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BBC Criticized For Snooping Under RIPA Powers
judgecorp writes "The BBC and other UK public bodies have been criticized for excessive and secretive use of snooping powers granted under RIPA (the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act). The act allows the BBC and other to request information on suspected criminals, but it has been over-used, and used covertly according to critics. From the article: 'The BBC said it had not been secretive about how it was using RIPA powers. “The BBC uses Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act for the detection of television licence evasion alone,” a spokesperson said. “It is only used as a last resort once other enforcement methods have been exhausted.The reason we do not release more details on how and when it is used is to ensure people without a valid TV licence don’t use this information to their advantage when attempting to avoid detection.”'"
It's worth it to have the BBC. Seriously.
When V for Vendetta came out, I was watching it and thinking "Curfews? Meh. Government sponsored rape squads? Yawn. You call this a dictatorship? ...wait a minute, they've replaced the BBC with US-style propoganda TV? The bastards!"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licence
You pay that there IS something to watch in the first place.... (Instead of fundfraising pleas from you PBS)
bickerdyke
Yes, and in return, you have one or several channels that are rely less on advertising resources for their survival. You also get news that is written more by real journalists and less by corporate bullies with political agendas (yes, I'm talking about Fox)... while still be independant from their government. You also get shows and other stuff that would not be considered mainstream enough to make money... Some countries decide that it's worth it to have some sort of tax on everybody to promote/create/garantee that sort of stuff. You have the right to disagree of course.
In Soviet UK, TV watches you!
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
You have to have a TV licence for live TV. Most of the money goes towards the BBC and the TV, radio and other services it provides. The upshot of that is that BBC content is broadly well regarded quality wise and doesn't contain third party advertising. The down side is that some people don't see why they should have to pay the licence if they don't like the BBC's content.
Only if you want off-air or live streaming. The BBC provides about a dozen advert-free channels of high-quality programming, and dozens of ad-free radio stations..
Compare this with the state of TV in the US, where you pay about the same amount of money (or more, depending on your cable or satellite provider) to watch ten minutes of adverts with two minutes of programme in between.
It must be great if someone is rich enough that paying the TV license is a moot point when it comes to affordability. However, whether or not there's exemptions for the poor, for those near poor it can be a burden I imagine. Why don't they just subsidize the revenue needed by shifting to a graduated income tax? Just get rid of the TV license. I imagine it'd be more cost effective to have one less method of taxation. Plus, I subscribe to the idea that communication should be tax-free.
That's about the size of it. It's slashdot, so they must maintain their rabidly anti-UK stance no matter what.
It's like they hate us because we're free, or because we keep pulling them out of the shit when they get embroiled in wars the US can't fight on their own, or something.
I haven't paid my TV license since I moved away from home some 10-15 years ago. Most of that time I haven't actually had a TV either, I get my media online these days... but the people who come asking why I haven't paid my license are rarely so easily convinced.
"Hello, I'm from 'Radiotjänst', we notice you haven't paid your TV license."
"I don't have a TV."
"Really? Can I look?"
"I don't have a TV, I don't have a TV card for my computer, or any other item that is listed as requiring me to pay your license."
"Are you sure, it covers quite a lot. If I can come in and have a quick look..."
"I'm quite sure, and no, you can't come in."
Then they'll usually call a few weeks later, because the inspector reports that behaviour as suspicious, so they call to ask. And then sometimes I get a letter as well, making sure I know that I seem to have 'forgotten' to pay my license.
Agencies like that are the basic reason why things like RIPA is a very, very bad thing. Guilty until proven innocent, and harassed until you confess whether actually guilty or not. Organizations with that mindset is what caused the inquisition, so we really need to keep them under check rather than giving them more power.
"The reason we do not release more details on how and when it is used is to ensure people without a valid TV licence don’t use this information to their advantage when attempting to avoid detection.”
Bollocks. The reason they do not release more details is that they don't want to.
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
"...Why don't they just subsidize the revenue needed by shifting to a graduated income tax? Just get rid of the TV license. I imagine it'd be more cost effective to have one less method of taxation...."
Yes, it would be much more cost-effective. If you only interested in making a profit. But that's not the point.
