UK Government Plans 10-Year Database of Citizens' Travel

moderators_are_w*nke writes "The UK government is planning yet another database to track its citizens, this time keeping track of their movements in and out of the country for ten years. Just like all their other databases, this one 'is essential in the fight against crime, illegal immigration and [of course] terrorism.'" I'd be very surprised if the US is not already doing this, and just not making a point to let anyone know.

Comments

Police State

[Blue Stone]

I'm sick of hearing that we, here in the UK, are 'marching toward' a Police State (I think we essentially have one, it's just being applied in a low-key and selective manner at the moment). May I make an appeal that we can all agree that the bunch of ex-communist sympathisers who rule the country at the moment, at least WANT a police state?

Then perhaps we can move forward instead of repeating the self-defeating 'walking toward' mantra.

Re:Police State

[Anonymous Coward]

If Wikipedia's definition of a police state is accurate, the fact it's applied "in a low-key and selective manner" really does mean "marching toward" rather than "having arrived".

We can only hope that the western world, having known freedom, will revolt while they still have enough of that freedom left to effectively do so. Not saying that time is now, but if the governments keep heading in the direction they are, it's only a matter of time.

Ideally, one would vote the nations out of these issues instead. But if all the parties are caught up in the hysteria, what's there left to do.

Re:Police State

[Anonymous Coward]

Step 1: Ban use of creepy opera masks and words starting with letter 'V'
Step 2: ???
Step 3: Police State!

Re:Police State

[footnmouth]

Agreed. I think the next step from a travel database will be a travel permit. Papers please!

Re:Police State

[davro]

It not really a police state, more like an open prison where the police have more power than the citizens they are suppose to serve.

The police can carry guns, citizens cannot.
The police can break the laws of road safety, speeding, over taking.
The police can kill people without being prosecuted.
The police can stop and search you but you cannot stop and search them, i have meet some seriously dodgy police officers but you try getting them prosecuted

The government is full of idiots with a self serving agenda, thay are not accountable, and are ruled by the house of lords in other words you common vote counts for shit, at the last election more people did not vote than actually vote for are current government and nobody voted the "one eyed Scottish idiot" as prime minister.

Welcome to are open prison, and you really want to move here ffs.

You really want to bring you children up in a prison as you are living in one ruled by a bunch of idiots so what does this make us, England will not revolt as we are like the Americans idiots a bunch of spineless whelps that only care about feeding are addictions.

I feel sorry for the children aka "Emotional Void fillers" that are being dragged up into this mess, really can anyone consider them self a good parent if they are willing to bring a child into the mess of a world.

Re:Police State

[damburger]

Please don't try to make this a left-right issue; the Tories only ever oppose such plans to gain political traction. Much of the mentality of New Labour is inherited from their ideological forebearers in the Tory party.

The fact that a bunch of old trots and stalinists could so easily switch over to thatcherism to me shows a fundamental similarity; the cynical treatment of man as an economic machine, a belief in political and economic rationalism to the point of total dehumanisation, and a utopian vision that is used to justify any short-term oppression or inequality in the name of some glorious but forever distant future.

Re:Police State

[commodore64_love]

>>>We can only hope that the western world, having known freedom, will revolt while they still have enough of that freedom left to effectively do so.

Dear British Cousins,

If this law to track citizens' movement were passed in America, we would exercise our second amendment rights. We would tell our parliamentarians: Real this law or die. Government is there to SERVE the people, not to be a master. Politicians who desire to be masters need to be "fired" by their employers, the People.

A concerned liberty-loving citizen

Re:Police State

[Nursie]

How's that working out for you?

The US already does much of the stuff the UK does. You have free speech zones, warrantless wiretaps, your homeland security theatre...

The US public is too complacent to revolt, and too "patriotic".

Re:Police State

[Bertie]

The police generally can't carry guns. And the whole reason why they neither have them nor want them is because that would give them powers that ordinary people don't have. There are armed response units which are called out for firearms-related incidents, but these guys spend most of their days sitting around doing nothing.

And of course, ordinary people can have guns if they want them. It's just strictly controlled.

Re:Police State

[GigaplexNZ]

Make that Guy Fawkes masks.

Re:Police State

[Anonymous Coward]

The bunch of ex-communist sympathisers who rule the country

Thatcher: 'New Labour is my proudest achievement'

Thatcher: 'Britain is safe in Tony Blair's hands'

Blair squashed the Saudi corruption investigation. In who's watch did the Saudi deal take place - Thatcher's

Blair started piratising the NHS, something even Thatcher didn't do.

All the ID card stuff started with the last Conservative government. New Labour have just taken Tory policies and moved further to the right - witness no bail out for car workers but heaps of our money for the financial lot.

Enough said really.

Re:Police State

[hobbit]

If this law to track citizens' movement were passed in America, we would exercise our second amendment rights

I hear this sort of thing a lot from Americans, but it really isn't borne out by the evidence.

Re:Police State

[Anonymous Coward]

bunch of ex-communist sympathisers

The Labour party ceased to be left wing the moment Tony Blair took over. Using communism as a slur like that is childish, successive totalitarian regimes have already done enough to discredit the ideology without folk like you deliberately confusing it. Furthermore, I'd prefer communism to the corporate welfare system being foisted on us. There's a glorious mechanism at work whereby current market forces dictate businesses and fraudulent, unsustainable monetary systems should fail. Welcome to capitalism!

Re:Police State

[N1AK]

Tell me when the British people sit by when it is discovered that our government has been illegally and secretly spying on its own citizens. Right about then you'll have shown us to be just as spineless in the face of the police state as you are.

You can keep polishing your rifle while dreaming about storming the capital building, but frankly with their 3 million military personnel I doubt you'll have them quaking in their boots.

Re:Police State

[quickOnTheUptake]

If this law to track citizens' movement were passed in America, we would exercise our second amendment rights. We would tell our parliamentarians: Real this law or die. Government is there to SERVE the people, not to be a master. Politicians who desire to be masters need to be "fired" by their employers, the People.

I wish Americans had the testicular fortitude to do this. Unfortunately since, idk, the civil war we have been pretty trusting of government (even if we talk a lot of smack about Washington and politics). In fact, not only are we not willing to give an ultimatum to the Federal government, we keep electing politicians who ensure more of the same (albeit in different trappings sometimes). The only way something like this would ever happen is if the economy when to complete shit and you had large numbers of people (> say 30%) unemployed and the rest unable to live in any sort of comfort. Americans are just too comfortable to make real change.

Re:Police State

[N1AK]

The police can carry guns, citizens cannot.

As an alternative do you prefer the idea that everyone may openly and freely carry weapons with no caveats? Or that no police officer regardless of training or position be allowed to carry a firearm? If the latter do you suggest that the police call for army support when dealing with an armed criminal or that we also remove the right of the armed forces to be armed?

The police can break the laws of road safety, speeding, over taking.

Again, do you propose that we remove these rules? Or remove the ability of any and all police (and also Ambulance and Firebrigade?) to use exceptions to these laws? Again if the latter do you propose that we have laws against speeding, but no method of catching the people that do it? Especially considering I doubt you would be in favour of mass CCTV, police using devices like Stingers that aren't publicly available or the mandatory numbering and insurance of vehicles.

nobody voted the "one eyed Scottish idiot" as prime minister.

The Prime Minister isn't a job for which a public election is held, he is chosen by the political party found to be dominant in a public election.


There are a multitude of issues with most facets of the United Kingdon, your post simply shows your inability to comprehend the complexity of the issues about which you blindly swing accusations. Sadly it is exactly this kind of display that leads many of the 'sheeple' (A phrase I am sure you enjoy) to think that those protesting against government or police action are all a bunch of idiots and loons.

Re:Police State

[commodore64_love]

The eastern Europeans stormed their capitals in 1990-91, and in the face of an armed communist military, and yet they still managed to reclaim their freedom.

Re:Police State

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you would go back to watching American Idol.

Perhaps not you in particular, but the American people in general, yes.

Re:Police State

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem in the UK is that we've already had our ability to revolt effectively removed by having our weapons taken from us. Armed revolt is obviously not a desirable thing, but what else is there when the democratic process fails us? Considering the guys we want to revolt against hold the power to decide to ignore our complaints, what else is left beyond the use of force? We've already arrived at the point where the government holds a complete monopoly of power and legitimate violence.

Re:Police State

[ncgnu08]

We have been living in a police state for at least seven years. Those of us that stop following "what Brittney is doing" for a few minutes and use that time to educate ourselves about what is going on in the world are not surprised at anything our governments do in the name of "protecting" us. Other than a few quotations of Benjamin Franklin's "...sacrifice liberty for security..." is anyone doing anything to stop this trampling of our rights as citizens? The saddest thing is the answer to that question is a muted and indifferent "no."

Re:Police State

[mlk]

From The Fucking Article:

Similar schemes run in the US, Spain and Canada

Re:Police State

[ncgnu08]

Dear brethren American commodore64 love,

See my first post above.

A fellow concerned liberty-loving citizen

Re:Police State

[mlk]

Computerised records of all 250 million journeys made by individuals in and out of the UK each year will be kept for up to 10 years.

will be a travel permit. Papers please

Like a passport?

Re:Police State

[Davidis]

controlled as in to own one you need a license. these can be aquired if you do not have a criminal record and are a member of a gun club where you can learn to shoot them properly. The only other restriction is that the police know where you live and that you have a gun. This is a simmilar policy to that enacted by many US states. In addition to this we dont have daft rules which class a gun case as concealment.

Re:Police State

[Anonymous Coward]

When on earth is it illegal for the British government to spy on us?

The reason it's a big deal in America is because the 4th amendment forbids it. We have no rights, Parliament can pass whatever law they like, and they have passed RIPA.

Re:Police State

[mikeb]

A pound to a penny that is not about terrorism but about taxes. Whenever you see a government doing ANYTHING these days, I strongly recommend that you think 'Hmm, is this revenue related?' before considering anything else.

The UK apparently believes that it's losing around GBP 15 billion per annum in tax to various offshore and other borderline legal tax avoidance schemes.

One such scheme is to claim that you are non-resident for tax purposes. It used to be the case that you could be non-resident and visit for up to 183 days (actually nights, so you could land at 6am one day, depart at 6pm a day later and call it one day) whilst potentially remaining non-resident for taxation. That has recently been tightened so that even one second before midnight now counts as a day for residence purposes. It is highly likely that a substantial number of people claimed non-residence but in fact forgot to count the number of days. Some of those people might well be those Russian squillionaires who own Premiership soccer clubs etc. I've gone non-resident myself once and there are no obvious checks - I reckon I could sit here for a whole year, tell the authorities I'm actually non-resident and have a fighting chance of them simply not noticing.

A database which is easily searchable to find when you left and re-entered the country puts a pretty firm stop to abuses of that.

You betcha they pretend it's about security but I betcha it's at least as much about tax.

Re:Police State

[qbzzt]

Considering the guys we want to revolt against hold the power to decide to ignore our complaints, what else is left beyond the use of force?

Immigrate. It's safer, easier, and eventually leaves a government without much of its beloved milking cows (oops, I meant to write "tax base").

Re:Police State

[vrai]

All statists are alike, they may fly flags of convenience (socialist, fascist, social-democrat, conservative, etc ...) but deep down they all place maintenance and growth of state power above all other considerations. The old school Labour party were as guilty of this as the current mob.

Frankly it's all been going downhill in the UK since Lloyd George destroyed the Liberal party.

Re:Police State

[Yokaze]

> The eastern Europeans stormed their capitals in 1990-91

Hardly an argument in favour of the 2nd amendment, as they overthrow their dictatorships without yielding any weapons (in 1989, btw).

Re:Police State

[evilandi]

When on earth is it illegal for the British government to spy on us?

(Assuming us = British citizens located in the UK:)

* When you are a British government agency engaged in national security work whose terms of service expressly forbids spying on British Citizens located in the UK (IIRC this includes the SIS/MI6)

* When you are doing so ostensibly under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act but are failing to observe those regulations.

* When you are not covered by RIPA nor national security regulations, and are failing in your responsibilities under the Data Protection Act.

I don't actually have a problem with people monitoring me, so long as I have a right to check all records about me and correct any incorrect ones. That's pretty much what the Data Protection Act says. If it's an issue of national security, then, well duh, all governments are in the same boat and the UK is no different.

The loophole, if there is one, is the rather stupidly wide-ranging Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, which allows you to be monitored without your knowledge or right of reply if they suspect you of a variety of minor crimes such as dumping an old tyre in a hedge. The problem there is that these investigations are so common, that they are done by poorly trained local council staff who frequently mistake identities, and you have no right to become aware of the problem, nor correct it. Indeed, under most situations it is illegal to inform someone that they are being monitored under RIPA.

The root problem, therefore, is the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, which needs to be significantly re-written.

Re:Police State

[Shakrai]

warrantless wiretaps of overseas calls

Fixed that for you.

The US public is too complacent to revolt, and too "patriotic".

Eh, you may have a point there, but the 2nd amendment raises an interesting issue. Historically the right to keep and bear arms came from the Common Law. In the UK you've allowed parliamentary supremacy to take away this time honored right. If they can do it to that right then why can't they take away your right to a trial by jury, your right against self-incrimination, or any of the other rights that you hold so dear?

Say what you will about the United States but at least it takes more than a majority vote in the House of Representatives to start taking away our rights. You'd also need a majority vote in the US Senate, the signature of the President (or 2/3'rds vote in the aforementioned chambers), the acquiescence of the 50 States and the Federal judiciary.

Re:Police State

[pisto_grih]

I guess you've never wondered why this Labour government in particular is so happy to let hundreds of thousands of potential Labour voters through our borders.

I mean, if you'd just immigrated to Britain you wouldn't vote for a party thats anti-mass immigration would you?

Re:Police State

[tolgyesi]

People are sheep. They revolt when someone makes it the craze/fashion/whatever, but then let the country become the same crap as in the west. Here in Hungary we can choose between two similarly corrupt parties, just like everywhere else I see.

I have seen some good ideas to change things. For example to allow voters to say yes to more than one candidate - so they can vote for the third or fourth party and can still have a say in the fight between the two strongest. Here is one such site: http://www.rangevoting.org/

Re:Police State

[Nursie]

"Say what you will about the United States but at least it takes more than a majority vote in the House of Representatives to start taking away our rights. You'd also need a majority vote in the US Senate, the signature of the President (or 2/3'rds vote in the aforementioned chambers), the acquiescence of the 50 States and the Federal judiciary."

Wow, what a load of old cod.

You might need that to do certain things, and do them by the book, but it seems to me that you can get away with what you like so long as you cover it up for a bit and then grant retrospective immunity to everyone involved. And if you think your government, with all it's DHA, TSA and other such stuff isn't keeping a record of everywhere you go, well... I disagree!

Surely the last government proved to you that the US executive can and will do whatever they like?

Also, who cares whether the calls were made to/from overseas places? Is that some sort of strange comfort if you're American? "Shouldna bin talkin' to them furr-ners anyway"?

Re:Police State

[JamesSharman]

We lost the right to remain silent some time ago.

Re:Police State

[abundance]

If they can do it to that right then why can't they take away your right to a trial by jury, your right against self-incrimination, or any of the other rights that you hold so dear?

Maybe because keeping and bearing arms was seen more like a stupid idea than a dear time-honored right? Anyway, yes, I also have always considered the british legislative system to be somewhat weird (I'm not british btw).

Re:Police State

[Shakrai]

You might need that to do certain things, and do them by the book, but it seems to me that you can get away with what you like so long as you cover it up for a bit and then grant retrospective immunity to everyone involved. And if you think your government, with all it's DHA, TSA and other such stuff isn't keeping a record of everywhere you go, well... I disagree!

Keeping a record of everywhere I go doesn't violate my rights. I question why the government needs such a record but if you think this started with TSA you are sadly mistaken.

Surely the last government proved to you that the US executive can and will do whatever they like?

Actually, SCOTUS shot down several policies of the US executive so I think my underlying point still stands. The worst problem of the last eight years wasn't Bush (every single President since Washington has tried to expand executive power) but the manner in which the Congress rubber-stamped his policies for the first six years.

Also, who cares whether the calls were made to/from overseas places?

Historically the Government has had broader powers at the border and some of your rights may not apply when crossing that border. That doesn't mean I support all of those powers (if the call is between two Americans I don't think they have any right to be listening) but claiming that this is something new shows that you haven't really researched the topic as throughly as you should.

"Shouldna bin talkin' to them furr-ners anyway"?

Yes, any American that might see the historical basis for this kind of policy is automatically the stereotypical xenophobe and can be dismissed as such.

Re:Police State

[LordSnooty]

The right is to "bear arms" , does it include "to shoot people"? Would there really be no consequences if they used their guns to overthrow the government? if so, why don't presidential assassins get away with it?

Re:Police State

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sick of hearing that we, here in the UK, are 'marching toward' a Police State (I think we essentially have one, it's just being applied in a low-key and selective manner at the moment). May I make an appeal that we can all agree that the bunch of ex-communist sympathisers who rule the country at the moment, at least WANT a police state?

