before any of that you managed to write the Magna Carta, perhaps the greatest document on the rights of the individual in human history.
Why did you even bother, only to willingly turn yourselves into a bureaucractic authoritarian state? Sure, you're not murdering millions of your citizens in gas chambers, but you're only a hop, skip and a jump away from East Germany under the Stasi - total state surveillance and the tyranny of a huge, opaque executive government where faceless "officials" control the lives of citizens.
Wake up, before it's too late.
Read Pynchon.
I guess you shouldn't vote either. Or do anything. How about you just curl up in the corner and die, since you make no difference? No individual can. I propose mass suicide.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
Here it is:
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Brilliant stuff. Really sad. But brilliant.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
You know, stories like this make clear its a good thing the Nazis didn't win WWII. Just imagine if the Nazis had won, they might have tapped everyone's.....
er..... Nevermind....
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
This is the first comment I read. I do not need to go any further before saying that you are not only right, but have put forth the truth in such an eloquent manner.
History does repeat itself, or so they say.
1700-1900 is NOT that long of a time span at all in the grand scheme of things. Now consider all of the world changing events we saw in just two hundred years. The change saw are almost unimaginable by even the most creative of minds. What will another 200 years and scarce resources bring?
I do not think even the most intellectual of us can fathom what the world will look like in a hundred years. If it comes down to it, the police state WILL be enforced if deemed necessary, and it will all be already in place ready to go...
We think we are so different from those before us, but are you so naive to think that they did not feel the same way about their previous generations?
It really is time to get up and do something if you live in the UK. This kind of stuff makes me feel good to be in the US... for once.
which is actually the interesting part... The more a government pushes monitoring the internet, the more people people will use things like "freenet" for pirating and just a big "FU" to the government. As the use of a "freenet" type of thing increases, the less suspicious encrypted traffic becomes becuase it will be so much more common.
:que dramatic music)
I predict that it'll be a funny side effect of trying to do complete citizen monitoring is that you'll be LESS able to monitor the people the government claims it's trying to monitor. (insert spooky voice: "the terrorists"
This is of course, is all bullshit. With the exponentially rising number of bits that are being shoved around the internet these days, it would be trivially easy to hide terrorist instructions in on a bit torrent DL, a usenet post, a youtube video, or a flickr picture. And if you're a really creative terrorist you can even use encryption!
This is all a load of shit and I for one can't believe the UK is actually surpassing the US the "2008 Most Fucked Up Government" award. Have you guys seen what's been happening to the republican assholes who've been running our government? You should do the same with the ruling party over there, except in both cases I think we really should get out the tar and feathers and give them a proper going away party. (BTW, any democrats who are supporting this bullshit in the US should also be tossed out on their asses! I'm not partisan when it comes to spying on your own fucking citizens!)
d
all language nazi's will burne in heil!
Carl Marx wasn't a fascist he was a communist. Please don't confuse the the two, as the red scare really makes communism look worse than it is.
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It sounds like that we are moving to the state of "Pre-crime" where we will be charged with suspicious activity even when no crime has yet been committed.
All they need now is some curfews and laws against private gatherings.
Cue the 1812 Overture...
If I were British I would be considerably more afraid of my government than any terrorist. Believe me. I am. And when we raise our concerns, they ignore us and do what they want anyway. Learn this, we are no longer a democracy (rule of the majority), we're a totalitarianistic state. The vote is just something they 'allow' us to have because it appeases the masses. And please don't mod this down unless you actually live in the UK. I WISH this were a flamebait or a troll. I really do.
Have you guys seen what's been happening to the republican assholes who've been running our government?
I won't blame the Republicans, the powers that the PATRIOT Act gave Bush Clinton tried to grab as president too.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Why reach that far back? Didn't the Metro police just execute someone, gangland style, on the Subway for mere being suspected a "terrorist"? What happened to that? Was anyone held accountable for putting 6 bullets in the unarmed, held down on the ground by 4 "officers" guy's head? Me thinks not.
But ... look, look at your telly! There is an Osama Bin Laden under every bed in London! Quick, more cameras! More draconian laws! More power to the "anti-terrorist" squads! More rank stupidity! Before its too late and the sheeple notice what we are doing!
this is not just something the UK citizens should be protesting / revolting over... if this goes through it will set a precedence for other governments to follow. but that's not to say that it isn't already happening, black ops do happen
Great comment, bet that argument could be used to win some opposition in England! "Your Granddad fought Nazis..for this?"