Ever since Lord Reith, the BBC has carefully guarded its independence. Do you think we haven't thought of funding through direct taxation? But The important (VITAL!) thing about the BBC is that it is NOT a government-run station. It is not beholden to government and dependent on a minister deciding to provide or withhold tax. That means that it can afford the huge and rare luxury of:
1 - not being commercial. Not only does that mean no adverts, it also means that unusual/experimental programs can be run depending on artistic merit alone, even if there is not an obvious market for them. Why do you think the BBC leads the world in development of novel entertainment?
2 - being able to criticise not only government policy, but ALL pressure and interest groups equally. This enables it to have balance, which no other broadcasting station can have. During WW2 the world listened to the BBC, because everyone knew that it would report stories accurately, no matter who was going to be annoyed...
3 - transmitting civilisation according to educated ideals. Lord Reith laid down the dictum that the BBC's job was "to inform, educate and entertain". In that order. No other funding system would be able to support that ideal.
In fact, what happens is that the British pay into a fund to maintain themselves and the rest of the world at a reasonably civilised cultural level. The BBC is neither commercial nor political in spirit. It is biased in favour of idealism. There is nothing anywhere else like it.
The funny part is you apparently think the other news programs in thw US have "real" journalists. CNN? MSNBC? CBS? These guys trip over their own ideological slant every day
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
There is very little in the way of subsidy , being blind reduces the licence fee and i think there is a provision for pensioners. Other than that there are fines and imprisonment as alternatives to paying.
One issue, often stated, with bundling into general taxation is that it would probably lead to the government deciding what is or isn't acceptable to broadcast, especially when it is something which shows the government in a poor light.
It would make sense for the BBC to encrypt their channels and eliminate most of the thorny issues concerning licensing. Since if you want to watch the content you would need to pay for a card to decrypt it. Unfortunately the BBC knows that the revenue base would shrink dramatically. It would also put an end to most of Europe having free access to the BBC via satellite. Interesting to the note the contrast between Britain and Ireland in broadcasting to it's neighbours, There is a certain propaganda value to pushing British Culture to foreign parts one not shared by the more neutral Irish.
Ireland already does encrypt it's channels delivered by satellite, you need to access them via a subscription to Sky TV or use Digital Terrestrial TV *. Either way you will not be able to view outside of Ireland, to be honest you wouldn't be missing much other than Fair City, and Irish News and Sport. The bulk of the broadcasts are from UK, Australia and the USA, and are widely available anyway.
Ireland still has the curse of TV licensing and since digital terrestrial isn't encrypted an excuse to carry on with it into the future.
* Analog TV shuts off in Ireland in a few months time.
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Your example kind of argues against your point.
You do know why Assange is hiding in Ecuador, don't you? HINT: He's not afraid of "special rendition" to Weston-Super-Mare.
As a fan of the BBC I wish all of this were true, unfortuantly its not quite. The BBC's budget is used as a politcal weapon. The Conservatives would like to reduce the BBCs size and thus influence, something they were calling for before they were in power. Personally I'd summise that if News International hadn't scored such an amazing own goal recently (as a lot of influence was coming from them) that the pressure to do so would increase. Their main problem is that like the NHS, on the whole people quite like the BBC...
Also it's woth noting the World Service I'm pretty sure is paid for by the goverment rather than from the license.
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This. The BBC has been a mindless lapdog since Hutton.
Interestingly, under the much more authoritarian Thatcher, it remained a thorn in the government's side. (It required a decades or two to remove all the activist management and gradually replace them with stooges.)
"2 - being able to criticise not only government policy, but ALL pressure and interest groups equally. This enables it to have balance, which no other broadcasting station can have. During WW2 the world listened to the BBC, because everyone knew that it would report stories accurately, no matter who was going to be annoyed..."
Which they do so well that practically every ruling UK political party has accused the BBC of being biased in favour of the opposition. Including most recently our current abomination of a government. Basically because the BBC doesn't parrot what they are fed by the government they must be biased. Unlike the commercial media/press organisations that have been shown recently to have a disturbingly close 'relationship' with the UK government. It is just a shame this that will eventually be the death of the BBC as they get punished by those governments by having their funding cut. That and most people think that because they don't like *everything* on the BBC they shouldn't have to pay for any of it so are eager to support such actions.