Then perhaps we can move forward instead of repeating the self-defeating 'walking toward' mantra.

Then you can just say welcome to socialism. Kiss your rights and freedoms good by. If America still exist in 30~50 years and is still a functioning democracy we might be there liberating you soon.

Again.

Re:Police State

[Shakrai]

Maybe because keeping and bearing arms was seen more like a stupid idea than a dear time-honored right?

That whooshing sound is the point flying right over your head. If sensibilities can evolve towards considering that right to be a "stupid idea" and taking it away then they can evolve towards considering other rights to be a stupid idea.

I think we should take away free speech because organizations like the KKK use it for bad things. Phrase it like that and watch the sheep line up to surrender their rights.

Re:Police State

[Anonymous Coward]

warrantless wiretaps of overseas calls

Fixed that for you.

Still warrantless, no?

Besides, it wasn't(isn't) just overseas calls. Remember the entire floor at AT&T that the NSA is camped out in? The one with *ALL* AT&T traffic flowing through it including domestic calls?

Say what you will about the United States but at least it takes more than a majority vote in the House of Representatives to start taking away our rights.

Actually, for things like killing the 4th amendment it should take a new amendment with all the states agreeing. But it's far easier to break the law, then pass a new law saying "Everything we did before is now OK. Oh, and by the way, no one can investigate what we did, and even if you do investigate we've destroyed the records anyway." (See FISA 2008).

Re:Police State

[mdwh2]

Say what you will about the United States but at least it takes more than a majority vote in the House of Representatives to start taking away our rights.

Yes, but that's a property of the US Constitution, and not the fact that you have guns.

The OP's point wasn't to say that the US was worse than the UK. The point is that everytime there's an article like this about the UK, we get the inevitable "If only you had guns". The fact that similar things happen in the US, despite your guns, suggest that the point is irrelevant.

Re:Police State

[Shakrai]

As an alternative do you prefer the idea that everyone may openly and freely carry weapons with no caveats?

Yes, although with the caveat of not allowing them for convicted felons or mental cases. Law-abiding citizens carrying firearms harms no one.

Or that no police officer regardless of training or position be allowed to carry a firearm?

That would be pretty stupid, wouldn't it? I would argue that the police need more training though. The police actually shoot more innocent people than the civilian population does. The NYPD did a study a few years ago that concluded that >85% of shots fired by their officers missed what they were aiming at. Clearly they need more range time ;)

Re:Police State

[Ihmhi]

And that certainly helped you during the 8 years with W didn't it.

All those guns, but nobody could line up a shot.

Re:Police State

[guruevi]

The only way to get a revolution (almost anywhere) is by hitting people directly in their pockets. American Civil War: slaves were a cheap workforce and not having them or having to pay them was bad for a lot of people's business. Thus they revolted. Same goes for the Soviets. They went along as long as they weren't affected. As soon as people started disappearing on large scales and the whole 'communist' thing meant that they were working but weren't getting food but the big wigs in the Party did get all the perks of the communist idea they started revolting. Same for the French: As long as they had it fairly good they went along. But then when the government started raising taxes to the point of famine they started revolting. African nations the same: as long as they are fed they will be fine with whatever ruler comes along, have 1 group/tribe/area excluded from food and that group is larger than a village, that group will start a rebel movement or a civil war. Israel-Palestine is trickier because they will kill each other because they hate each other but the same goes there: having 2 states is all fine and well even with the occasional bombing but one side starts to close borders and rationing food/gas/supplies and you'll have a revolt.

Re:Police State

[Shakrai]

Yes, but that's a property of the US Constitution, and not the fact that you have guns.

Did I say it was? All I said about guns was that the right to keep and bear arms came from the Common Law and the UK allowed their Parliament to take away a right that they had held for hundreds of years. My whole argument was that if they can do that with the right to keep and bear arms they can do it with any of the other rights.

My demonstration of the US system was simply to point out how much tougher it would be to take away rights over here.

we get the inevitable "If only you had guns". The fact that similar things happen in the US, despite your guns, suggest that the point is irrelevant.

The point is only irrelevant if you think the Government taking away a right you've had forever is irrelevant. Give them an inch and they'll take a mile.

Re:Police State

[Anonymous Coward]

The only way something like this would ever happen is if the economy when to complete shit and you had large numbers of people (> say 30%) unemployed and the rest unable to live in any sort of comfort. Americans are just too comfortable to make real change.

Working on that.

Re:Police State

[jgtg32a]

The Secret Service is very good at counter assault.

Re:Police State

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.prisonplanet.com/uk-terror-law-to-make-photographing-police-illegal.html
Here's some legislation that would make it illegal to photograph police officers.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article5439604.ece
Here's an article about how the UK police can hack into your computer without a warrant.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/hi/the_p_word/newsid_7852000/7852248.stm
Here's an article about how the UK police scour the internet for images of brits holding knives. If they find an image of you with a knife in public, they arrest you. If you are in your own home, they come to where you live, knock on the door and confiscate the knives.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4581871.stm
Here's just one of a multitude of articles, about the UK knife ban. For those of you who don't know, the UK is beginning to crack down on knives much like other countries in the world are cracking down on guns.

This list can go on and on and on. Quite frankly, if you're in the UK, you're living in a police state. Deny it all you want - the evidence is there for everyone to see. But hey, it's not really going to matter, because no one's going to do anything about it. The problem is only going to get worse and worse and you brits aren't doing anything to stop it. [On the contrary, by all appearances you're welcoming it with open arms.] Posting anonymously because the truth hurts, and sometimes people would rather lash out than deal with it.

Re:Police State

[Nursie]

"Yes, any American that might see the historical basis for this kind of policy is automatically the stereotypical xenophobe and can be dismissed as such."

Whilst I was taking a poke at the stereotypical american, it's not xenophobia that I'm implying. It's parochialism and the tendency that even educated americans seem to have in thinking of the US as both the centre of the world and the only important part, and the usual hypocrisy of shouting about justice, equality and freedom for all and then quietly adding "american citizens" at the end.

Anyway, I fear I have wandered off topic here. I know that when these sorts of things happen you yanks at least discuss it in the public arena to some extent, whereas over here it seems to take the form of an announcement about what's going to happen followed by total silence. The end result seems to be much the same though.

Re:Police State

[Kjella]

The Soviet Union was in grave economic problems, the kind that really do piss the general public off not just for lack of freedom but the basic standard of living. The reforms they tried were half assed and became neither central planning nor market economy, and by 1990-91 the Soviet Union was ripe to fall. If you want any indicator of when people will revolt, regardless of the form of government it's when they're cold, hungry and unemployed.

There are several examples to indicate that a totalitarian regime does not imply a poor economy. The communist plan economy might, but fascism and whatever you'd call China's economy are good counterexamples. There's much less evidence that people will revolt when they're living comfortably but unfree, once they're already there. By the time you have mass demonstrations in the streets you have pretty much already won, but what you need are organizers and leaders to rally people. Isolated episodes can be struck down quite easily, sending waves of fear that keep others from doing the same.

Take out the organizers and no resistance, no revolution is going anywhere - I'm talking about the people that rally a handful of people each not the figureheads on top. Find the troublemakers which think they're below the radar, use the massive amounts of collected data to find them, track them and neutralize them. With computers you'll have tons more data and much better analysis. Particularly if you did a real push for "convienience and security" to use electronic money, electronic tickets, cell phones, social networking sites that can be easily monitored *and* be quite leanient so 95%+ of the population won't mind using it.

Ultimately, what you're trying to do is operate a secret network without detection from the government. Who the bad guy and the good guy is does not really matter. You can be pretty damn sure that if the US is able to create a system that will detect any terrorist network it is the same system China will make to detect any resistance network and it is the same system already in place that any future totalitarian leader will use to silence the opposition. And with all due respect to the thousands that have lost their lives to terrorism, millions have lost their lives to various "cleansings" by totalitarian regimes.

Re:Police State

[Anonymous Coward]

The question When on earth is it illegal for the British government to spy on us? still stands.

When you are a British government agency engaged in national security work whose terms of service expressly forbids spying on British Citizens located in the UK (IIRC this includes the SIS/MI6)
Doesn't apply any more as even putting the wrong rubbish in your bin is a terrorist activity http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/3333366/Half-of-councils-use-anti-terror-laws-to-spy-on-bin-crimes.html.

When you are doing so ostensibly under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act but are failing to observe those regulations.
No good if the law isnt enforced. For example some UK Telco's read and modify traffic between website and the users browser, in direct violation of RIPA. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7542810.stm

When you are not covered by RIPA nor national security regulations, and are failing in your responsibilities under the Data Protection Act.
What data protection? Its left, quite literally, lying around on the streets all the time and no-one gets prosecuted. And the data protection act can be mostly by-passed by getting your customers to use a "loyalty card".

Re:Police State

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me guess, you also whine about being "harassed" all the time by coppers "with nothing better to do" when you were "only going a few MPH over the speed limit" and "the light was only just changing".

Ever read the Discworld novel Night Watch? You're like Carcer: "What did I do?!"

Re:Police State

[Nursie]

Whist tracking down tax avoidance is good, I can't help feeling they could save us a buttload more money by getting rid of all their surveillance crap and cutting deeply into public spending.

Make the UK a genuinely low-taxed capitalist country (as it damn well should be, even with the NHS) and the rich won't feel as much need to evade.

Re:Police State

[Anonymous Coward]

>>If they can do it to that right then why can't they take away your right to a trial by jury, your right against self-incrimination, or any of the other rights that you hold so dear?

Enter The EU. The European Courts have right over the UK courts, and they have ruled against UK law before (see the recent case WRT fingerprints/DNA taken from people who were not convicted of any crime).

The UK has signed things such as Universal Declaration of Human Rights which gives anyone in the EU who is a member of an EU state the right to trial by jury (Article 10), the right to avoid self-incrimination and other rights (Have a read of the Declaration, it's interesting what rights you have).

Re:Police State

[Anonymous Coward]

You only need a majority of the 50 states, same 2/3 as required in the senate.

Re:Police State

[Kjella]

Eh, you may have a point there, but the 2nd amendment raises an interesting issue. (...) If they can do it to that right then why can't they take away your right to a trial by jury, your right against self-incrimination, or any of the other rights that you hold so dear?

...or to hold slaves, or voting without those pesky women or whatever? Rights change when people agree on change, and hopefully we won't agree to take away the wrong rights but there's really no stopping ourselves. YMMV but I feel safer because there's a lot lower risk I'll be killed in a drive-by stabbing or accidentally be hit by a stray knife during a knifeout then when there's guns and bullets involved. If someone really wanted me dead they could pass me on the street with a knife and I wouldn't see it coming any more than the bullet. And yes, having and using guns does add to the penalties so much most petty criminals don't use them. As for the big revolution, I think most gun nuts are likely to go out in a Waco-style massacre if it ever came that doesn't do anyone any good. Despite all good intentions I think amny will simply want peace at all costs.

Re:Police State

[Anonymous Coward]

How many guns do you own? I have 12.

Re:Police State

[Anonymous Coward]

Say what you will about the United States but at least it takes more than a majority vote in the House of Representatives to start taking away our rights. You'd also need a majority vote in the US Senate, the signature of the President (or 2/3'rds vote in the aforementioned chambers), the acquiescence of the 50 States and the Federal judiciary.

Come on, it was not that hard to pass the PATRIOT Act in a very short lapse of time. This law permits :

"the private communications of law-abiding American citizens might be intercepted incidentally"

, which is in contradiction with the Fourth Amendment.

The only process to prevent things like this is the inform people and to act.

Re:Police State

[slashdotlurker]

Eh, you may have a point there, but the 2nd amendment raises an interesting issue. Historically the right to keep and bear arms came from the Common Law. In the UK you've allowed parliamentary supremacy to take away this time honored right. If they can do it to that right then why can't they take away your right to a trial by jury, your right against self-incrimination, or any of the other rights that you hold so dear?

As an American, I find that a little misleading. The second amendment is not going to do a jot for you if the feds decide its time to SWAT you out of existence. Its at best a palliative that gives us a false sense of security. As to the right to trial by jury, there are plenty of people our government is holding, who do not even "exist", let alone are ever tried, or tried by jury.

Say what you will about the United States but at least it takes more than a majority vote in the House of Representatives to start taking away our rights. You'd also need a majority vote in the US Senate, the signature of the President (or 2/3'rds vote in the aforementioned chambers), the acquiescence of the 50 States and the Federal judiciary.

Nice in theory, but doesn't work in practice. Frighten the congressmen/women enough, fool the people enough and you can make them dance any which way you want. Even allow the President to declare war on a neutral country in the name of national security, or pay billions to fight STDs in the name of economic stimulus.

The reason is that our media is a part of the establishment. Whether its CNN's love affair with the Democrats or Fox's marriage to the Republicans, an ignorant, naturally insular populace such as ours is ripe pickings for these charlatans who call themselves our leaders. We are pretty much as scr*w*d as the Brits are. Except that most them know it. We still are living in our fantasy land.

Re:Police State

[Shakrai]

...or to hold slaves, or voting without those pesky women or whatever? Rights change when people agree on change, and hopefully we won't agree to take away the wrong rights but there's really no stopping ourselves

Your honestly comparing holding slaves to our other rights? Holding a slave deprives another human being of his liberty. My ownership of a firearm or exercise of free speech does nothing of the kind.

YMMV but I feel safer because there's a lot lower risk I'll be killed in a drive-by stabbing or accidentally be hit by a stray knife during a knifeout then when there's guns and bullets involved.

You don't have the right to take away my rights to make yourself feel safer. I'd feel safer if we could put a muzzle on those KKK idiots but that doesn't give me the right to infringe on free speech.

And yes, having and using guns does add to the penalties so much most petty criminals don't use them

Huh? I don't know where you live but most "petty" criminals around here do carry guns. Almost every single drug bust in our area includes gun charges.

As for the big revolution, I think most gun nuts are likely to go out in a Waco-style massacre if it ever came that doesn't do anyone any good

Who is calling for the big revolution? If it ever reached that point it's a fair assumption that things have deteriorated to the point that it wouldn't just be the "gun nuts" who are resisting the Government.

Despite all good intentions I think amny will simply want peace at all costs.

I want peace, but not if I have to surrender my civil liberties to get it. I hear that Singapore is pretty peaceful -- do you really want to live there?

Re:Police State

[Shakrai]

And that certainly helped you during the 8 years with W didn't it.

It did if you were paying attention. SCOTUS reined in a lot of his policies. Some of the states stood up and flipped Washington off over Real ID. Just because the system doesn't work overnight doesn't mean the system doesn't work.

Re:Police State

[Hordeking]

>>>We can only hope that the western world, having known freedom, will revolt while they still have enough of that freedom left to effectively do so.

Dear British Cousins,

If this law to track citizens' movement were passed in America, we would exercise our second amendment rights. We would tell our parliamentarians: Real this law or die. Government is there to SERVE the people, not to be a master. Politicians who desire to be masters need to be "fired" by their employers, the People.

A concerned liberty-loving citizen

Dear American Brother,

If we try to use our 2nd amendment rights, we'll be summarily shot for any number of offenses, trumped up or not.

Sincerely, a not-free American.

Re:Police State

[Shakrai]

As an American, I find that a little misleading. The second amendment is not going to do a jot for you if the feds decide its time to SWAT you out of existence.

Well I would dispute that notion (it would matter if the Feds decided to SWAT a whole bunch of people out of existence) but that wasn't the underlying point I was trying to make. My underlying point was that the people of the UK sheepishly agreed to surrender a right that they had held for hundreds of years. That's a pretty dangerous precedent to set, IMHO, and why should we believe that any of the other rights will be respected if that one wasn't?

As to the right to trial by jury, there are plenty of people our government is holding, who do not even "exist", let alone are ever tried, or tried by jury.

The difference between someone captured on the battlefield and someone captured within the United States should be plain to everybody. Do you also think that we lost the right to trial by jury because we didn't afford it to the POWs we captured in the Civil War/Spanish-American War/WW1/WW2/Korea or Vietnam?

Even allow the President to declare war on a neutral country in the name of national security

I opposed the Iraq War but you should at least acknowledge that it was the stated policy of our country since the 90s to change the regime in Iraq. It's not like Bush picked a random country off to map to invade and bullied Congress into letting him do it.

or pay billions to fight STDs in the name of economic stimulus.

Well, I oppose that too, but it's interesting that you are bringing up pork in a discussion about civil liberties. Which civil liberties do I lose if Congress decides to fight STDs? My right to keep and bear chlamydia? ;)

The reason is that our media is a part of the establishment.

The media has it's own agenda -- selling copy. I would dispute that you can make a blanket statement that 'the media' is part of 'the establishment'. 'The media' is a pretty broad term. Slashdot is part of the media. Is Slashdot part of the establishment? How about 2600? They part of the establishment?

