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UK Government Plans 10-Year Database of Citizens' Travel

Posted by timothy on from the always-on-vacation-in-oceania dept.

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.

27 of 289 comments (clear)

  1. Police State by Blue+Stone · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --
    Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
    1. Re:Police State by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:Police State by Nursie · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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".

    3. Re:Police State by hobbit · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

      --
      "Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something" - Plato
    4. Re:Police State by quickOnTheUptake · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      --
      Mod points: Guaranteed to remove your sense of humor.
      Side effects may include gullibility and temporary retardation
    5. Re:Police State by commodore64_love · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      --
      "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
    6. Re:Police State by Shakrai · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      --
      I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
      We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
  2. Stephen Fry... by Goffee71 · · Score: 4, Funny

    ...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!

    --
    If he's the Walrus then can I be a penguin please?
  3. superficial and ineffective by petes_PoV · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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.

    --
    politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
  4. The real surprise is... by Malc · · Score: 5, Informative

    ... 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.

  5. Re:Very sad by DreamsAreOkToo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  6. Re:Very sad by sakdoctor · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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."

  7. Re:Immigrants by Malc · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  8. Re:Very sad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  9. Re:Very sad by thermian · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    --
    A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
  10. police state? - been there! by petes_PoV · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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.

    --
    politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
    1. Re:police state? - been there! by damburger · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

      --
      If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
    2. Re:police state? - been there! by Bertie · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

    3. Re:police state? - been there! by lxs · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

  11. Open Project To Track ALL GOVERNMENT ACTIONS by itsybitsy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  12. You demean those who have suffered before by SuperKendall · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    1. Re:You demean those who have suffered before by Xiph · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      --
      Blah blah sig blah blah blah irony blah blah
  13. You know not of what you speak by SuperKendall · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  14. DDOS by giafly · · Score: 4, Funny

    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

    --
    Reduce, reuse, cycle
  15. the gravy train is over by speedtux · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  16. Re:Very sad by Richard_at_work · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "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.

  17. "UK doesn't make people disappear" by longusername · · Score: 5, Informative

    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