I think a few Russian journalists would beg to differ (if they were still alive, that is).
Russia's becoming more free? What Russia are you talking about?
Certainly not Putin's Russia.
In fact this "leak" will later become known as "the period of full and frank public consultation" which provides the mandate for the enforced changes.
While the Prime Minister is appointed he is the leader of the party that dominates parliament. So in practice the people vote along party lines to get a certain PM.
The power of the house of lords has been curtailed quite a bit over history, especially at the beginning and end of the 20th century.
They can only delay bills, 1 month for monetary bills (new taxes etc) and 2 sessions of parliament or 1 year for other bills.
I believe that much of the opposition against the current police state has actually come from the house of lords.
I personally think that having a second house who's members don't have to worry about reelection to allow delays for second thoughts on legislation is actually a good idea.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
But what on earth is going on in the UK? Security cameras literally everywhere, compulsory DNA databases, laws permitting detention without charge or trial for long periods of time ...
I understand where you are coming from, and I hate being surveilled myself, but let's try to understand the context in which this is happening. Necessity is the mother of invention. For the better part of a half a century, the UK has been under constant terrorist threat and subject to numerous (often hightly deadly) attacks. They have a lot of experience dealing with this and these measures have developed over time (accompanied by some very poor curial decisions). This is not unqualifiedly good, but neither is it surprising.
Now that sections of Islam have declared war on Western civilisation, the UK faces a particularly nasty threat, namely a HUGE number of poorly socialised (into British culture) and radicalised Islamic youth living within their very borders. As we sit here from a safe distance, several hundred potential Islamic suicide bombers are devising way to kill the maximum number of Britons possible.
Perhaps the problem was that the British state (which after all is not separated from the Anglican church), has been too tolerant of religious diversity in the past.</irony>
Sorry I'm not up to speed here. Delegated legislation is long established and is in use in virtually every common law country in the world. That's what a 'Regulation' (as opposed to an 'Act') is. Which particular insane proposal are you referring to that puts a new twist on this?
Britain stood virtually alone against fascism in World War Two, and was a bastion against the totalitarian Soviet bloc during the Cold War ... Why did you even bother, only to willingly turn yourselves into a bureaucractic authoritarian state?
Here you are simply committing an error of logic. While it is true that a "bureaucractic authoritarian state" would benefit from a highly surveilled society, a highly surveilled society by no means implies a "bureaucractic authoritarian state!" (Neither is the absence of effective surveillance a guarantee against authoritarian rule). This really depends on how robust British democracy is, how safe the legal framework is regarding the proper use surveillance, presumptions of innocence vs. protection of the public, data protection, privacy etc. etc. I don't think you should write off British democracy just yet (I mean it's not like they use electronic voting machines! ;)
Wake up, before it's too late.
I believe that's what they are doing! And one hopes that their basic liberal-democratic* values survive the challenge.
*I mean 'liberal-democratic' in the traditional sense of the term (ie. representative democracy through free elections balanced by respect for the rights of individuals, as embodied in the rule of law), not in the recent abusive misuse of the term to signify left-of-centre US Democrats, as employed by people who got their politcal education off the back of a Corn Flakes pack.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
But what on earth is going on in the UK? Security cameras literally everywhere,
... which will be talked about for a while, then thrown out.
Except there isn't
compulsory DNA databases,
If you're charged with a crime, you get a DNA sample taken. If it doesn't go to court for whatever reason, or you are not found guilty, the sample is destroyed (unless you've got a prior criminal record)
laws permitting detention without charge or trial for long periods of time
Yeah, the US has *nothing* like that that
insane proposal for a law to allow laws to be made and abolished by regulation (i.e. without a vote in parliament),
Laughed out of the house as soon as it was proposed
and this obsession with centralising government control over information, particularly insofar as it relates to the movements and communications of private citizens
The UK may have its faults, but I'd rather live here than in the US, where you've got a policeman training his gun on you wherever you go, ready to shoot and kill you at a moment's notice.
Thats all you got for 7 years? So fricking what? How many more people were Murdered by common criminals or died in car accidents over the same period?