We are pretty much as scr*w*d as the Brits are. Except that most them know it. We still are living in our fantasy land.

I disagree. The fact that several states stood up and told Washington to fuck off with regards to Real ID tells me that we are far ahead of the Brits.

Re:Police State

[Hordeking]

Say what you will about the United States but at least it takes more than a majority vote in the House of Representatives to start taking away our rights.

Yes, but that's a property of the US Constitution, and not the fact that you have guns.

The OP's point wasn't to say that the US was worse than the UK. The point is that everytime there's an article like this about the UK, we get the inevitable "If only you had guns". The fact that similar things happen in the US, despite your guns, suggest that the point is irrelevant.

The US is as bad as the UK in different ways.

The US citizens aren't exactly complacent, but a lot certainly feel powerless.

The most insidious prison is the one you don't realise you're in.

Re:Police State

[Anonymous Coward]

This.

The reason we haven't had a revolt driven by the people (and not the States or the Colonies) is because despite all our high-minded ideals, the bottom line at the end of the day is our ability to LIVE. We have that, and we have it damn good right now.

Which isn't to belittle our liberties, people should continue to fight for them, but that fight will not become literal until it actually matters in the grand scheme of things.

Re:Police State

[Nursie]

And yet you have far more in the way of random road blocks (to check for drunk drivers, uh-huh) and requirements to carry identification (like whilst driving).

Swings and roundabouts my friend, swings and roundabouts.

Re:Police State

[Anonymous Coward]

warrantless wiretaps of overseas calls

Fixed that for you.

Your naivity is kinda cute...

Say what you will about the United States but at least it takes more than a majority vote in the House of Representatives to start taking away our rights.

That's the *theory* - but remember that we're taking about the very situation where the government doesn't care about your rights etc. anymore.

If you want to invoke the 2nd and start an armed revolution, be my guest, but you're on your own insofar as that you cannot tell the government "you're not allowed to do this, you're violating my rights!" anymore. If that kind of reasoning still worked, you wouldn't be starting an armed revolution in the first place.

Put another way, as long as you use that reasoning, you cannot start an armed revolution.

So all in all, either you live in a state that respects your rights, or you don't. If you do, fine; if you don't, there's no reason why you'd expect them to respect SOME of your rights if they don't respect others.

Re:Police State

[Marxist Hacker 42]

If this law to track citizens' movement were passed in America, we would exercise our second amendment rights. We would tell our parliamentarians: Real this law or die
 
Then why haven't we? The RealID Act, the Patriotism Act, the continuing war on the American Worker, the Mexican Drug War Invasion, it goes on and on and on- we've lost the liberty to earn money, do our jobs, not be robbed by a bunch of bankers living in luxury a continent away. And yet, we've yet to revolt against our own police state.

Re:Police State

[slashdotlurker]

The difference between someone captured on the battlefield and someone captured within the United States should be plain to everybody. Do you also think that we lost the right to trial by jury because we didn't afford it to the POWs we captured in the Civil War/Spanish-American War/WW1/WW2/Korea or Vietnam?

Why do you think they call it the Department of Homeland Security ? In this age of terror, the US is a part of the battlefield. Bush has pretty much established the right of the executive to declare anyone it feels like to be an enemy combatant. Obama, by voting for a lot of Bush's policies when he was in Senate, and by effectively declaring that he is not going to prosecute anyone for crimes (he spins it as "looking forward"), has adopted the same policies. I am not trying to minimize the threat that Islamic radicalism poses to the US, only saying that we have entrenched a policy of overreaction which needlessly tramples on the very ideas that these jokers are pretending to be fighting to save.

I opposed the Iraq War but you should at least acknowledge that it was the stated policy of our country since the 90s to change the regime in Iraq. It's not like Bush picked a random country off to map to invade and bullied Congress into letting him do it.

He did. In the aftermath of 9-11, Iraq *was* a random country to pick off the map. It was the only Arab country without an Al Qaeda presence. That makes it worse than just some random country. Invading Iraq after 9-11 was not like us invading Mexico after Pearl Harbor. It was more like us invading China after Pearl Harbor.

The point is that it is perfectly possible to frighten otherwise rational people into doing stuff that is utterly braindead and self-destructive. So that 2/3rd majority blanket you are hiding behind does not exist.

Well, I oppose that too, but it's interesting that you are bringing up pork in a discussion about civil liberties. Which civil liberties do I lose if Congress decides to fight STDs? My right to keep and bear chlamydia? ;)

Its an example of the modus operandi. The fact that you find it to unrelated only serves to further support my argument that a determined executive branch can do practically anything it wants, and our legislative check and balances system has long since ceased to exist.

The media has it's own agenda -- selling copy. I would dispute that you can make a blanket statement that 'the media' is part of 'the establishment'. 'The media' is a pretty broad term. Slashdot is part of the media. Is Slashdot part of the establishment? How about 2600? They part of the establishment?

I think both of us pretty much know what media I am talking about. If not, look up the examples I gave (CNN and Fox). Its the mass media, with a broad reach. Nothing on the internet, free as it is, has anything comparable. Internet tends to self-select (you are not going to find Joe Sixpack on slashdot). Cable TV addles everyone.

I disagree. The fact that several states stood up and told Washington to fuck off with regards to Real ID tells me that we are far ahead of the Brits.

Which the feds have circumvented easily with the total information awareness program. It was even commented on slashdot fairly recently. I am sure that "f*ck you" will feel pretty good pretty soon.

Re:Police State

[Shakrai]

And yet you have far more in the way of random road blocks (to check for drunk drivers, uh-huh) and requirements to carry identification (like whilst driving).

The requirement to carry your drivers license while driving doesn't strike me as particularly onerous. That is actually the point of the drivers license, is it not? In any case you generally won't get into too much trouble if you don't have it -- they can assume that you are an unlicensed driver but more often than not they will just look you up on the computer. When they make a requirement that you carry your drivers license around all the time is when I'll get concerned.

The road blocks is a better point to raise, IMHO. I've spoken out against them before. It would seem to be more effective to use those police resources to patrol around looking for the guy who is swerving all over the place than to use them hassling everybody who drives through a particular stretch of roadway.

Then again, I'm convinced that the whole DWI issue is blown out of proportion and used to distract the populace from other issues. I rather like the viewpoint that the NMA has about it.

Re:Police State

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Well I would dispute that notion (it would matter if the Feds decided to SWAT a whole bunch of people out of existence)
 
Actually, it would matter even LESS in that circumstance. the Feds deciding to SWAT me, I hole up in my house and shoot through the windows until I'm out of ammo or they bring in a tank to destroy the house. The Feds deciding to SWAT the entire neighborhood out of existence, I won't even get a single round off before the 500 mile nuclear fireball that hits Portland wipes out the West Hills and Beaverton.

Re:Police State

[scruffy]

warrantless wiretaps of overseas calls

You must have missed this story:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/01/nsa-whistleblower-says-journos-were-targeted.ars

"The NSA had access to all Americans' communications: faxes, phone calls, and their computer communications," said Tice. "It didn't matter whether you were in Kansas in the middle of the country and you never made any foreign communications at all. They monitored all communications."

Re:Police State

[Shakrai]

Bush has pretty much established the right of the executive to declare anyone it feels like to be an enemy combatant

And SCOTUS has subsequently reduced that power. Some would say that they've gone too far in the other direction. The Boumediene ruling in particular -- apparently foreign nationals captured on foreign battlefields have the right of the writ of habeas corpus. Personally I think that's a pretty dangerous precedent.

He did. In the aftermath of 9-11, Iraq *was* a random country to pick off the map. It was the only Arab country without an Al Qaeda presence. That makes it worse than just some random country. Invading Iraq after 9-11 was not like us invading Mexico after Pearl Harbor. It was more like us invading China after Pearl Harbor.

Feel free to ignore the US policy that existed before 9/11 if you feel that it furthers your argument. For better or worse it was US policy (passed overwhelmingly in the House, unanimously in the Senate and signed by Clinton) to change the regime in Iraq. Given this and the decade Saddam spent flouting the agreement that ended the first Gulf War, I don't really see how you can claim it was some random country picked off the map.

The point is that it is perfectly possible to frighten otherwise rational people into doing stuff that is utterly braindead and self-destructive. So that 2/3rd majority blanket you are hiding behind does not exist.

I'm not "hiding" behind anything. The 2/3rd majority is only one part of our system. I'm pretty sure I also mentioned the States (decentralization of power) and the Federal judiciary (check and balance) as well.

Its the mass media, with a broad reach. Nothing on the internet, free as it is, has anything comparable. Internet tends to self-select (you are not going to find Joe Sixpack on slashdot). Cable TV addles everyone.

What's your point? The populace needs to do a better job of being informed? You won't get an argument from me. My point was that other sources of news and information exist -- you just have to be willing to look for them. What do you want to do about Fox and CNN? Pass a law that regulates how they have to cover the news? Regulate cable TV and make it more like PBS (disclaimer: I love PBS and don't have cable -- I do actually agree with you here) so people get less 'addled'?

Which the feds have circumvented easily with the total information awareness program. It was even commented on slashdot fairly recently. I am sure that "f*ck you" will feel pretty good pretty soon.

We shall see. The history of our country is a history of competing political interests trying to push their own agenda at the expense of any civil liberty that gets in their way. Whether it's Democrats with guns or Republicans with the separation of church and state. Personally I don't trust any of them but I do have some trust in the underlying system. It's served us well so far. I'm not ready to write it's obituary just yet.

Re:Police State

[Shakrai]

The Feds deciding to SWAT the entire neighborhood out of existence, I won't even get a single round off before the 500 mile nuclear fireball that hits Portland wipes out the West Hills and Beaverton.

One would hope that our military wouldn't go along with dropping a nuclear weapon on Portland......

Re:Police State

[ultranova]

Yes, although with the caveat of not allowing them for convicted felons or mental cases. Law-abiding citizens carrying firearms harms no one.

How do you propose to enforce this? Require everyone to show papers when asked?

Furthermore, I've often heard it said that "if guns are outlawed, only outlaws have guns." Given this, what does it help to forbid felons from carrying guns - either they are still criminals and will carry a gun anyway, or they've gone clean and are being punished forever for no reason?

Finally, you do realize that "felon" is a completely arbitrary label? A felon is someone who has broken a law where said breach has been labelled "felony" by the government. Why would such an arbitrary label disqualify one from carrying weapons, if carrying weapons is such an important freedom?

Re:Police State

[Shakrai]

How do you propose to enforce this? Require everyone to show papers when asked?

Well whether or not it's enforceable is another matter. It's enforceable at the point of sale but this doesn't really accomplish much other than to make the felon go buy his gun from the back of someones van as opposed to your local gun shop.

Given this, what does it help to forbid felons from carrying guns - either they are still criminals and will carry a gun anyway

In which case they've just broken another law and will be charged with breaking that law if caught.

or they've gone clean and are being punished forever for no reason?

If they've gone clean then they should apply for a reinstatement of their civil rights. This would be required in most states to be eligible to vote or serve on a jury again -- rights equally as important as the right to keep and bear arms.

Why would such an arbitrary label disqualify one from carrying weapons, if carrying weapons is such an important freedom?

That arbitrary label also disqualifies one from voting in most US States. The Constitution doesn't say that you can never lose life or liberty -- it says that you can't lose them without due process of law. A convicted criminal has received that due process of law and is subject to the loss of liberties as proscribed by law.

Re:Police State

[Marxist Hacker 42]

One would hope that our military wouldn't go along with dropping a nuclear weapon on Portland......
 
Given the number of enviro-nazis and other liberal ilk resident around here, I consider it one of the top 10 targets should a conservative military coup ever happen in the United States. New York and San Francisco would go before Portland however. Heck, it's not even the first OREGON city to go- that'd be the People's Republic of Eugene.

Re:Police State

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't actually have a problem with people monitoring me,

That's good for you. I, on the other hand, very much DO have a problem with people monitoring me, thankyouverymuch.

Re:Police State

[Dreadneck]

Epic fail.

Article V

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose amendments to this Constitution, or, on the application of the legislatures of two thirds of the several states, shall call a convention for proposing amendments, which, in either case, shall be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the legislatures of three fourths of the several states, or by conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other mode of ratification may be proposed by the Congress; provided that no amendment which may be made prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any manner affect the first and fourth clauses in the ninth section of the first article; and that no state, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate.

U.S. Constitution Online - Cornell University Law School

Re:Police State

[slashdotlurker]

One would hope that our military wouldn't go along with dropping a nuclear weapon on Portland......

In other words, you are conceding that you are ultimately dependent on goodwill of people who choose not to follow orders. And implicitly accepting that our system of checks and balances is not so durable after all.
If men were angels, no government would be necessary (not verbatim - Madison).

Re:Police State

[Shakrai]

In other words, you are conceding that you are ultimately dependent on goodwill of people who choose not to follow orders

Perhaps. Me the individual may be dependent on that goodwill. The United States as a country is more dependent upon the desire of her population to remain free.

Re:Police State

[Anonymous Coward]

try too busy trying to make a living and provide for their families. that's not just the US, I'd say that's the whole western world. technology is making revolts impossible in 2 ways:
1. it eats up so much of our time
2. it is used against for surveillance and enforcement.

it was the same thing in ancient times. swords and armor were too expensive for the common man, but those who ruled had the wealth to buy them. it was the gun that leveled the playing field because there wasn't much training needed to use a gun. since the gun made armor ineffective, all you needed was a gun and some ammo. much easier and cheaper to raise an army using guns than swords and armor. now, the powers that be have guns (sword) and surveillance/defensive technology (armor). we would need a smoking gun or silver bullet :) technology that would render the other technologies ineffective. it would also need to be readily available to the common man and require little training to use. guess what fits the bill? Biological and other WMD. I'm not willing to unleash that sort of epidemic on the world just because my government is studying and trying to control my behavior. I would reserve such a drastic measure for a government that is actively oppressive to an extent that they are killing people.

Re:Police State

[commodore64_love]

>>>Keeping a record of everywhere I go doesn't violate my rights.

"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

Tracking everywhere you go is a violation of your right to privacy, to freedom of travel, and an exercise of power not granted to the U.S. by the People's Constitution.

Re:Police State

[commodore64_love]

My point which I did not make clear, is that I think it's time for our British cousins to start killing some of their MPs. I apologize for not being more explicit.

Re:Police State

[commodore64_love]

>>>And yet you have far more in the way of random road blocks (to check for drunk drivers, uh-huh)

They are allowed to check for sobriety, but NOT allowed to search the car. See the relevant U.S. Supreme Court cases.

Re:Police State

[meringuoid]

The difference between someone captured on the battlefield and someone captured within the United States should be plain to everybody.

You actually think that everyone the US is imprisoning without charge was 'captured on the battlefield'? As I understand it, the majority were not captured on the battlefield, but bought for bounty payments from Afghan warlords. Perhaps they captured them on a battlefield somewhere; I imagine that they did indeed assure the CIA that these people were terrorists captured on the battlefield. And who would lie when all they had to gain was getting rid of their enemies and acquiring large sums of money?

And that's before we discuss the people who were seized in peaceful regions across the globe, like Sarajevo, or Islamabad, or Gambia. Not that it matters. It seems that the Americans define 'the battlefield' as the entire planet, and anybody, anywhere could be declared an enemy combatant thereon and disappeared to some godforsaken torture camp.

Re:Police State

[commodore64_love]

Voters don't even know how to punch-out a chad*, how on earth would they handle a scoring system??? I don't think that would work. Maybe we could get away with Australian ballots, where you assign 1 for your favorite (McCain), 2 for your second favorite (Harry Browne), and so on, but that's about it.

*
*I think it was less stupidity, and more laziness. The instructions said to verify the holes were punched out of your ballot, prior to handing it in, but like a typical school student, SOME of the voters were too lazy to do that. If they care so little about their vote, why should the rest of us care?

Re:Police State

[commodore64_love]

"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be
changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath
shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable,
than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably
the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism,
it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government,
and to provide new Guards for their future security."

U.S. Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson

Re:Police State

[commodore64_love]

Only if we're caught. Reference the French Resistance.

Re:Police State

[greengrocer]

Eh, no. According to NSA whistleblowers, all domestic voice and data traffic was monitored as well.

And, again, no, it does not require House vote, Senate vote, and POTUS signature to take your rights away. For eight years of Bush, all it took was a decision by POTUS, and complicity of DOJ. DOJ says "waterboarding is not torture" and poof, it becomes so. DOJ says habeus corpus can be suspended and poof, it becomes so.

The real problem here is not that "The decider" made these things happen, it's that if his administration is not investigated, prosecuted, and sentenced, then there will be precedent for future presidents, including this one, to act outside the bounds of law (the Constitution), unilaterally, and effectively, dictatorially.

Re:Police State

[slashdotlurker]

Perhaps. Me the individual may be dependent on that goodwill. The United States as a country is more dependent upon the desire of her population to remain free.