Bloody hell I would be.
It would ok with me if you could avoid the TV license if you didn't use any BBC content, but the TV license applies to all live TV. Even if I only ever watch commercial TV, I still need to pay the TV license. Perhaps that made sense when there were only a few channels, but not today. It's just another one of the UK government's stealth taxes.
The money doesn't go to the UK government, so I'm not sure how it's "just another one of the UK government's stealth taxes".
1. We know these powers have been abused in the past, and more generally speaking power is always abused when given. That is why we need oversight of power.
2. There is no oversight in these cases. It isn't just the BBC, there are other unmonitored organizations. You are correct in stating that we don't know if there has been any abuse yet (although arguably TV Licensing merely using such powers counts), and that is the problem.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
...unlike commercial television, whereby anybody who buys a packet of breakfast cereal is forced to make a donation to the cost of TV, even if they never watch it... and when they do watch it everything is effectively censored to avoid upsetting the advertisers. Or do you think the money to pay for commercial TV is magically conjured up by the Invisible Hand Fairy?
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Much of that thanks to the tireless efforts of the Daily Mail turning middle class opinion against it, for the very reason that it was a thorn in the Tory government's side.
If you can't kill it directly, go for a propaganda war. The Daily Hate Mail is very good at that sort of thing.
Do you think we haven't thought of funding through direct taxation?
To be very blunt, I think your country is insane for letting the BBC have that kind of power over you. And yes, I don't think your country has thought about it. Else they would be funded differently.
The money doesn't go to the UK government, so I'm not sure how it's "just another one of the UK government's stealth taxes".
Well, I imagine a great majority of the other money that goes to the UK government doesn't actually go to the government either. It goes to people, businesses, and whatnot, that just happen to be, like the BBC, doing stuff that the government decided to force their citizens to pay for.
So they might not actually have done anything and they most likely haven't done anything inappropriate and they don't have any obligation to reveal what they've used the powers for, but let's pretend they're all doing evil things with it 24/7 because it makes for a better article.
That is a fair assumption to make about power. And since the BBC isn't a citizen but a public organization with a bit of power, there's no concept of "innocent until proven guilty". If they're not willing to show what they're doing with that power, then I'm not willing to assume that they aren't abusing it. That's how I roll.
Unbelievably, I couldn't give a shit whether Americans are watching it or not, but here are a few incredible television shows created by the BBC which spank most - I did say most - comparable American products:
As far as journalism goes, The Daily Mail is an embarrassment. It's an affront to journalism which is purely aimed at tacky sensationalism which has only the most tenuous relationship with the truth.
But this conversation wasn't about "the UK's" journalism, it was about the BBC's journalism, which - while it has some weaknesses I have been known to bitch about - can only be regarded as among the best in the world. The ABC in Australia is the only organisation I can think of with a comparable code of journalistic integrity and surprisingly, the only better journalism I've ever seen comes from Al Jazeera of all places.
If you are handing out challenges though, how about you name just one solitary US news outlet which can be trusted to reliably provide balance to the news stories it broadcasts? Just one. I'll wait.
By the way, did you enjoy watching the Olympics live on NBC?
A.I. Research. The peculiar science in which we know the question and we know the answer, but can't show the working
The money doesn't go to the UK government, so I'm not sure how it's "just another one of the UK government's stealth taxes".
Well, I imagine a great majority of the other money that goes to the UK government doesn't actually go to the government either. It goes to people, businesses, and whatnot, that just happen to be, like the BBC, doing stuff that the government decided to force their citizens to pay for.
But that's the point - the BBC is independent of the government very specifically. The money collected for running it is not from or collected by the government. It is not a tax in that sense. It's set up this way to ensure that the BBC is not just a state-owned and controlled media arm of whatever government happens to be in charge at the time.
The TV licence is very definitely not a "stealth tax" in any sense of the definition whatsoever. It is not part of the government.
You might as well say that water rates are a stealth tax - the water companies are not part of the government, but you must pay water rates if you want to receive piped water into your house, and the collection of this fee is enforced by law.
Also it's woth noting the World Service I'm pretty sure is paid for by the goverment rather than from the license.