9-11 was a terrible event yet *each and every day* many times the number of people killed during that event die from smoking related causes. Where is the media attention, hundreds of billions of dollars and public outcry?
If only a fraction of the money to fight "terrorism" went into anti-drug education, medical research or foreign aid.. pound for pound it could easily save orders of magnitudes more lives than the current trend of acting like a bunch of tired protectionist sissys.
If you really want to make progress in the middle east get everyone out of Iraq as soon as possible and resolve all outstanding border disputes with Isreal.
I emigrated from the UK to Australia five years ago, because basically, as one tradesman-type person said to me very succinctly before I left: "Yeah, Don't blame yer mate, it's all fucked, innit?".
And it is. It's not just the government though - it's also overpopulation, and the fact the the average Brit is happy to work all hours for faceless corps who don't give a fuck about them, because they're all up to their eyeballs in mortgage debt (and are led to believe that owning ones own house is the be-all and end-all of existence, so it's all worth it really). Towns are unfriendly and jammed with cars - there are now so many cars you can't move for the fucking things, being used or just parked. Housing estates are horrible hideous anonymous places with bad architecture, built so shoddily and close together that everyone's at each others' throats about the noise and where everyone shuns their neighbours because there is just no fucking privacy anymore. Simple fact - 60 million people and counting simply do not FIT into the British Isles.
People pay insane prices for food and other basic needs, and put up with crap quality because they have gradually forgotten what good quality IS. Supermarkets have taken over every town and turned them all into identikit clones of each other - distinguishable only by the small differences in their dysfunctional traffic-saturated ring-road systems. And what are the supermarkets full of? Ready meals full of chemicals - for FUCKS sake Britain, cook your own food!
There's no pride in anything - ones work, ones environment, ones town, and nobody actually makes anything anymore - it's all "service industry" whatever the fuck that means, what 'industry'?
I don't believe in conspiracy theories generally, (after all, conspiracies require competence, and that's a precious commodity these days), but if some shady organisation had wanted to hatch a plot (in the 1960s, say) to turn Britain into a sleepwalking nation of compliant consumers that took any old shit thrown at them with a shrug, they could not have done better than what has actually taken place since then. Britain can be a beautiful place, and it has its good points, and good people, but as a nation it's lost its soul. Very sad. WAKEY WAKEY!!!
Don't forget they have actually had a number of terror related incidents... more than one the US has had.
Ok, so what you're saying is that terrorist activity excuses the kind of draconian measures being taken?
Let's take a good look at that word "terrorist" again. Terror...had something to do with being very afraid, doesn't it? So if one goes completely apeshit and implements all sorts of ridiculous measures...who's winning again?
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
Right, so the hotter climates - which the English crave and all those countries just happen to have - wouldn't be anything to do with it?
Mod parent up.
British myself and I have seen time and time again the actions that parent describes.
Democracy in this country ceased to exist as soon as New Labour came to power, and our rights will keep eroding as the current generation of politicians play on this whole "terrorism" bullshit.
Whats worse is that the majority of sheeple in in this country believe and trust our govt as soon as terrorism is mentioned, and it's not going to stop any time soon.
I can't see this particular Bill becoming law, but mark my words, one day something very similar will.
I stopped reading at "Now that sections of Islam have declared war on Western civilisation.." Let me fix that for you: "Now that Western imperialist wars on Islamic countries have triggered terrorist responses.." Please, please get it right. Contrary to what you hear from adults around the playground "Who started it" is very important.
https://dalgamotor.wordpress.com/ - Elektronik beyinlere ozgurluk asisi (Turkish)
This whiffs very strongly of the usual government tactic here in the UK. They will 'leak' an extreme proposal that nobody in the right mind would support and get a lot of people protesting. Then when the bill is presented the proposal will be watered down to what the government actually wanted in the first place. Protesters are happy because they were 'successful'. Government are happy because they get what they wanted. We lose but think we win.
You mean you might start placing people in prison without charging them with any crime on the basis that they're "linked to terrorism", then place them under house-arrest when the courts point out that the government has no right at all to incarcerate people that have not committed any crime?
Ah but they were darky Muslims, so no one was too worried about that were they?
No, the mods are just Americans. The story was published and commented upon while everyone in Britain was asleep.
The reverse happens when America hasn't woken up when a story is published.