Given the general dumbing down of our political discourse, recent events, and the active hatred that exists between the left and the right wings of the two respective major political parties, I doubt that the population even has the foggiest idea of what freedom means.

Re:Police State

[Wowsers]

The police generally can't carry guns.

What do the British police need guns for when they are being provided with 10,000 TASERS? The Times or CNN.

Re:Police State

[ScreamingCactus]

You are already required to carry a form of photo-Id anytime you're on public property, driving or not. I don't know if it's a Federal law yet, but it's a law where I live and the cops here consider it probable cause.

As to the right to trial by jury, there are plenty of people our government is holding, who do not even "exist", let alone are ever tried, or tried by jury.

The difference between someone captured on the battlefield and someone captured within the United States should be plain to everybody.

There are plenty of American Citizens the government is holding, who do not "exist". And there are plenty the government has "neutralized". I don't know about the government in the UK, but ours pretty much thinks it can do whatever it wants, so long as the media doesn't find out. And if the media does find out, they just put all the blame on one man and send him to fry while everyone else gets away scott-free. So while the Constitution says everyone gets a fair trial, the government interprets it as everyone who they want to let have a fair trial gets one, and likewise with the other Rights.

Ours is heading toward a police state just as fast as the UK, the only difference is the UK is a few years ahead of us. They don't have a pesky Constitution to interfere with the progress of oppression. Plus our government sees what's going on over there and thinks, if the British will put up with it then so will the Americans.

None of this is, of course, unexpected. It is the natural progression of every government. They will continue to oppress their people more and more until the people revolt and instantiate a new government, or drastically alter the one they have, or there is a war. Of course, 21st-century technology has given the government new ways to oppress people so this is a unique situation, but I presume it will play out as it has in the past. The government has already given itself too much power for us to reverse it through political means now.

Re:Police State

[Anonymous Coward]

Your theory doesn't hold up. For evidence, look at El Salvador, Guatemala, or Honduras.

Revolutions don't occur due to poverty. It's a voice that leads the charge. Good luck with that if your government's going to silence those speakers with wiretaps, zones with no free speech, house raids, COINTELPRO, and the like.

Re:Police State

[Nursie]

Oh sure, but if you try and stop them then who knows, they might just conjure up some probable cause. You aren't trying to hide something are you citizen?

Re:Police State

[Shakrai]

You are already required to carry a form of photo-Id anytime you're on public property, driving or not. I don't know if it's a Federal law yet, but it's a law where I live and the cops here consider it probable cause.

I'd like to see a citation for that. If it's a law where you live then you need to work on getting that law changed.

Re:Police State

[hobbit]

Because government is for the people, not for the person ;)

Re:Police State

[Hordeking]

Only if we're caught. Reference the French Resistance.

Hence the increasing use of surveillance.

Re:Police State

[Blue Stone]

Actually, I didn't mean to make this a left-right debate.

If the Tories were in power, I'm sure they would be implementing similar things, the Labour Party is aiming at the same totalitarian power-crazed goal based on their own flavour of rationalisations. It all amounts to the same thing.

It's the human condition; it doesn't matter what they call their brand of politics. Real restraints on the powers of government are the only thing that can stop it in the mid-term; the rest is up to people doing something about what lurks in their hearts and minds.

Re:Police State

[Ed Avis]

If this law to track citizens' movement were passed in America, we would exercise our second amendment rights.

Yeah, just like that time when the gun owners rose up to end segregation in the South and enforce civil rights for black people. Good old NRA, always there to defend liberty! It's a good job you guys are all armed, otherwise who knows what kind of abuses the US government and states might be able to get away with.

Re:Police State

[visible.frylock]

When the economy really turns to shit, we'll likely start invading other resource-rich nations and stealing from them. That will likely escalate into WW3.

Because a core tenet of the American mindset is this: No matter the problem, it can't possibly be my fault. And by extension, we view our country as blameless in all respects. Even to the point that we're confused and offended if anyone else dares resist us.

Re:Police State

[quickOnTheUptake]

We do have it very good. But the issue is whether it is still going to be good in 25 years. Or 100.
Not to be alarmist or anything. Just asking.

Re:Police State

[trewornan]

No, in fact the UK hasn't signed up to the European Declaration of Human Rights - only to some articles of it.

Re:Police State

[nomorefreedom]

They let us think we're having free elections (although the candidates are already chosen in advance, and the winner selected by the controlled media). That way, the people of the U.S. will believe they still have a free country although their rights are gradually taken away from them. When things get bad enough the US public will revolt, but by then we'll be in a full fledged dictatorship.

Re:Police State

[sumdumass]

Not to detract from your point, but to be fair, we are only looking at some pissed of European attempting to reconcile his losses by saying "I bet they do it in America too". I know your addressing his seemingly ignorant comment but don't let the chanter convince you that it is being done.

Re:Police State

[sumdumass]

Besides, it wasn't(isn't) just overseas calls. Remember the entire floor at AT&T that the NSA is camped out in? The one with *ALL* AT&T traffic flowing through it including domestic calls?

Because they were there does not mean they were tapped without a wattant. There was a law passed in the mid 90's that mandated the telecoms to update their offices to make intercepting calls efficient and expedient when appropriate. The entire floor at ATT is simple compliance with that. And of course, if all calls go through there, then it makes a pretty good central location to intercept foreign calls into the country.

To date, no one has done any more then speculate about domestic calls. Don't act like it is some sort of fact.

Actually, for things like killing the 4th amendment it should take a new amendment with all the states agreeing. But it's far easier to break the law, then pass a new law saying "Everything we did before is now OK. Oh, and by the way, no one can investigate what we did, and even if you do investigate we've destroyed the records anyway." (See FISA 2008).

The fourth amendment always ended at the borders of the country. The very first congress seated in the United States under the Constitution allowed for warrant-less searches at the borders. This was a law made by the very same founding fathers who not only wrote the constitution but presented it to the people and convinced them to ratify it. There was no objection by those in government nor was there objections by those out of government. The Supreme court has upheld the law on at least two occasions and referred to it when upholding the border searched of electronic devices.

Re:Police State

[Anonymous Coward]

You are ignorant of the fact that USSR chose to let it go. In fact, it was internal power struggle between Gorbachev, leader of USSR, and Eltsin leader of Russian Republic that was the cause of Soviet Union and East block. Yeltsin said, by USSR constitution, we have a right to vote ourselves out of the Union.

  It was not that "little people" who brought about change by standing up to the armed forces- that is a myth. Because if you look at Budapest, Prague, and Poland uprisings, they were CRUSHED with tanks. Worked like a charm -- So please get your facts straight, though i wish your dream like thoughts would be reality, it was not.

Re:Police State

[sumdumass]

Exactly.

It's a one step forward and two steps back. Take the DC gun ban for instance. They had been attempting to take guns away for a while and finally the Supreme court took the case up and made the anti-gun people take 10 steps back. The former President wanted to take habeas corpus away from prisoners held at club gitmo, the court made them take a few steps back.

We won't be free of people, however innocently intentioned they think they are, who will attempt to take rights away from the people. However, because it is so difficult to do so, we end up with a document which gives the government directions for all the power it can derive from the people and being enforced by the supreme court of the land who steps in eventually and puts a stop to it. There is no higher legal authority in England where the courts can say "stop doing that because the constitution doesn't allow it". There is nothing others then rights that can be easily legislated away. It's especially easier to do so when the government has no fear of reprisal from the people. Taking the right to defend yourself from not only a criminal but a tyrannical and/or oppressive government away from the people only makes it easier for the government to becomes tyranical and oppresive when it takes other rights away. Perhaps you right to vote against them, or you right to free speech (which shouldn't be confused as a right to deny others their speech and some seem to think) or to speak against them will be next.

Re:Police State

[Anonymous Coward]

I think history has shown that people usually do not revolt until it is 'too late'. Of course, it is never really too late to change back to 'freedom'. It's just a matter of how much violence and bloodshed will be necessary in order for that change to happen. The further we go, the more violent it will become.

It's much easier to fight an enemy that is trying to control you than one that is already in control. We live, yet we never learn.

Re:Police State

[kayditty]

you say 'oh, I may not agree with such and such thing, but that's the way it is' as if that has some relevancy to this thread. the entire point was whether these things should be done. the context of this thread was not about whether or not the government does certain things or whether they're allowed to do certain things, but rather about whether they should be doing those things and what we can do to stop them. if you want to take it back that far, it doesn't even make any damn sense.

there's also now precedent for our government to do many other things we don't like, but, suddenly, just because they "can" do those things, it doesn't matter?

Re:Police State

[sunnyflorida]

Bush was bad!!??!! Well, look at what Obama and the dems snuck into the so-called stimulus bill: doctors will be told by some government employee how to treat the patient.

Re:Police State

[Anonymous Coward]

People who want a police state are a bunch of sissy's who don't have the courage to stand up for themselves against a criminal. The fact is, no matter how big you make government, it can never defend you against everything, so get used to the idea of looking out for yourself, your kids, and your family.

Re:Police State

[Anonymous Coward]

The very first congress seated in the United States under the Constitution allowed for warrant-less searches at the borders.

Wasn't the purpose of this to ensure that people crossing the border weren't bringing weapons or trying to bypass import tariffs?

Not to mention the fact, that the *person* is not crossing the border in this case.

This would be closer to inspecting international mail. Of which, only the *incoming* mail can be inspected WITH probable cause and this was only decided as of 1977 (see US v Ramsey).

Title 19 U.S.C. Â 482 and implementing postal regulations authorize customs officials to inspect incoming international mail when they have a "reasonable cause to suspect" that the mail contains illegally imported merchandise, although the regulations prohibit the reading of correspondence absent a search warrant.

Additionally, in that particular case, the mail officials had a wealth of evidence to support a search and could have probably easily obtained a warrant.
Details.
Basically, the Thai govt followed some guys around, searched some of their US-bound mail and found heroin. They then notified the US who did a warrantless search on mail already on US soil.
Probable cause abound, no precedent setting needed. Though I don't know why they couldn't have spent 10 minutes in front of a judge getting a warrant.

Of course, because the guy lost the case, we all have to suffer because of the USSC statements that say basically all border searches are OK.

Re:Police State

[Anonymous Coward]

it would matter if the Feds decided to SWAT a whole bunch of people out of existence

Wako, Tx; Rainbow Ranch; Ruby Ridge...

The difference between someone captured on the battlefield and someone captured within the United States should be plain to everybody.

...like, for example, Joseph Padilla?

it was the stated policy of our country since the 90s to change the regime in Iraq

OK - I'll go along with that one. That doesn't mean that the war wasn't fought under false pretenses, though. WMDs? National Defense? War on Terror?

Which civil liberties do I lose if Congress decides to fight STDs?

What do you gain if congress decides to spend billions of dollars buying condoms for people in sub-Saharan Africa?

The media has it's own agenda -- selling copy.

All to true. Unfortunately, Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt seem to sell pretty well, these days.

Is Slashdot part of the establishment? How about 2600? They part of the establishment?

Just what percentage of people in the good ol' US-of-A do you think get their news from Slashdot and/or 2600?

The fact that several states stood up and told Washington to fuck off with regards to Real ID tells me that we are far ahead of the Brits.

The fact that the US Congress passed the Real ID act [as a rider in a military spending bill, during a time of contrived war...], the Executive signed with a joyful flourish, and the Judicial branch sat back and waited to see if anyone with enough time and money on their hands wanted to make a big deal about it... tells me that the US Federal Government isn't exactly standing up for people's rights, state's rights, or the US Constitution.

Immigrants

[johnsie]

They need to concentrate on the non-citizens who are coming into the country, not the citizens who are traveling abroad. Just last week there were strikes because too many people are coming into the UK. The UK is already overcrowded and the government seems to be able to do very little to control the borders effectively. Allowing Workers to freely migrate within the EU was a big mistake and will drive wages down.

Re:Immigrants

[Anonymous Coward]

Shoot them at the fucking border!

Re:Immigrants

[Malc]

Great attitude dickhead. Perhaps other countries should take the same attitude towards expat Britons too. You realised 1 in 10 Britons live overseas? How about we start with the 761,000 (2006 numbers) who live in Spain, and send them home? That will surely help, or at least in Spain. Australia has 1.3 million, many of whom are retired and screwed by the British government on their pensions and so costing the Aussie taxpayers a lot of money... I'm sure Gordon Brown will be happy to raise taxes or government debt further to provide for them.

Re:Immigrants

[cj1127]

Just last week there were strikes because too many people are coming into the UK

Incorrect. There were a series of wildcat strikes because we have a legacy of being fucked up the ass by trade unions who refuse to accept that UK labour is unwilling to adapt in order to become competitive (read: lazy). It was all over a grand total of 198 jobs. Wow.

The UK is already overcrowded

Care to back that up?

Re:Immigrants

[Ragzouken]

Just last week I had to stand up on the bus. ALL THE SEATS WERE OCCUPIED. Can you believe it?

Re:Immigrants

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny thing, this word overcrowded. May I suggest an alternative: isolationist.

There are lots of people in the UK, but I wouldn't call it overcrowded.

For comparison, there are approximately 250 people per square km. Contrast this to 490 per in the Netherlands.

Re:Immigrants

[BiggerIsBetter]

They need to concentrate on the non-citizens who are coming into the country, not the citizens who are traveling abroad. Just last week there were strikes because too many people are coming into the UK. The UK is already overcrowded and the government seems to be able to do very little to control the borders effectively. Allowing Workers to freely migrate within the EU was a big mistake and will drive wages down.

You lose your freedom but you complain about money.

Re:Immigrants

[Nursie]

Bullcrap

Loads of britons work abroad, many more than the few contractors that this idiotic furore broke over.

This is just the working class braying for protectionism, again, and turning to xenophobia as a way to shift the blame off themselves or to admit that the wider economy is screwed.

Whilst border control *is* an issue, it's not as big of one as you think. And the workers in question are EU citizens. By all means let's kick them out, then rehouse and re-employ the million or so brits that get kicked out of other EU nations and deal with economic isolation as the EU either kicks us out or disintegrates. Because clearly that would be best for all of us, to restrict international trade and screw up Britons' ability to work abroad.

Great plan.

Re:Immigrants

[haggisbrain]

Ok, I'll bite. I'm Scottish and have lived in 3 Countries outside of the UK, 2 of these are in the EU.

The UK is already overcrowded

I think you mean

The World is already overcrowded

Allowing Workers to freely migrate within the EU was a big mistake and will drive wages down.

I read this argument all the time but I've always received above average wages when working in another Country. Part of the reason I like to work in other Countries is because I want to compete and see how I can cut in in another economy. How does my Scottish education match up to others? Can I be better than I am? Can I learn new skills/methods?
Are you afraid to compete? Would you prefer a handout from the Government? How about a job for life and never having to better yourself?
Part of the reason the UK and other Countries allow/need this immigration is due to the constant need for growth in our economy. How can reducing the overall headcount help this?

Re:Immigrants

[arethuza]

The distribution of population in the UK isn't that even - there are some pretty big chunks of the UK (e.g. Scottish Highlands) where there are very few people. The Central Belt of Scotland seems pretty crowded to me!

Re:Immigrants

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent -1, Reads the Daily Mail.

Re:Immigrants

[Anonymous Coward]

There were a series of wildcat strikes because we have a legacy of being fucked up the ass by trade unions who refuse to accept that UK labour is unwilling to adapt in order to become competitive (read: lazy)

What you don't mention is the most important point and the reason why this strike got public sympathy: British workers were *not allowed to even apply* for these jobs. They did't want more pay or better conditions - they just wanted a chance to compete on an equal footing with the Italian and Portugese workers for these jobs. Totally unreasonable huh?

Stephen Fry...

[Goffee71]

...is going straight to jail(the new Morcambe Bay maximum security anti-terror gulag!)Look at all those dodgy Twitter posts - America, Australia, America, Luxembourg - the chap is a one-man axis of evil!

Re:Stephen Fry...

[MichaelSmith]

I am sure he will make a lot of friends there.

Re:Stephen Fry...

[Hurricane78]

It's "Lëtzeburg". That's how we "Lëtzeburger" call it. :)

The variant with ou is the French word for our country. The variant with only u is the German word. That's, because of the word burg (castle).
You're not French, are you? :D

Re:Stephen Fry...

[teslar]

I think you'll find that the "ou" variant is not just for the French.

Just nitpicking :) Mee ech mengen ech dierf daat an dësem Fall.

Re:Stephen Fry...

[Admiral Ag]

No, but he comes from a real country. ;-)

Re:Stephen Fry...

[Hurricane78]

Doesnâ(TM)t matter. We have all his money any therefore his real country anyway. :P

No big deal.

[Anonymous Coward]

You have had this for years. The government holds your travel records for the last 30 years, then they are moved to the national archives where they are public domain. They are often used when you apply for dual citizenship.

Re:No big deal.