This is no longer the case. One of the first things the Tories did when they recently got back into power was to "freeze" the BBC Licence Fee. From 2014, the BBC World Service will be funded from the Licence Free and not from the Government. The deliberate effect is to force bigger cuts onto the rest of the BBC.
When did we have left wing authoritarianism? We went from Thatcher (Conservative) to Major (Conservative) to Blair (New Labour - Old Conservative) to Brown (ineffectual) to Cameron (Conservative). The only one of those who could possibly be considered left wing was Brown, and he came in at the peak of the financial crisis and spent his entire term on the defensive.
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Wonders of the solar system.
Wonders of the Universe.
Everything & Nothing.
Chemistry: A volatile history.
Planet earth.
The frozen planet.
Science & Islam.
The majority of the UK population thinks: global warming is a massive environmental disaster, that we're all descended from a common ancestor, and that the earth has been around for a few billion years more than the bible claims. The quality of the BBC's programming is largely to thank for that, and so i'm happy to continue paying my license fee. Compare any of the above programs with the typical output of 'the history channel', and I think you'll quickly change your opinion about the program quality.
But that's the point - the BBC is independent of the government very specifically. The money collected for running it is not from or collected by the government.
It most certainly is collected by government through both the law establishing the licensing fee, the government body that sets the fee, and the actual enforcement of nonpayment.
The TV licence is very definitely not a "stealth tax" in any sense of the definition whatsoever. It is not part of the government.
The TV license is not a "stealth tax" because it is overt. I do consider it a variation of a property tax since it is imposed by government fiat (on owning a working TV) not by contract.
Let's see... Surveillance cameras on every corner, no freedom of speech, no right to self defense, no protection against self-incrimination(encryption keys), and it's the very reason the term "nanny state" was invented. What's not to love?
I'm not saying the UK is worse than my country, but you clearly have serious problems. I don't see how anyone can consider the UK "free".
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It would make sense for the BBC to encrypt their channels and eliminate most of the thorny issues concerning licensing. Since if you want to watch the content you would need to pay for a card to decrypt it.
Not really because hardly anyone has a receiver capable of accepting such a card. 99% of Freeview and Freesat receivers don't even have card slots.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
They really cover all bases in this article. They have both a denial that they have been secretive and an explanation of why they had to be secretive.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
I just want to point out that if you're talking to an American here, then half of them (us) think that everything in the UK is left-wing, even your most conservative politicians. I have a couple of friends who have moved here from the UK and often comment about how when in the UK they were die-hard conservatives but here they seem to fall into the "bleeding heart liberal" group instead.
It has the same legal standing as a tax, so fines and possible jail time.
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
I'm genuinely curious about the r/f capability you have mentioned. Outside of the oscillator signal, which is not detectable on modern flat-screens? I guess they'd need to detect the digital signal a screen emits, but the antennas to pick that up would have to be rather clumsy, which makes me doubt the portability.
As an amateur radio operator (and I'm okay with being proven wrong - still learning of course ;), I'm fairly skeptical that a decent portable device is feasible with current tech to read a digital screen's RF to determine live TV is being watched and to have enough evidence produced by this single function of the unit alone to prosecute someone over that information. This mainly because triangulation is a very messy science (hell, fox hunting can be quite a challenge for some of the most experienced in the field).
I also find it difficult to imagine TVLA would go to the extent of training more than a few people in the proper theory of radio and make them a licensed radio operator in order to make them a credible witness in court based off observations made by the unit.
I can imagine the other bits though of this device standing up in court though.
Skipping out on a TV license when you should have one is really no excuse IMO.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Well unlike any time in the last 90 years, maybe they'll think about it now due to your post.
I'm not usually that sarcastic, but the arrogance in your post is staggering. Because their decision is different from yours, rather than thinking that maybe they arrived at the decision based on different priorities or values or something else you're missing, you assert that an entire country of millions of people hasn't seriously thought about the license fee since it was implemented in 1922. Do you realize that you're implying that the currently-living 62 million people, and all the people before them, were just shit-chucking apes who couldn't make their own decisions correctly? And that's not a rhetorical question.
I suggest that you at least consider the possibility that other people did really come to the right decision for them, even if it's not the right one for you. I live in the US, and frankly I'd gladly pay the license fee for quality news and programming live, rather than catching the scraps over here.
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