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UK Government Says More Spying Needed
An anonymous reader writes "Our wonderful government here in the UK has decided we're not being surveilled enough, and agreed to spend £12 billion on a programme to monitor every Briton's phone calls, e-mails, and internet usage. According to various sources, upwards of £1 billion has already been spent on the uber-database. Rationale? Terrorism, of course (no prizes for guessing).
Needless to say, not everyone is as happy as Larry over this: Michael Parker pointed out how us Brits are being 'stalked.' I'm just looking forward to when the data gets lost."
Thats almost 200 pounds for every man woman and child in the UK.
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IP Address Finding
I've escaped all this crap by moving to Germany. I never really like the way britain is becoming a surveillance state and moving here was such a breath of fresh air.
It wasn't that hard to find an IT job either, only one month of serious searching.
I'll never need one of these british ID cards, I'm not paying for that bloody database, and the DNA database here has people's names taken out of it if they aren't found guilty.
todo - The developer's equivalent of confession: "Forgive me Father, for I have sinned..."
These technologies of mass surveillance and ubiquitous tracking, which have slid into existence in many states (excluding some of the more enlightened European countries, such as Germany) were designed and built during economic good times. If, as seems very likely, we have mass unemployment, some interesting societal effects can be expected - ranging from conspiracy theorists (it's the jews! no, the illuminati! no, it's the CIA!), plus the inevitable search for a scapegoat amongst the dimmer / less educated members of society (those currently saying things like "Why are we paying billions to bankers when small businesses don't get bailed out?") will mean a lot of social churning. Some of that will be well organised via political parties, some through NGOs, some very informal and "underground". Now, what happens when mass surveillance technology meets mass unrest? Given what we know of abuses of the blank cheque that are inevitably going on... I think things could get really ugly.
(Yes, of course they're ugly now, but there's still a broad acceptance of the various "think of the children!" "time of war" "terrrrrists!" pablums by which this crap is justified.) I saw some rather scary vox-pops of attendees at a McCain rally the other night, with the guy with bulgy eyes and a pseudo-military "Sir, yes SIR!" manner who when asked what would happen if Obama won, said "I think it will make Europe very happy..." - a slight pause whilst he dealt with the cognitive dissonance of saying that to a representative of The Enemy, namely European media - "and it'll be socialism, and the destruction of our values and our freedoms!"
(Tangent -- I wonder what such people would say if someone said "Obama will allow the NSA to intercept and monitor American's phone and internet traffic, en masse, without any warrant!" or any of the other egregious civil-rights abuses this administration's delivered. Their heads would probably explode with fear at the coming invasion of socialist lizard army Europeans, forcing everyone to marry a gay and eat cheese... )
Anyway, when these types start burning immigrants out of towns and shooting at black helicopters and such, or at least register on the radar of the security state as a potential threat and get the full attentions of the (real) Man,.. well, people get crazy when they find themselves unexpectedly hungry, cold and poor.
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
However, where I work the new building was designed and OK'd. The contracted parties are EXTREMELY unhappy because no changes were made.
They were expecting a change which they could charge for. The change then shows up other changes "needed" and they can be charged.
As it was, the company didn't do more than break even no the deal.
Contractors LOVE changes. Charging for them is the continuing stream.
Many people here in Iceland are not happy about being labeled terrorists by the UK. Iceland is probably the most peace loving nation in the world. We have no army, the police here doesn't carry guns and to my knowledge no Icelander has ever been suspected or linked to any terrorism in the history of Iceland.