[foobat]

yeah but FTA it says

"The intelligence centre will store names, addresses, telephone numbers, seat reservations, travel itineraries and credit card details of travellers. "

which i assume is a tad more than they have already. I like how the government now needs a database for:

my credit cards
dna/other "biometric data"
all the emails I send
all the websites I visit
all the phone calls I make
all the details of my children

obviously you need all of our credit card details to fight terror!

superficial and ineffective

[petes_PoV]

Oh goody, more security theatre.

If the plan is to see how many baddies go to "suspect" countries (obviously with nefarious intent - not simply because they might have family there, or like traveling), then it's easily negated by traveling to a "friendly" country and booking onwards from there. As usual with govt. hare-brained schemes, this will track the millions of holidaymakers and completely miss any people who have half an interest in concealing their true intentions. Meantime, we are all tracked, tested, tagged, followed and surveilled to an even greater extent. All this does is add to the general sense of oppression in the country, and adds to the sheer volume of innocous data collected - while leaving those with both the motivation and the organisation free to carry on as they wish, safe int he knowledge that the "intelligence" services are snowed under in an avalanche of useless data.

Re:superficial and ineffective

[Anonymous Coward]

so why are they really doing it? just to create more government jobs?

Re:superficial and ineffective

[DNS-and-BIND]

I disagree. While you parrot the standard party line, the fact is that most "bad men" are: 1) Criminal masterminds, or 2) Not particularly smart. Just the fact that this sort of thing exists serves as a deterrent. You can go on about civil liberties and such, but this sort of thing does work, and intelligence services are not being buried in avalanches of bad data (which is just wishful thinking).

Re:superficial and ineffective

[jessica_alba]

"the fact is that most "bad men" are: 1) Criminal masterminds, or 2) Not particularly smart."
which is why 2's generally work for 1's

Re:superficial and ineffective

[BiggerIsBetter]

What's all this good people bad people bollocks? The information is far more likely to be used for marketing than for counter-terrorism.

Re:superficial and ineffective

[julesh]

If the plan is to see how many baddies go to "suspect" countries

What makes you think that's the plan? Info on travel to any other country is useful in catching benefit fraudsters and tax dodgers.

Re:superficial and ineffective

[Threni]

> While you parrot the standard party line, the fact is that most "bad men" are: 1) Criminal masterminds, or 2) Not particularly smart.

I call BS. What do you know about crime? Most criminals are neither `criminal masterminds` (been watching too much James Bond?), and if they're not smart then they're certainly smarter than the average pig.

Very sad

[SuperKendall]

It's sad that people actually think even the UK is a police state, they obviously have not read much about what being in a real police state is like, or travelled to some truly controlled parts of the world (like Zimbabwe, which I have been to).

It cheapens the term when you abuse it like that.

Re:Very sad

[DreamsAreOkToo]

It's sad that people actually think even the UK is a police state, they obviously have not read much about what being in a real police state is like, or travelled to some truly controlled parts of the world (like Zimbabwe, which I have been to)

SuperKendall, why do you buy into this argument? I see it a lot on Slashdot, and everywhere else I go!

It goes like this:
"X is bad."
"Y is worse than X, X isn't bad at all."

The fallacy here is that somehow, you could be the 2nd worse and that isn't a bad thing at all! While it might be true that the UK doesn't make people disappear (yet) it is also true that the UK is creating very powerful policing tools, and that once they do start making people disappear, it will be all too late, as George Orwell has warned us.

And don't even think for a second that our leaders are benevolent and immune to corruption.

Re:Very sad

[sakdoctor]

I disagree.

People seem notoriously unable to recognise a police state when they are immersed in one.

On the other hand, I don't think there is a photofit image of a police state for easy identification. It's fallaciously to say, "Oh look, we aren't as bad as China/Iran/Zimbabwe, so we can't be a police state, every thing's fine."

Re:Very sad

[Anonymous Coward]

rather, people don't disappear in large numbers, yet. There are the occasionally reported cases of people being detained for periods of time widely considered unreasonable for criminal investigations.
Likewise, people aren't assaulted in large numbers. That doesn't mean the police limit themselves to levels of force widely held to be acceptable.

And then there's the participation in rendition programs that do nothing other than make people disappear.

Re:Very sad

[thermian]

It's sad that people actually think even the UK is a police state, they obviously have not read much about what being in a real police state is like, or travelled to some truly controlled parts of the world (like Zimbabwe, which I have been to).

It cheapens the term when you abuse it like that.

Agreed

I live in the UK, and I'm rather appalled that people talk of our being or becoming a police state.

It seems to me some people are desperate to prove a police state exists in a nice safe (and entirely free) country so they can get all annoyed about it and not have to deal with the real ones, or the potential dangers of protesting an actual police state.

Last I checked people weren't being dragged from their beds in the night and improsioned/shot/beaten, and we have a legal system which apportions everyone legal rights that the police cannot avoid. I can't be bothered to refute this any more though, its too nonsensical for that.

Re:Very sad

[interkin3tic]

SuperKendall, why do you buy into this argument? I see it a lot on Slashdot, and everywhere else I go!

It goes like this:
"X is bad."
"Y is worse than X, X isn't bad at all."

His argument was actually "It's not a police state, calling it that weakens the criticism." Which I think is valid. Saying "The government keeps a log of when I leave the country... POLICE STATE BIG BROTHER!!!" is somewhat overstating it. I know I roll my eyes when I hear that term, because it gets thrown around so often. It immediately reduced my interest in this issue.

It seems to just be cynicism trying to pass itself off as wisdom. "I knew this would happen, after all, we do live in a police state." It just sounds like arrogance to me. I'm not impressed, we don't live in a police state, quit being overly dramatic. There is work to be done, but not on /.

Re:Very sad

[damburger]

What worries me is that all the tools of a police state are there, but not employed yet. The government have powers of arbitrary detention, suppression of public protest, suppression of publication, and so on. They haven't been used to any great degree yet - probably because the civil society we spent centuries developing has a certain inertia to it - but having such laws on the books at all is tempting fate.

Re:Very sad

[damburger]

Muslims do get raided like that, although it is not widespread yet. These things happen in degrees - we are not at totalitarianism yet but we are displaying some characteristics of it, and that in itself is wrong.

Re:Very sad

[commodore64_love]

>>>It's sad that people actually think even the UK is a police state, they obviously have not read much about what being in a real police state is like, or travelled to some truly controlled parts of the world (like Zimbabwe)
>>>

Even if the devil gives you a palace in Hell and says, "Look how much better I treat you than those poor smucks without a roof and in the middle of the flames," the fact still remains: You are in a damn hot place. I'd rather live in a freedom-loving UK Paradise, than a lukewarm hell.

Re:Very sad

[Anonymous Coward]

David Kelly disappeared himself.

Re:Very sad

[Builder]

Being the second fattest chick in the bar does NOT make you skinny!

Just because there are worse places out there is no good reason to allow our own lands to slide.

Re:Very sad

[Richard_at_work]

"Muslims" do not, as a group, get "raided". Just because the vast majority of current high level suspects, or "persons of interest" are from that group does not extend the treatment to the entire group.

Re:Very sad

[nomad-9]

Nor the UK, nor the US are becoming "police states" the way countries like Zimbabwe are.

And that would be because they dont need to use force, when it is easier to control people's thought process through education and mass media.

That would be the only analogy with Orwell I can see: the narrowing of the range of thought.

Re:Very sad

[mdwh2]

I entirely agree. Saying "But but, it's not as bad as [insert some very bad country]" is not exactly a ringing endorsement!

What happened to striving towards a country that values freedom? Now instead, it's okay to strive towards countries like Zimbabwe, just so long as things don't get as bad as them? This trend in itself is worrying.

Re:Very sad

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't believe this has been modded insightful.
The logic in it is bad.

It's perfectly logically acceptable to say "Muslims do get raided like that" if only some people who are muslims get raided.
As well as being logically fine, its also useful, if many of those who have been raided share the characteristic of being muslim. Which they do.

Compare, for example:
"Black people were racially discriminated against in Americas past"

Were all black people racially discriminated against?
No, but some of them were, so it makes sense to say.

Re:Very sad

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear Slashdot and thermian,

"Last I checked people weren't being dragged from their beds in the night and improsioned/shot/beaten, and we have a legal system which apportions everyone legal rights that the police cannot avoid."

As an Irish citizen, I find it a bit scary when UK citizens say things like thermian did above.
Less than 40 years ago pulling people from their beds and imprisoning them without any legal recourse was *exactly* what the United Kingdom of Great Britian and Northern Ireland was doing.

I would like to draw your attention to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Demetrius

"Operation Demetrius, or Internment as it is more commonly known, began in Northern Ireland on the morning of Monday, 9 August 1971. Operation Demetrius involved the arrest and internment without charge or trial of people accused of being members of illegal paramilitary groups by the British Army and the Royal Ulster Constabulary."

"many of the people arrested were completely unconnected with the organisation but had had their names appear on the list of those to be interned through bungling and incompetence"

In discussions on the prevention of nations becoming police states in future, it would be extremely helpful if the very recent history of said nations was not totally ignored.

Re:Very sad

[Richard_at_work]

*My* logic is bad? Your logic is utter bullshit - there has not been one single case of a police raid conducted because the recipient was muslim, there has always been other reasons for the raid. You need to learn context before you engage in a debate with adults.

Oh, and yes, all blacks were racially discriminated against in the context you put forward - there were laws restricting blacks rights and freedoms....

Re:Very sad

[Anonymous Coward]

rather, people don't disappear in large numbers, yet. There are the occasionally reported cases of people being detained for periods of time widely considered unreasonable for criminal investigations.
Likewise, people aren't assaulted in large numbers. That doesn't mean the police limit themselves to levels of force widely held to be acceptable.

That reminds me of the story on the housewife of a school teacher here in the US. After being the victim of an assault, she calls the police. For whatever reason the deputy on arrival asks to see her papers(id), and she accidentally hands him her dead sister's ID. The cop tosses her in the back seat of his squad car and takes her back to the station, where she's held down on her stomach in a jail cell by a couple of male officers while they strip her naked. They video-taped her the entire time. They then leave her in the cell for 6 hours. She was charged with some misdemeanors and the officers got off clean.

You can read the longer description on youtube by clicking "more info" on the right.

The real surprise is...

[Malc]

... that they're not already doing this.

I believe Canada does it. When I returned to Canada last year from one of my trips, the guy at the border swiped my passport, looked at the computer screen, and commented on how much I travel. He hadn't even looked at all the visas and stamps in passport.

The US has definitely been keeping track of everything for years. When I went for the final interview for enrolment in the Nexus programme, the US immigration guy swiped my Canadian passport. After a while he asked me what happened at Detroit in Oct 2000. I'd been refused entry whilst travelling on my British passport, before I had Canadian permanent residency and long before citizenship, but he'd connected my two passports.

Re:The real surprise is...

[MarkRose]

Canada has been for years, yes. The only time I have not had my ID scanned when returning to Canada was on a tour bus where the guard just looked at my passport. The US guards are particularly anal. Last time I crossed into the US, the guard accused me of trying to move there because I had crossed a week earlier. Although there is one crossing where I've never had trouble -- because there is no guard.

Re:The real surprise is...

[MichaelSmith]

Same here but this article is probably about taking that data and archiving it in a database elsewhere with a nifty web front end so higher ups can import it into excel and fabricate correlations before leaving it on a running laptop on the tube after going to the pub and having a drink or 10 too many.

Re:The real surprise is...

[tyroneking]

But what *did* happen at Detroit in Oct 2000?

Re:The real surprise is...

[kubitus]

sorry - you are wrong.

Media in Europe say it is already in place and it was discovered. So UK gov gave an explanation that it "is planned" .

http://euro-police.noblogs.org/post/2009/02/08/bislang-geheime-datenbank-erfasst-in-gro-britannien-alle-ein-und-ausreisen

http://www.heise.de/newsticker/Bislang-geheime-Datenbank-erfasst-in-Grossbritannien-alle-Ein-und-Ausreisen--/meldung/127093

http://derstandard.at/PDA/?id=1233586959776

Re:The real surprise is...

[Malc]

Refused entry in to the US by a rotten apple in the INS. I guess there were a lot of them at the time, which was something that was supposed to be cleaned up when the DHS was created. I was travelling with a former RCMP officer, who couldn't believe what he witnessed that day. US immigration were rather incredulous about the whole thing the next time I tried to visit, five years later. Obviously I'd done nothing wrong or I wouldn't have my Nexus card, which is a zero tolerance programme. It's on my record though for the rest of my life, because of one arsehole. Most Americans don't realise how badly visitors are treated. I travel a lot around the world (just in the last couple of years: US, Canada, UK, Germany, Peru, Chile, China, Hong Kong, Macau, Australia and Japan), and nowhere is as bad as the US - if given a choice of visiting US or China, I would pick China any day just because the border is a better experience, even though the risks are perhaps higher if things don't go in your favour.

Re:The real surprise is...

[tyroneking]

Sadly believable! I remember a very old Peter Ustinov interview where he stated that his United Nations Passport saw him welcomed at every country he visited, the only exception being US immigration, where they treated him with disdain.

"The Automated Targeting System"

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.metafilter.com/64931/The-Automated-Targeting-System-the-US-governments-recordkeeping-system-on-travelers

More security

[retech]

Somehow just does not make me feel more secure.

USA

[Anonymous Coward]

This'll be handy next time I need a US visa, as they like to know where you've been in the previous 10 years...

Ironic that Hitler started this trend

[cheekyboy]

So ironic that Hitler started the concepts of monitoring citizens, being big brother and record keeping everything (with IBMs help).
So did the UK win? or has it turned itself into 1932 germany?

police state? - been there!

[petes_PoV]

Yup, I've been to iron-curtain countries (when there was still a "proper" iron curtain). Most citizens were wary of the police and would scatter whenever they showed up, even if they had done nothing wrong themselves. Otherwise they would keep their noses clean and do whatever they could to keep out of the way of the law. Foreigners (like me) were basically told to do the same - be calm & courteous, offer documents and ID whenever approached and otherwise keep out of their way. Oh, yes: don't go around photographing official buildings or people - you'll get arrested.

This is exactly the same position that law-abiding UK citizens face every day, in their own country. If that isn't a measure of a police (run) state, then I can't say what is. Taking extreme examples of a failed state (e.g. Zimbabwe) as an example does not represent the everyday situation.

We're there already guys. It just crept up on us, slowly, and no-one noticed.

Re:police state? - been there!

[Smuttley]

You run away from the Police when they show up? Do you get arrested for photographing offical buildings or people?

I've not been in the UK for just over a year but things must have changed an awful lot.

Re:police state? - been there!

[SuperKendall]

This is exactly the same position that law-abiding UK citizens face every day, in their own country. If that isn't a measure of a police (run) state, then I can't say what is.

Come on, I've also been to the UK a number of times and I have to call you on this statement.

When have you ever seen ANYONE in, say London scatter when the police come? They are way more likely to give them lip. This is the country where disabling speed cameras is a national pasttime.

And as a serious photographer I've photographed the hell out of everything there without issue. There's the occasional overzealous guard that sometimes gives people trouble, but even if they go to jail that's usually found to be wrong and they get a full apology along with some remuneration.

Here's a hint - in a real police state, they were not wrong to arrest you for photographing because the state arrested you and the state is never wrong. That simply does not happen in the UK.

I've been to real police states too and the UK is nothing like them, nor even close.

Re:police state? - been there!

[damburger]

Depends on how you are dressed. If you have the temerity to wear a hoodie, a baseball cap, or the wrong colour skin, you are VERY wary around the police. The UK police are undermanned and under great pressure to produce 'results' - i.e. convictions - so they go for easy collars. Often this involves intimidating someone from a poor background into doing something, however minor, that could constitute resisting arrest or assaulting an officer, and stomping on them for it - despite the fact that the individual would've commited no crime were it not for being approached by the police.

Watch the film 'taking liberties' by the way - it shows two older ladies being accosted by the police for standing on a hill near a military base, with a camera crew.

Re:police state? - been there!

[DNS-and-BIND]

Funny, I'm living in a police state at this very moment. You couldn't have something like this here, and yet it exists in Britain.

I thought all this "we live in a functional fascist theocracy" insanity was supposed to go away when Bu$hitler left office?

Re:police state? - been there!

[Bertie]

Fear of the police? Not yet. Just the other day I read this in the Guardian:

"On the canal bridge just behind Kings Cross, a policeman took a huge snowball full in the face and - I couldn't quite believe this was happening - giggled delightedly (it must have really hurt). His three colleagues gathered snowballs and pelted the mob of school boys and girls, quite sensibly avoiding head shots (think of the lawsuits). But they were outnumbered and outgunned. And anyway, they were easy targets, these coppers in their fluorescent jackets. And the school children, those alleged dysfunctional products of our greed-obsessed, low-serotonin, broken-homed, intolerably lardy, TV-ruined society, were in a snowy wonderland where there was no school, no rules and nothing to worry about. I've never seen London secondary school kids look filled to the brim with such girlish glee. "See if you can knock his helmet off," I yelled at one girl (which probably made me an accessory to something but I don't care: the delirium is infectious) and she pitched a curve ball that would have hit had the copper not ducked."