By allowing entry into Britian to anyone with a British passport (which is to say anyone from any of current and former the British colonies) the British have lost control of their own land and country.
This is the story pushed by the government and the press.
"We need these laws to keep you safe from all those nasty Moslem terrorists and Eastern European Maffia types. Things are so bad now that we need to track anybody or this will soon be an Islamic state. If you complain about this you are supporting terrorists. If it we don't get this information half of London could be blown up"
Unfortunately a lot of people believe the FUD and think they have to accept it.
One of the problems in EU is that when a law is make at Brussels, it doesn't apply instantly (it have to be implemented locally) so people don't care. And when it's time to implement the law locally, well, it's too late, because states are obliged to implement Brussel's laws.
"Freedom can only be the whole of freedom; a piece of freedom is not freedom." Max Stirner
"If it comes down to it, the police state WILL be enforced if deemed necessary"
Those at the top of the political heap always deem police states to be necessary because they wouldn't stay at the top of said heap unless they had an innate desire for controlling everyone else. The problem they have in democracies is convincing the public to let them have the powers they've always wanted.
"It really is time to get up and do something if you live in the UK"
They won't though, because Britain is now largely occupied by spiteful, ignorant people who are so driven by their resentment of anyone who does something they don't like or approve of that the vast majority of them would welcome a system where denouncing annoying people would immediately result in them being forcibly hauled off to a place where they can't annoy decent citizens for the rest of their lives.
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.
Oh for Goodness' sake. I know that it's very fashionable at the moment to claim that the UK and US are turning into repressive police states, but is this comment actually based on any knowledge?
Russia is moving toward becoming more free? Under Putin the state control of the media increased massively, the President's powers were increased hugely and the Duma was reduced to almost nothing. Now we have Medvedev, who won in a landslide that could never have been anything other than a landslide, while Putin is Prime Minister and still hugely powerful, leading a party with a constitutional majority and his hand-picked successor as president.
China is pretty much the archetypal example of a repressive regime working today. A country employing the most complex control system ever built to prevent the people exercising any control and employing methods that have been associated with tyranny since the days of Aristotle.
Claiming that these countries are as free as the UK or the US is a very strong statement, especially when you assert it with no evidence or information of any sort. It's a long time since we have been any different? The Republic of China has existed for 58 years, the Russian Federation for 16. And even if we just look at the UK it's difficult to see what you could be talking about.
In the UK we have a three party system. The candidates embody genuine differences in philosophy, have massive differences in their manifestos and represent different sides of the political divide. It's very popular at the moment to make fun of the parties for having no real differences in policy, but it's mostly popular among people who have no idea what the parties' policies are. People "go on about the vote as if it makes a difference" because it does make a difference - you sound like you're in the UK so you have probably noticed there are some by-elections on at the moment, and the peoples' votes are forcing the Government to give people what they want. If the by-elections are as bad for Labour as many people expect, their entire policy agenda will have to change. This accountability is one of the things the vote guarantees; politicians have to govern reasonably or lose office.
What's wrong with them? I think I've got a good idea...
Don't forget they have actually had a number of terror related incidents... more than one the US has had.
Yup, and we had a whole load more terror related incidents in the decades prior to 2000 from the IRA. We didn't need to treat the whole population as potential terrorists to deal with the threat then so why do we need to now?
When I was younger, and we had a constant threat of IRA terrorism, everyone always downplayed the dangers in an effort to keep people calm. Ever since 9/11, the US have been making a big deal about terrorism and (rather stupidly) the UK government have aligned themselves with the US. These days, the UK government seems to be following the US's lead and actively *hyping up* the terrorist threat - trying to make the public as scared as possible so they can push through new legislation like this.
This is not helped by the modern media who try to sensationalise stories as much as possible, to the detriment of the society as a whole. You don't even need to look at terrorism to see the effects the media have - last year, sensationalist reporting caused a run on the Northern Rock bank which was only saved from collapse by being hurriedly nationalised.
Back in the IRA days, it was often said that if we change the way we live because of terrorist threats then the terrorists have won. Well I guess we know who's won now don't we?
Who are the terrorists these days? Extremists - yes, they are going around blowing people up as they always have. The government - definitely, they are now terrorising the public by overstating the extremist threat in an effort to further their own political agenda.
http://blog.nexusuk.org