Now, while I, like any right-thinking British citizen, am extremely worried about our government's incessant control-freakery, there is a huge amount of goodwill towards the police in this country, who for the most part have a history of being decent and even-handed. This is because they're an implement of the people, not of the state, and have always been operationally independent from the judiciary and the government. From time to time certain factions of society have their run-ins with them, but by and large they're seen as being "on our side". Sadly this is being steadily eroded by the current government, and at this rate it won't be long before people turn on them completely.

Re:police state? - been there!

[Anonymous Coward]

Depends on how you are dressed. If you have the temerity to wear a hoodie, a baseball cap, or the wrong colour skin, you are VERY wary around the police.

Oh how I wish this had any basis in reality.

Re:police state? - been there!

[petes_PoV]

Come on, I've also been to the UK a number of times and I have to call you on this statement.

OK, here's an excerpt from the Financial Times magazine, Jan 10, 2009. It's from an article where a reporter accompanies two PCSOs (one 18, the other 24 - just think of all the weeks of experience these two must be able to draw on) on their evening "beat" in London. They're talking about photography by individuals: ...We talk about how Whittern and Eastoe sometimes see potential terror suspects taking photos of buildings as part of "hostile reconnaissance". I ask how they know who is a potential terrorist and who is not. They talk in terms of assessing behaviour - such as whether the individual tries to hide his or her camera ...

Whittern says there's no harm in asking someone a few questions about what they're taking photographs of and why, to gauge whether there are grounds for concern. Depending on the results, a person's personal details could be passed on to Special Branch by a police officer. ... I ask Whittern if he is concerned that this approach risks making the area feel unnerving, especially to it's many foreign visitors. He says he respects people's privacy but is "more concerned about the safety of the City".

So, we're all potential terrorist suspects now and it appears we should all be treated like that.

Re:police state? - been there!

[JohnBailey]

Oh how I wish this had any basis in reality.

Oh how I wish it hadn't.

Re:police state? - been there!

[lxs]

The fact that an instance of policemen acting like human beings is so exceptional that it warrants an article in a national newspaper says enough for me.

Re:police state? - been there!

[Builder]

I avoid the police at all costs, to the point of not reporting violent crime that I was a first hand witness to. This is a direct result of my treatment at the hands of UK police when reporting crime in the past.

People ARE arrested for photographing things / buildings and people now and in around 10 days time (I forget the exact date) it will be illegal to publish a photograph of a police officer.

Re:police state? - been there!

[Shakrai]

and at this rate it won't be long before people turn on them completely.

I read an interesting article that placed the blame (in the US) for the people turning on the police squarely on the War on Drugs. The War on Drugs was the primary catalyst for the militarization of police forces (they went from being armed with revolvers to having SWAT teams with fully automatic weapons and armored vehicles) and introduced an entire generation of Americans to the concept of being arrested for doing something that harms no one.

It's fiction, but if you've ever watched 'The Wire' you can actually see how this plays out on our streets. I don't know what the solution is -- it would take years to wind down the War on Drugs and probably another generation before people stopped viewing the police as the enemy.

Re:police state? - been there!

[Anonymous Coward]

The individual police officers are not the problem. The majority of them are very nice people who are just as baffled and annoyed by the ridiculous laws that they have to enforce. The problem is that in the last couple of decades all of their decision making powers have effectively been removed, meaning that they are now bound to do everything exactly by the book. For example if someone makes a complain of assault against you, you will be arrested, even if the officer doing the arrest knows damn well that it never happened and you'll never be charged. It's not their decision to make any more: as bizarre as that sounds, it really is true. An officer doesn't even get to decide if or what crime may or may not have been commited: a civilian in the call centre will decide and open a crime for the most vague reasons, often mis-classifying them in the process (I.e. opening a crime as "Racist" even when the victim themselves does not believe racism was involved!).

If you don't believe me go read some of the Police blogs by the likes of Inspector Gadget or Girl Next Door, or their books. The reality will blow you away.

Re:police state? - been there!

[LordSnooty]

Depends on how you are dressed. If you have the temerity to wear a hoodie, a baseball cap, or the wrong colour skin, you are VERY wary around the police.

And this is different to, say, the 1970s, in what way? Police have always held prejudiced views of certain parts of society, just like their fellow citizens might. To use this as proof of a "police (run) state" is frankly laughable.

Re:police state? - been there!

[Anonymous Coward]

All it says that public opinion is against the police. It says nothing as to whether that has any basis in reality.

People could be paranoid, or they could be right. Or (here's where I'll be characterized as an evil right-wing conformist) perhaps this particular paper/journalist/editor has prejudged the police force without any regard to reality OR public opinion. Can't tell much objectively from anecdotes alone.

Open Project To Track ALL GOVERNMENT ACTIONS

[itsybitsy]

An project open to the public is hereby initiated to track and publish the movements of ALL GOVERNMENT STAFF from ALL branches and departments of ALL governments in ALL countries around the world. No government business is to be carried out unless all participants are video recorded and broadcast LIVE to the public around the world. No business of the public is valid unless it's public! Track all government officials, staff, employees. Record when they are with you and publish on the web. Develop and design tracking systems to monitor all communications of all government operatives anywhere and anywhen, anyhow. Their work is not valid public business unless it's fully PUBLIC!

Little Brothers Unite Against the Oppressive Big Brothers.

Re:Open Project To Track ALL GOVERNMENT ACTIONS

[L4t3r4lu5]

mod parent +1 Abouttobedisappeared.

You demean those who have suffered before

[SuperKendall]

SuperKendall, why do you buy into this argument?

I don't "buy into" anything. I merely mean to protect the meaning of a phrase.

You see, literally millions of people have died in real police states. Not been inconvenienced, or had some privacy stripped from them (though that of course happened to). I am talking about actual lives lost.

That's pretty much where I draw the line. As much as you might not like the governments attempt to keep a travel journal for you, it's hardly anything like a "Police State" Wake me when you are not in fact allowed to leave your own country, or your Slashdot post whining about the police state from your cozy home is met with imprisonment.

I am not saying some things that are being done should not be reversed, and are not good ideas. What I am saying is that to equate your "suffering" with those that have truly suffered at the hands of a police state is obscene, and you belittle them all.

I'm sorry if you can't see that, but if you keep watering down the word people will not realize when REAL problems occur as they'll have no way to describe them, just like the boy who cried wolf.

Re:You demean those who have suffered before

[Xiph]

People don't die as long as they play along.

The fact that people play along, doesn't change whether or not it's an orwellian police state.

Right now, we can at least agree that governments in Europe are quickly installing all the tools required for creating and maintining a police state/totalitarian dictatorship.

I think we should stop making more hammers, before the average citizens starts looking like nails.
I'm looking forward to when the EU gain the power, to declare a union wide state of emergency. When they get that power, it won't take many years before it's used.

Re:You demean those who have suffered before

[Anonymous Coward]

The German governemnt has had the power to create a nation-wide state of emergency since the 60s, and those were abused all the time, right? Right? Oh wait, they weren't. They were never used.

The fact that people play along, doesn't change whether or not it's an orwellian police state. The fact that it's actually not an orewellian police state by any sane definition of "orwellian" or "police state" does.

Re:You demean those who have suffered before

[SuperKendall]

Right now, we can at least agree that governments in Europe are quickly installing all the tools required for creating and maintining a police state/totalitarian dictatorship.

I don't agree though.

Some of the tools, sure. But it's no-where near stepping over that final line.

In fact I see nothing but backpedalling from most EU states to do anything to actually control citizens. Documentation is to me rather the opposite of control, or at least one with the lowest effect on citizens, and governments all over are giving up direct control (say police) in exchange for documentation (like, say speed cameras or the cameras they have all over London).

Those are not the tools of real oppression, but of annoying bureaucrats. They might nickel and time you to death with fees based on said information, but they will not really ever do anything to you. Now if you want to coin something like the phrase "Burostate" I am right there with you, but I am not willing to say it's anything like traditional police states for peril to the body that a real honest to goodness police state offers. It's bad but in a wholly different way. It's a kind of a loss of freedom but one leading to a very different destination.

Re:You demean those who have suffered before

[damburger]

Those are not the tools of real oppression, but of annoying bureaucrats.

My take on communism, from the words of those who lived under it, was that annoying bureaucrats are quite capable of real oppression.

Re:You demean those who have suffered before

[Anonymous Coward]

We're losing our right of privacy!

Europe has always had a lot of bureaucracy, governments will have to streamline how data is handled, to reduce costs.

Which will probably mean automating a lot of the handling, and make it more easily accessible.

So i guess we disagree, i do think we're implementing the tools totalitarian dicators dream of. I hope we manage to keep electing the right people.

Re:You demean those who have suffered before

[julesh]

Wake me when you are not in fact allowed to leave your own country

The UK has legislation that prevents certain "undesirable"s from being permitted to leave the country, in apparent contravention of international treaties. (Sexual Offences Act 2003, s. 114)

Re:You demean those who have suffered before

[mirkob]

..... i do think we're implementing the tools totalitarian dicators dream of. I hope we manage to keep electing the right people.

electing the right people, yeah, like here in italy where the worst prime minister of all times just told that he want to change the constitution so that he does not have to have his emergency legislation submitted to the head of state signing.

that after he hastily made a law to prohibit to let die a poor person that has been in comatose state for last 17 years (not even eutanasia, simply cease the forced alimentation)
law that was refused by the president because anti costitutional.

search englaro case for information.

for example this
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/coma-womans-fate-left-in-berlusconis-hands-1604504.html

Re:You demean those who have suffered before

[intheshelter]

"that to equate your "suffering" with those that have truly suffered at the hands of a police state is obscene, and you belittle them all."

- Please don't waste everyone's time with that old "I'm outraged" scam. The poster's statement didn't belittle any of the people you're trying to prostitute for your arguement. The only person who should be ashamed is you, because you had to resort to prostituting others in your attempt to justify your position.

Re:You demean those who have suffered before

[mdwh2]

I don't see that it demeans the phrase. If people are murdered in a "police state", I don't say "They lived in a police state" if I want to convey the gravity, I say "They were murdered".

No, I don't think that we are in a police state. But the term is not some magical phrase that is only reserved for the absolute worse case possible - that demeans the phrase. You are wrong to equate police state with "very bad things like murder" in the first place. The term is a phrase describing how things are run in a country, and not what necessarily takes place in such a country. It's also not a case that one either is or isn't - a country typically has many different systems, and it's rather simplistic to catgorise all countries as either being a police state, or not being one. You could have countries that were generally okay, but where they gave judicial powers to the police. OTOH, you could have regimes where people were murdered by the state, but which wasn't a police state at all, because it was still a democratic country with oversight by the courts.

I'm sorry if you can't see that, but if you keep watering down the word people will not realize when REAL problems occur as they'll have no way to describe them, just like the boy who cried wolf.

The only one watering down phrases is you, by mistaking a term describing how things are done in a country, with how many people are murdered in such a country. By your reasoning, a state where millions of people were imprisoned by the choice of the police wouldn't be a police state, so long as they were simply "inconvenienced" and not murdered.

Re:You demean those who have suffered before

[Schemat1c]

Wake me when you are not in fact allowed to leave your own country,

Hmmm.. would you rather be waken up now or when the government agents break down your door?

Re:You demean those who have suffered before

[ultranova]

You see, literally millions of people have died in real police states. Not been inconvenienced, or had some privacy stripped from them (though that of course happened to). I am talking about actual lives lost.

I think it's closer to a billion, now. I mean, Stalin alone killed tens of millions, and was nowhere near the worst of the lot.

That said, do you think that police states just pop up overnight? No, they require careful cultivation, especially if you're starting from a liberal democracy. They require the building up of surveillance systems and draconian laws - both of which Britain is doing, along with seemingly every other Western democracy.

I know people die in real police states. I wish we could stop the slide towards them before I become one of them. We can't, of course; WW2 is too distant, and the majority of people don't remember what it was like to live in dictatorships of the time. Those from the former Soviet Block do remember, but they're rightfully afraid of Russia's rekindled ambitions, and flock to NATO for protection.

Oh well. We'll have another few dictatorships, a world war or two acting as a really rude wake-up call for everyone, and then the cycle begins again. That's how it goes.

Re:You demean those who have suffered before

[Anonymous Coward]

Are the old people dieing neglected and unburied? Are the kids drafted at 13 and shipped off for 5+ years to fight a trench war with spectacular casualties? Do farm animals and pets fall over and die in the streets and fields because people cannot feed them?

Until those things come to pass, or something equally horrible, there will be no "revolution" in North America. I can't speak for England, but I suspect about the same.

I'm a disabled vet, by no means well off by US standards, yet I have a large TV, a crappy but running car, a couple pets, and no one I personally know has been wronged seriously by the government.

These are not revolution conditions. Right now we're at more of a "1965 San Fransisco" level of cultural upheaval; I don't see any reason to get all "1917 St. Petersburg Russia" over it.

Re:You demean those who have suffered before

[DarkVader]

You do understand that once that "final line" is crossed, it's too late, right?

Once it really gets going, nothing short of a war, a total economic collapse, or a massive revolution can stop the oppression.

And many of us would like it to never get to that point, and therefore we point out when government actions are leading us in the direction of a total authoritarian state.

No, we're not there yet. Yes, many of the actions governments are taking today are repressive, police state actions. We point out these police state actions, and make lots of noise about them because we want to reverse this horrible direction before it crosses the final line.

IBIS and IP's

[VirtBlue]

The USA hold IBIS data indefinitely and even down to the IP your purchased your ticket from.

Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, they're already doing it in the US:

http://current.newsweek.com/budgettravel/2008/12/whats_in_your_government_trave.html

Give an example

[SuperKendall]

People seem notoriously unable to recognise a police state when they are immersed in one.

Please give an example?

Through history it's been pretty clear when the police state arrives, because that's when the cleansing begins and freedom truly ends.

It's absurd to the look at the UK and say "those poor buggers are just like Zimbabwe or old Russia". It's offensive to those actually suffering day to day in those regimes.

And it's even more sad that I am being attacked because I have the temerity to point this out, that people think because I dislike the use of the term "Police State" I must of course agree with the concept of the government keeping secret records and so on. Well I don't, it's just that I have seen real suffering and dislike people pretending they are under the same thumb or even close. You can't claim that *I claim* that everything is fine simply because I object to you normalizing references to any oppressive government from Zimbabwe to the UK under the same umbrella. Everything is not fine, but you can't take away the ability to see just where you are on the scale either.

Re:Give an example

[sakdoctor]

Yeah, I can throw anecdotes around too.
But i'm not going to because I reject your relativist approach to this whole issue.

Dont worry, it probably wont happen

[GreenTech11]

This is just a way for the government to keep track of information they already know. This is just an attempt by the government to make itself, dare I say it, simpler. Either that or "The baeuracracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding baeuracracy"

You know not of what you speak

[SuperKendall]

Zimbabwe is no more a "police state" than anywhere else.

I've been there asshole.

You can't take currency out of the country (illegal, you can be arrested). The protesters we take for granted here in the US would all be dead by now in Zimbabwe as speaking against the government there is not healthy. The price of basics like bred is controlled by the state (meaning of course there is none) and you will be arrested if you try to circumvent that.

Then of course there are the random armed checkpoints with soldiers set up to question you...

Try going there and then post your ignorant relativistic bullshit.

Re:You know not of what you speak

[damburger]

This is a futile discussion - classifying all nations into 'police state' and 'not a police state' is oversimplifying a complex issue.

So you have seen Zimbabwe with your own eyes. Have you seen the UK also? If so, could you gauge in your own opinion how far from true freedom the UK is in the direction of Zimbabwe, and if it is truly headed for such a state.

Re:You know not of what you speak

[Eivind]

You're right. Some places really truly are worse than other places. Relativism is bullshit.

But I'm not sure where your argument is headed; Are you truly saying we shouldn't be concerned about the policies and the development in the UK, because there exists worse places on this planet ?

It sorta sounds like it, and that makes no sense at all.

If something is bad, then it remains BAD even if you can point to one (or many!) examples of things which are WORSE.

Re:You know not of what you speak

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you truly saying we shouldn't be concerned about the policies and the development in the UK, because there exists worse places on this planet ?

No, he isn't. He literally already spelled it out for you, that he isn't. He doesn't even criticize "being concerned". All he says is, that shouting "OH NOES! ITS ZE NAZI REGIME!" is a bit ridiculous.

Re:You know not of what you speak

[Anonymous Coward]

As a UK citizen i can honestly say we are not becoming a police state aka zimbabwae.

1:
out military do not run armed check points
2:
nobody has disappeared for critisizing the government.
3:
the current laws that are being abused were part of a terrorism act which is being inforced by stupid councils rather than police. This is being picked up on and dealt with in the usual slow way.
4:
the state of our police force and councils any data they store will probably appear on ebay within a week.
5:
The laws in question already exist in the USA.

Re:You know not of what you speak

[Anonymous Coward]

QuantumG's a professional troll, ignore him.

Re:You know not of what you speak

[Builder]

I was born there and have been there repeatedly and recently. I've also been to far worse places.

There are many healthy and active protests, and yes, there are risks with this. The difference there right now is death vs arrest here in the UK. That doesn't make the UK better, just less efficient.

Many of the armed checkpoints are vigilante run and are run for opportunist / profit motives.

Many countries with weak currency have laws about taking currency out of the country and will arrest you for this - this does not make them a police state. It's especially ludicrous when taking common currency is illegal - I got done trying to take CFA out of either CAR or Niger (I can't remember which), despite this being the primary currency in many countries in the region.

Re:You know not of what you speak

[mdwh2]

the current laws that are being abused were part of a terrorism act which is being inforced by stupid councils rather than police.

We're a council state!

But I'm not sure that's true - people arrested and held without charge for 30 days under terrorism laws is something that is decided and enforced entirely by the police.

And anyway, by your own reasoning:

out military do not run armed check points

That's the "stupid" military, not the police.

Re:You know not of what you speak

[Anonymous Coward]

I second that!

As a Dual Citizen (British/Zimbabwean) who lives in both countries, let me say that the UK is miles away from being a police state.

I have been arrested in both countries, and I can honestly say that you can arrest me in the UK anytime you like, at least I know I will be treated fairly.

I was arrested once in Zimbabwe. I was at no point told that I was under arrest. (although I figured out exactly what was happening) I was visited by members of the Central Intelligence Organisation in the middle of the night, they had surrounded the house, but knocked on the door and asked me to accompany them to assist in their investigations of a housebreaking (The house in question belonged to a senior government official), as I had been seen in the area on the night in question.

I was home alone (my wife being out with friends) I went with them, and was never told I was under arrest, but when we arrived at the Police Station, I was told to empty my pockets, remove my belt, socks and shoes, and roughly thrown into a pitch-black cell that contained about 20 other men (I only discovered how many of us were in there when the sun came up)

I was held for 3 days & 3 nights, without charge, I was never given a phone call, no lawyer, nothing. My wife had no idea where I was, even though she had phoned & visited the same police station to report me missing.

Groups of two were regularly taken away from the cell we were in, for "Further Investigations" These guys ALL came back battered, bruised and bleeding. You live in fear of the cell door being opened, praying that they don't call your name.

I was eventually released unharmed. The thought of compensation, an apology etc never entered my mind, as I would have better luck wishing for a winged horse.

It has happened to others I know, and keeps happening. Sometimes people are taken, and are never seen again. Their friends and family have no idea if they are still alive an being held somewhere, or weather they have been killed during interrogation and their bodies disposed of, down a disused mine shaft.

The Government, through the police, army, and militias, have covered the country with a blanket of fear and uncertainty, that haunts the whole of society.

A Government Official can decide that he does not like your business and you will be informed that due to new regulations, you need a licence to operate, you will never get such a licence as the governments conditions are impossible to fulfill. However, that official's brother/cousin/wife etc will miraculously obtain a licence and start opereating.

The Government can arbitrarily decide to Freeze the price of goods at whatever they choose. eg. Price of Bread is $1.00, it costs roughly $0.70 - $0.80 to produce a loaf. Government decides the price of bread is now $0.50. Any sensible baker would stop producing, as they can't afford to subsidise bread to the people at $0.20 - $0.30 per loaf. However, this is not a sensible environment, and the bakers are now accused of trying to sabotage the country by withholding bread which is a staple food. Owners & managers of bakeries are thrown in cells.

In a country with 80% unemployment, I have seen groups of people rounded up by the army for "hanging around" at the local shopping center, and asked why they were not at work, accused of being "destabilising saboteurs of the economy" and made to perform undignified acts at gunpoint AK-47 for the amusement of the soldiers.

You can be chased from your house, land and possessions, never to return, buy armed (non-uniformed) thugs. The police will not raise a finger to help, claiming it is a "Political" issue, and they have no jurisdiction.

That my friend is a but a tiny glimpse of a True Police State, aka Zimbabwe.

Now let's compare thiswith the UK:

You WILL be told you are under arrest, you WILL be given a phone call, you WILL be given access to a lawyer, and you WILL be giv

Re:You know not of what you speak

[Anonymous Coward]

1: our military do not run armed check points customs, airports, sea ports, most lines of separation between countries (borders) 2: nobody has disappeared for critisizing the government. Your sure on that? Ofcourse, this is hard to prove as if they're dissapearing, then it probably wasn't a legal act to begin with, as if it was legal, then they would most probably use them as pariah's and political scapegoats to get more laws passed that further infringe on your freedom - ALA David Hicks in australia. 3: the current laws that are being abused were part of a terrorism act which is being inforced by stupid councils rather than police. This is being picked up on and dealt with in the usual slow way. So a council is enforcing a national law, but they're the idiots. Fair enough. More to the point, however, what country *isn't* currently abusing the anti-terrorism laws as much as they can and still pushing through more to solidify their existing powerbase and make the changes wrought irrevocable. 4: the state of our police force and councils any data they store will probably appear on ebay within a week. Yeah, not gonna argue there. Unfortuantely, your smack on the nail with this one. 5: The laws in question already exist in the USA. Most of the laws in question already exist in the UK as well, and are being used and abused just as badly. Any western country caught up in the "terrorism" mentality is doing the exact same thing : destroying your civil liberties and curtailing your freedom under the guise of protecting you against the people who want to destroy your way of life and kill you all in your sleep. Won't somebody please think of the children?!?!?!?!?! Gah, we're all going to hell anyways, let em make the plunge faster. I for one am sick of watching this world *slowly* destroy itself from the inside.

Re:You know not of what you speak

[ruadatha]

so at what point does being worried about the state of your countries political affairs and the direction that the laws being introduced seem to be headed consitite anything but prudence? "The United Kingdom is felt by some to be moving quickly in the direction of a police state,[7] with biometric identity cards,[8][9] continuous surveillance and long term detainment without trial all having been introduced by the government." (from wikipedia on police state) Wow.. seems like they have the basis for what people are worried about.. And now they're introducing yet more measures... but anybody who says anything to that effect must be a moron cause zimbabwe is worse.

and just like the other UK gov. databases...

[damburger]

...it is going to be left on a train by some retard in the civil service.

I don't know what is worse - totalitarian government collecting information on us all or totalitarian collecting information on us all and then fucking losing it.

Writing this, I do feel perhaps I am exaggerating a bit with the word totalitarian, considering some of the other regimes that have been described as such. So I would be interested to get some perspective from someone who lived in Eastern Europe under communism (was it really 20 years ago? fuck I am getting old) and now lives in the UK - on a scale of 1 to Glorious Peoples Republic Knows What Is Best For All, how buggared are we at the moment?

Re:and just like the other UK gov. databases...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi everybody. I happen to be one of those. I was born and raised in Poland but left it for South Africa and these days I live in the UK for quite a few years now.

Anyway - to the point, how it was like in communist Poland:

- The state kept your passport at the passport office - if you wanted to go somewhere, you applied to have your passport handed to you, you were handed it after a short interrogation by the secret police, you had to give it back after your return and after another short interrogation.

- The state could lock you up at any time, the people's militsia (the police) could just grab you, smack you with the baton, cuff and throw into the police cell for up to 48 hours. After that they let you go or they charged you.

- Demonstrations were illegal and dealt with using brutal force (water cannons, anti-riot police with anti-riot gear).

- The state eavesdropped on the communications (phones) of the suspects/dissidents continously, without warrants.

- Everybody had a unique ID number, and carrying an ID document was obligatory. No papers - locked up for up to 48 hours.

That's only a few I can remember now. So yes, in some aspects the UK is worse than former communist regimes - see one of the above posts - they can lock you up in the UK without charge for more than a month. Stalin would be proud!

Doesn't really tell them where I've been

[Smuttley]

I'm a British citizen. I flew out of the UK on 24th December 2007 and flew back on the 31st May 2008.

I flew to Russia and back from Thailand. In between I'd traveled overland to Mongolia, China, Vietnam, and Cambodia.

Unless the UK has some sort of automatic data sharing with these countries then this database will really tell them very little about where I've been unless they get hold of my passport.

Re:Doesn't really tell them where I've been

[butlerdi]

It is called airline reservation and ticketing systems. Amadeus et al. Also whenever your passport is scanned or that little piece of paper you filled in is input, there it goes. They all cooperate in a scratch backs scenario. If it moves it is tracked.

Uh... Yeah

[netcrusher88]

So this is different from the current state of things... how? I guarantee every time you enter or leave almost any country, it's already logged. Particularly the more technologically advanced countries we know as the "First World".

typical knee jerk reaction on privacy

[speedtux]

I'd be very surprised if the US is not already doing this, and just not making a point to let anyone know.

If the US does this, it's fairly recent; the US did not use to keep a lot of records. And if they don't let anybody know about it, that means that they can't be using it as part of regular legal proceedings (otherwise you'd know about it), which is a big part of the reason why people are concerned with the government collecting all this data. And US government agencies are restricted in the kind of data they can collect and how they can exchange it, while the UK is hoping to link all its databases.

I think people should stop this knee-jerk reaction assuming that privacy is better protected in Europe. You hear a lot about privacy issues in the US because people care passionately about it in the US and because Americans distrust their government, but that doesn't make privacy worse. Europe has a lot of laws protecting citizens from intrusion by private entities, but the laws for protecting citizens from government intrusion seem weaker to me. Even US border controls, which look quite intrusive for non-citizens, are not much different from some other Western democracies.

Making an argument that privacy is better protected in one nation compared to another requires looking at a lot of detailed legal and administrative facts, and actual cases.

Re:typical knee jerk reaction on privacy

[Anonymous Coward]

name a country which requires you to: fill in a visa application over a week before travel, have an electronically readable passport have a passport with more than 6 months left on it have a passport with at least 5 pages empty asks all tourists if they are a terrorist now youve answered the USA. Ill continue. Yes europe has less laws regualting government intervention than the USA but we know what data is held about us. Secondly the reason that this is news is more to do with government incompetence with previous systems.

Re:typical knee jerk reaction on privacy

[Anonymous Coward]

There is already this database.
We just copied you. (maybe not the year count, i'm not sure what it is in America)

I am sure this was brought up a few months back at least, someone actually requested that he see his own "travel records" because he was routinely pulled over on his travels.
It took him around a year to actually get it.
And if i remember correct, it had blacked-out sections, as well as opinions on "him", in relation to safety.

Re:typical knee jerk reaction on privacy

[speedtux]

name a country which requires you to: fill in a visa application ...

The US doesn't require me to do that, it only requires non-citizens to do that. So, that doesn't affect the privacy of US citizens.

Furthermore, the only reason you don't have to jump through such hoops in some other countries is because Europeans get special treatment. Try traveling as someone from a developing nation. Even as a European, several Asian countries require extensive pre-registration.

Yes europe has less laws regualting government intervention than the USA but we know what data is held about us.

There are three kinds of data governments keep: the kind that is part of public laws and regulations, the kind that is kept secretly but legally under national security and intelligence rules, and the kind that is kept in violation of the law.

You know only about the first kind, and in that area, the US government keeps less data than most European governments.

As for the second and third kind of data, you have no idea of knowing what governments keep or don't keep, and your assertion is wishful thinking.

Re:typical knee jerk reaction on privacy

[speedtux]

There is already this database. We just copied you. (maybe not the year count, i'm not sure what it is in America)

That's a bit simplistic. It's not like you could ever come and go as you please; there has always been a record of entries and exits. The change is in what is collected, how it is stored, and how it is shared.

Your view that the US is pushing the envelope and everybody else is following is wrong. The UK's effort seems to go quite a bit further because it appears to aim at correlating travel data routinely with other data.

I am sure this was brought up a few months back at least, someone actually requested that he see his own "travel records" because he was routinely pulled over on his travels. It took him around a year to actually get it. And if i remember correct, it had blacked-out sections, as well as opinions on "him", in relation to safety.

Yes, post 9/11, the US started making this info part of border controls, even for US citizens. And because of FOIA legislation, Americans can access it. The UK copied the US FOIA law; give it a try and see whether you can get your travel information in the UK.

Downloading publicly available data

[captainpanic]

Using facebook, twitter and all that crap, we practially give away our privacy... so why blame the government for just downloading what is publicly available?

We all notice what is going on. And we all care... for about 5 seconds. And then we're distracted again.

I'm sure I care about my privacy... but I just don't spend enough time on it to really get involved in any revolt against the police state. Unless you can really revolt using twitter or facebook. I fear that a proper revolt is still done with barricades and burning trashcans, not with facebook and blogging.

So, will there be an end to the loss of privacy? Will people care? Yes.
Will they do something about it? Not a chance.

Always the same justification

[dugeen]

In all these New Labour surveillance stories there's always an attempt at justification on the grounds that n arrests for serious crimes have resulted (never n convictions btw). Of course, the corollary is that 74,999,999 of the 75 million passengers mentioned in the quote have been wrongly suspected of those serious crimes. I call on Phil Woolas to visit every single one of those people and deliver a personal apology for falsely suspecting them.

Re:Always the same justification

[triffid_98]

Since you lot would like to launch your own version of the hit TV show 'Big Brother - UK Edition', I can understand why you need all of those surveillance cameras, but could you please stop convicting terrorists for implausible crimes?

For some reason airport security now seems to believe that my bottle of Shampoo, combined with Hair gel will somehow blow up a plane. You know, the one I'm threatening to hijack with my nail clippers.

In all these New Labour surveillance stories there's always an attempt at justification on the grounds that n arrests for serious crimes have resulted (never n convictions btw).

What's the difference with Google Latitide?

[Anonymous Coward]

So Google Latitude with your mobile provider can know in each and every instant of your life with a mobile where you are, maybe soon with a little tweaking even what you are saying.

Or in the Netherlands for example transportation companies can track exactly all your moves with public transportation to the minute, there also are databases preserved for years and can be accessed by the police.

What matters of this UK proposal? That there the government will own the database? Is one or more private companies better or worse than the government? Or maybe it's just the same..

What is the difference? We are doomed. We won't ever again be free as intended until about 1995.. ..unless throwing away all technology and go live in the country. It's up to us.

DDOS

[giafly]

If you live in Eire or Northern Ireland, near the border, please could you spend a few minutes stepping from one to the other.

Not only will this improve your aerobic fitness, but all your "journeys in and out of the UK" could help overload this stupid system

Re:DDOS

[Anonymous Coward]

Spend only a few minutes??
I could go one better...build a football pitch, right in the center of the border.

That'll teach them to be breadbaskets.

Cool...

[OneSmartFellow]

... this can only lead to one thing. A huge project costing many hundreds of millions, which will then run over budget by at least a multiple of two, as well as be delivered years late, and finally be scrapped when it can't handle anywhere near the number of records it was designed to handle; as well as having no meaning querying facility.

I just love it when the government wastes my money like this. It's so much more interesting to watch than when they build stuff that's actually needed like clean waste disposal sites, fresh water reserviours, and public transportation infrastructure. That stuff is usually completed on time, under budget, and works as advertised - how boring.

Re:Cool...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not a waste of money if you're in the business of government.

Even when government fails outright, the business of government wins. In fact, government failure is often leveraged as justification for even more power and revenue (drug prohibition is a classic example). As long as government isn't financially accountable for the failure (which they never will be, otherwise they wouldn't be government), they will have the incentive to continue the cycle. Looking at drug prohibition (just one of many examples), we can observe that after half a century of failure there is now an entire ecosystem of leeches sucking on what is now a multi billion dollar business. The punch line is that this business is of absolutely no value (negative value in fact) to those who actually pay for it.

Bottom line: if the elite at the top of the power pyramid are pulling money through their hands -- no matter where it came from or where it goes -- they win. After all, they're not exactly relying on persuasion (like a private enterprise) to acquire that money. Like a neighborhood protection racket, coercion lies at the heart of the business and guarantees that they aren't responsible for what happens.

Re:Cool...

[Anonymous Coward]

Reminds me of a police Criminal Database developed for Thailand some years back. All records to be accessed from a server in Bangkok. It 'only' cost 600 million baht.
The local police budgets didn't allow for the cost of (telephone) connecting to the server so Joe Copper couldn't use the system. Duh..

theres always a balance

[cheekyboy]

Im sure UK wouldnt want to import 30m africans yearly, first that would just be impossible to house and feed.

But if people truly wish their locals have more children, do the following;

1. have it easy to have a family with one parent working.
2. make larger houses cheaper, so we can have 5 kids.
3. stop promoting working careers to all girls, nothing wrong with 30% being mothers at 18.
4. bring back the 60s, let love be free, and 50% of all girls get pregnant.
5. Importing too many smart people from 3rd world countries hurts them more, they need to grow their own way too, they need their own smart people.

Bottom line, is balance, and not TOO much of X. You dont see 5million americans living in Japan do you?

Immigration jobs must be utterly brain dead boring

[cheekyboy]

Considering 99.9999% of people traveling are legit, it must be sooo brain dead boring asking the same questions, quizing people, interogating people, and finding out most are legit, and very very very few are crims/baddasses.

How sad it must be to go home and say, "F*CK, I screened 8200 people, and only 1 hit!!!, what a dull day!"

That must really make them eager to bust people, be over zealous and find the most minute thing to detain people on.

the gravy train is over

[speedtux]

Allowing Workers to freely migrate within the EU was a big mistake and will drive wages down.

Wages in the UK and EU are going down because there is lots of cheap labor available overseas.

Closing the borders to people or goods makes the situation worse, not better. If you stop people from coming, the same people are going to work elsewhere for less.

If you stop good from coming, then people will need to buy UK goods for more money and their money will be worth less.

Face it, the prosperity of the late 20th century is over. The UK has little competitive advantage over India or China, and hence its standard of living is going to equalize. Protectionists measures only make things worse. And the same is true for the US and Europe.

Brits have the government they deserve

[Anonymous Coward]

A documentary on "dangers in maternity wards" was aired this weekend on French TV. It appears that UK newborns get bulky RFIDs strapped to their legs so that they can't be stolen/exchanged. It appears mothers are not horrified at all. Actually, at some point one mother was horrified by the fact that her baby didn't have his RFID! And they were demanding even more cameras, tagging, a.s.o. The rationale being "it's the lesser of two evils, we're more secure like this, think of the children". I guess they only get the representatives and the laws they deserve...

Re:Brits have the government they deserve

[Anonymous Coward]

It appears that UK newborns get bulky RFIDs strapped to their legs so that they can't be stolen/exchanged. It appears mothers are not horrified at all.

As a sane person I have to ask: Why exactly do you think they should be horrified?

Re:Brits have the government they deserve

[Anonymous Coward]

This seems to be a perfectly reasonable use of RFID. In the past there have been a few cases where babies were mixed up, with the mistake being detected years later. The RFID simply adds an extra check to ensure that each parent goes home with their child. As an additional bonus it does actually prevent a weirdo stealing a baby (not that I can recall many instances of that actually happening). Of course the RFID tags are removed when the baby is about to leave hospital, with its own parents!

Already happening

[Anonymous Coward]

There doing it already INSIDE the UK- at least in south east. Number plate logging cameras are set up on all main routes into towns and on motorways- these are NOT speed cameras, road tax cameras, or mere cctv. They are logging car number plates and you could assume putting them into a database.... wheres my tin foil hat...

I_have_a_boner

[Anonymous Coward]

The UK scheme is based upon the success of the very same scheme that is currently active in the United States.

Clue up people.

Europe has done this for ages

[Kupfernigk]

Whenever I used to visit Italy before the borders agreement, hotels and boarding houses used to take your passport away and record details that went to the police. As for Switzerland...I remember crossing on a small country road over the Jura once. One of our party had his passport in the trunk, and took several minutes to find it. This immediately caused the border guard to decide that he had been hoping to get across the border without showing it. We were held up for half an hour while, I think, they investigated his passport to see if it was fake (we could clearly see a UV light bring turned on and off in the border post). Thereafter, every time he went in or out of Switzerland, he was held up. Strangely, I never had any trouble.

I am seriously beginning to think all this "police state" stuff is actually a campaign by the BNP/UKIP. Civil Liberties in the UK are actually being threatened to some extent by the right wingers in the Government, but the "police state" stuff is wild exaggeration. And if the BNP/UKIP ever did form a government, how long would civil liberties last?

Re:Europe has done this for ages

[feepcreature]

Lots of other countries may well be worse, and we may well not be in a police state yet. But you concede that civil liberties are being threatened by some in the government. Thus we are moving towards a police state, even if we are a long way off. Two obvious questions are:

• how close should we get to a police state before you think it is dangerous? (or, less contentiously, how much government snooping is reasonable, for the greater good?)
• And should we encourage people to get used to asking questions about new surveillance proposals before we reach the threshold of police statehood?

Re:Europe has done this for ages

[Petrushka]

I am seriously beginning to think all this "police state" stuff is actually a campaign by the BNP/UKIP. Civil Liberties in the UK are actually being threatened to some extent by the right wingers in the Government, but the "police state" stuff is wild exaggeration. And if the BNP/UKIP ever did form a government, how long would civil liberties last?

The truly wondrous irony is when the BNP complains about living in a police state, e.g. ashfieldbnp.org.uk/?p=278 (not an active link as I don't want to encourage hits). As someone on the News Quiz said when the BNP complained of police oppression some weeks ago, surely you'd think they'd be pleased!

Don't panic! Don't Panic! terrorists! terrorists!

[feepcreature]

Could that count as conspiracy or incitement to damage one of the UK's critical security computer systems.

Sounds like terrorism to me!

"UK doesn't make people disappear"

[longusername]

Under present laws, eg. Terrorism Act 2000, people can be held incognito for up to 30 days. In other words, you just disappear. People think you are dead. They would most likely call the police. This only happens to terrorists, of course. Right?

Well, actually it happened to me. 36 hours inside. For two nights my girlfriend thought I was dead. She was indescribably upset about it. This is how it goes. What did I do? I took some photographs in the centre (yes, this is the correct way of spelling "center") of town with my mobile phone and some dork behind one of those ridiculous cameras thought I was taking a picture of a manhole cover which could be used for terrorist activities.

I'm not making this up: http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1213934526/bctid5172505001

Re:"UK doesn't make people disappear"

[ElAurian]

Ooo, you nasty criminal.

It was definitely the beard. Only a terrorist would wear a beard.

Bloody interesting little drama, thanks for the TV link. Not quite that bad in Oz yet... unless you're brown-skinned or orthodox Muslim, then you can get done for pretty much anything.

Re:"UK doesn't make people disappear"

[prbt]

Wow. You have my sympathy (for all the good that does). What's the latest re: destroying your fingerprints and DNA?

Re:"UK doesn't make people disappear"

[BoberFett]

Wow, that messed up. Not even the traditional phone call? If that's not evidence of a police state I don't know what is.

Re:"UK doesn't make people disappear"

[Kamineko]

Would you have a link to a text version or transcript of that page?

Re:"UK doesn't make people disappear"

[longusername]

No news yet. The government still haven't used up their three months response time. Thanks for asking. We'll see.

Re:"UK doesn't make people disappear"

[longusername]

If you are being held on suspicion of the preparation, instigation or commission of a terrorist act [note: no terrorist act need have taken place] under section 40 of the Terrorism Act 2000 the police can waive your right to a phone call to prevent you from alerting your fellow terrorists who may then be able to take evasive action of some kind. At least that was my understanding from what the police said.

UK borders already extremely well-protected

[gqgreg]

I am a US Citizen and my partner is English. A lot of people may not know this, but when you fly into the UK and you are not a citizen, you are subjected to extremely close scrutiny. You are required to provide proof of onward travel. Every time I go there now, I am very nervous because I may be accused of overstaying my visa -- not necessarily in UK, but elsewhere, like Europe -- anything that may cast doubt on my tourist status while in UK. True, my partner is English and we are not married, but I am basically unable to travel to UK at the moment, because I have more UK and Europe stamps in my passport than US stamps. I will have to legitimize residency in Europe by getting employed or marrying my partner, before I can ever travel into the UK again.

This further tightening of travel restrictions for the UK only portends darker days to come. I always imagine the UK to be a very friendly, open society. But there are some really shady 1984-style things happening in the government there.

Re:UK borders already extremely well-protected

[Anonymous Coward]

Bollocks. The UK doesn't deny entry to US citizens willy nilly as you describe. No US citizen I have ever known has had trouble crossing into the UK, and that is a lot of people. Just walk up to the border guard, smile, ask how he's doing today, maybe crack a joke about where you're going, smile, and you're fine. Were you caught trying to smuggle in drugs or something once? Stop spreading FUD.

Am I the only one...

[ArIck]

... who sees it beneficial to know about the terrorists travel history. It could help to know that he visited a brother in Amsterdam the month before and gambled at Las Vegas before blowing himself up.

Seriously?

Oh for....

[Fuzzypig]

Oi Gordon are you listening? TRACKING DOES NOT WORK! THE BAD GUYS KNOW HOW TO GET AROUND THESE THINGS! Stop wasting my fecking money on this tripe and start paying people to do some real work!

Actually the real scumbag is Jacqui Smith, she this blinkered view terrorists are luriking around every corner and we all need protecting from ourselves, fecking bitch the quicker we boot this lot the better, then at least we'll have a few years of peace and quiet until the polls show the next mob are going down, then it starts all over again!

Revolt in the US

[qbzzt]

You can keep polishing your rifle while dreaming about storming the capital building, but frankly with their 3 million military personnel I doubt you'll have them quaking in their boots.

True. It's the loyalties of those 3 million military personnel, and recently released veterans, that are the ultimate limit to the power of our government.

Of course, it helps that the recently released veterans do have rifles. A lot of them also know exactly how the US military fights an insurgency.

Re:Revolt in the US

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, it helps that the recently released veterans do have rifles. A lot of them also know exactly how the US military fights an insurgency.

Badly?

Re:Revolt in the US

[qbzzt]

No, it's the media that says they fight badly. If you ask them (you can, they're online), they'll say they are winning and give examples and statistics.

Go to bar.baen.com, for example, register, and ask this question in KratsKeller or Ringo's Tavern.

Re:Revolt in the US

[robinsonne]

Oh for mod points! There's a big difference between reality and the media's portrayal of it.

Yes you are the only one

[dugeen]

The point is that the people being surveilled aren't terrorists. Phil Woollas knows perfectly well that any repressive policy can be falsely justified on the grounds that - as well as millions of innocent people - it catches a small number of people who have actually committed genuine crimes. When in the future Stockwell-style shootings have become more widespread, the government will be issuing press releases to say that among the 150 people shot dead by the police in tube stations this week, 2 of them were subsequently found to have previous convictions for dropping litter. This is what Geoff Hoon meant when he said he was prepared to 'go quite a long way in undermining civil liberties.'

Bad thinking: it's apathy before the event.

[thinkwhere]

"I'd be very surprised if the US is not already doing this, and just not making a point to let anyone know. "

This is exactly how they will manage to get these laws passed. You all think they are already doing these illegal activities, so when they say "can we do this?", you reply "Sure! You may as well, you are doing it already anyhow...".

Well, here's the news: They are _not_ already doing this!
Stop watching 24, or any other Spy / Law TV show.

Do not assume you are already living under a surveillance society, because if you do, then you *will* find out later that you let them do it.

Re:Bad thinking: it's apathy before the event.

[Anonymous Coward]

Protip buddy, they have been doing this in the US for years.

None of this 24 crap or whatever.

There a masses of documents on every person coming and leaving US soil.
You can even request the information (if you are willing to wait a long time, and have it given to you with parts not even you are allowed to see)

Police State? Really?

[6Yankee]

If this is a police state, where are my doughnuts?!

- Aggrieved Sugar-Deficient Brit

What a Paradox !

[yvesdandoy]

Becoming a fashist government to protect democracy.

RIP Bill of Rights
RIP Abea Scorpus

illegal immigration = no entry record

[anexium]

If someone is coming into the UK illegally (in the back of a truck for example) then they won't be coming through the 'official-wait-in-line-to-processed' queue. So how exactly will this new uber-database be able to know they've come into the country?

And as is typical with anything this government wants to introduce they've thrown the 'it'll stop illegal immigrant / cure terrorism / repeal child porn' card. However they never, ever tell you how *exactly* it's going to achieve those goals. And then they'll change these goals when it's been introduced, pretending never to have said that it'll actually have anything to do with the previous goals.

The only reason I can see for the current government to be introducing all these half-baked schemes is that they - like everyone else - can see that they're not getting back in at the next election and they're on a mission to screw things up for the next lot.

However, I seem to remember - and do hope to be corrected - that there is a law that the incoming government can't be held to any contracts agreed by the previous one. Knowing this lot though, it's probably been quietly repealed.

Re:Immigration jobs must be utterly brain dead bor

[Shakrai]

That must really make them eager to bust people, be over zealous and find the most minute thing to detain people on.

What are you basing that one? My observation of people working those types of jobs is that they don't want to bust people. Busting someone == paperwork.

second house is called the House of Lords...

[Anonymous Coward]

Say what you will about the United States but at least it takes more than a majority vote in the House of Representatives to start taking away our rights. You'd also need a majority vote in the US Senate...

The UK has something very similar. For new legislation a majority vote is required in both the House of Commons AND the House of Lords.

Running afoul of privacy

[LoadWB]

"I'd be very surprised if the US is not already doing this, and just not making a point to let anyone know."

Except that such actions would run afoul of the database provisions of the Privacy Act of 1974.

Not that the government might not withhold information for the sake of "national security," but there is little reason for it to do so in this case. The Act does not require a public consensus on a database's introduction, only that its existence be publicly known and that a person can issue a correction to any data about him or her contained within. That being said, there is no apparent requirement that this process be easy or expedient, AFAIK.

Who said it was a police state?

[mdwh2]

Saying "The government keeps a log of when I leave the country... POLICE STATE BIG BROTHER!!!" is somewhat overstating it. I know I roll my eyes when I hear that term, because it gets thrown around so often. It immediately reduced my interest in this issue.

Note that neither the article nor the summary referred to a police state in the first place. This was only mentioned by the first post - your interest in a topic is reduced just by a random person commenting on Slashdot?

The article talks about big brother and surveillance, but that's very different to "police state", and those labels are much more appropriate to this story - Zimbabwe is irrelevant, because "big brother" or "surveillance" aren't to do with "people being murdered".

Re:Who said it was a police state?

[interkin3tic]

Note that neither the article nor the summary referred to a police state in the first place. This was only mentioned by the first post - your interest in a topic is reduced just by a random person commenting on Slashdot?

Yes. That's still a person, who was expressing their honest opinion. Are you implying I shouldn't be at all influenced by other people's opinions? Good luck with that. I know it's not the best reaction, but I'd be lying if I said it didn't decrease my interest in this. Other people are undoubtedly the same way although they might not be honest about it.

Re:Who said it was a police state?

[mdwh2]

So I could get you to make you think the opposite, just by posting a stupid comment? Okay then:

These new plans are absolutely necessary, because there are terrorists lurking on every corner, and underneath people's beds! This plan will magically get rid of them forever!

Personally when I judge an issue, it's the strongest and most convincing arguments that I cornern myself with, not the weakest or most stupid ones.

Riot sledging

[Anonymous Coward]

The Sunday Times ran a short story about a crowd of people who were enjoying the snow when at the top of the nearby hill a group of riot police appeared. Everyone was wondering what was about to happen when the police put their shields on the ground and then used them to sledge down the hill, before going somewhere else. The article didn't say where this happened but I would like to believe it is true.

Re:Police State already in place

[kubitus]

European media report that the database already exists and has 70 Milllion datasets already stored

http://euro-police.noblogs.org/post/2009/02/08/bislang-geheime-datenbank-erfasst-in-gro-britannien-alle-ein-und-ausreisen

http://derstandard.at/PDA/?id=1233586959776

http://www.heise.de/newsticker/Bislang-geheime-Datenbank-erfasst-in-Grossbritannien-alle-Ein-und-Ausreisen--/meldung/127093

haha there rules...

[mr_musan]

"targets those who aren't willing to play by our rules"
well that is exactly it they set the rules we got to play by, they didn't even say anything about uk citizens always being allowed in, this is another horrible step toward a totalitarian state

Movements OUT of the country?

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in the USA, but the last few times I left the country (1998, 1999, and 2006), there was no check of my passport as I left the USA; only when I came back.

I must admit, however, that those three trips out of the country were two round-trip air flights and a cruise, so technically, there was a record of my leaving. Not sure how complacent Carnival is with hanging over passenger lists to DHS.

Has anyone here left the country on land at the border, on foot or by car? Does the USA check you on leaving, or just on return?

nope

[scientus]

warrentless wiretaps of ALL calls, domestic and international.

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/12/first-interview-nsa-whistleblower

http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?mkt=en-US&brand=msnbc&vid=297abdd5-d0dc-4617-a6c9-c482fa316b59

They copied EVERYTHING, INDISCRIMINATELY, FROM EVERYBOSY, and then passed a 'law' giving the telecoms retroactive immunity.

http://video.aol.com/video-detail/countdown-12209-fmr-nsa-agent-communications-rights-ignored/2733120647/descr

Breaking news

[bugs2squash]

This just in, the Home secretary announces that the database will be hosted on a laptop left on the passenger seat of a car.

terrorism or tourism

[LM-Els]

"essential in the fight against crime, illegal immigration and [of course] terrorism."

Am I the only one to read "tourism" there? I'm just too innocent for this world...

question about my wife flying with me

[Anonymous Coward]

The last time I went through U.S. immigration in December '08 I was asked why my wife was not flying with me. Apparently someone is keeping track of my flying habits.