Britain: Police State?

[ramonmercado]

At least these magistrates have struck a blow against policemen who think they are above the law. 3 tough cops attacking a disabled man in wheelchair because he objected to a cop parking his van illegaly. I hope he sues them.

Disabled man cleared of Pc attack

A disabled man has been cleared of hitting a police officer in a row about how a police van was parked.

Martin James, 47, from Carmarthen, in west Wales, had called the press to photograph a police van he said was causing an obstruction near his home.

He was cleared of a public order offence and assaulting a police constable at Carmarthen police station.

Magistrates in Llanelli said Mr James was "reacting" to being lifted out of his wheelchair by three officers.

During the trial, magistrates heard Mr James was having his photo taken for a local newspaper next to a police van when the row started and led to his arrest.

Mr James, who lived in a nearby street, had contacted the paper to complain about the way the van was parked in the cul-de-sac.

Prosecuting, David Haines said at around 1500 on 19 May, an off-duty officer was returning to his house in the Llangunnor area.


They treated me worse than an animal - they just threw me into the police van onto the floor
Martin James

He noticed Mr James near to the police van and a photographer from the Carmarthen Journal taking his picture.

When the officer approached him and asked what he was doing, Mr James became "abusive and very agitated," said Mr Haines.

The van belonged to another off-duty officer, Andrew Edwards, a police dog handler, who lived in the cul-de-sac. Pc Edwards was called and around the same time, a CID officer, who was passing, also stopped.

Pc Edwards told the court the van was parked at the top of his drive, with two wheels on the pavement, which was on a private road, maintained by himself and his neighbours.


He told the court that Mr James became abusive before officers restrained him, lifted him out of his wheelchair and put him in the back of the police van.

But Mr James told the court his arms were "wrenched" behind his back and he was "thrown" into the van.

"I was screaming in pain," he said.

"They treated me worse than an animal - they just threw me into the police van onto the floor."

He accepted he "accidentally" made contact with an officer but denied assaulting him.

Peaceful manner

The court heard Mr James has hydrocephalus - water on the brain - due to smallpox vaccine damage he suffered when around six months old.

Delivering their verdict, the magistrates found that up until the off duty officers intervened, Mr James was acting in a peaceful manner.

Chair of the bench, Margaret Davies said: "We are of the opinion that Mr James's behaviour was a reaction to the restraint procedure, the pain, and the fact he felt he was being treated with disrespect by the three officers when he was lifted out of his wheelchair and onto the floor of the police van."

Turning to the allegation of assault, Ms Davies said they again found the case unproven.

She said: "We have viewed the CCTV camera (footage) several times, we cannot say that the contact was intentional."

Speaking after the verdict, Mr James said: "I'm exceptionally pleased. In my opinion, it should never have gone to court. The police dog van was obstructing the pavement."

He said he was still angry at the way he was treated.

"I hope that they (the police) have learnt a lesson but I doubt that very much."

A spokesman for Dyfed-Powys Police said: "A complaint has been received and an investigation is ongoing - therefore it would be inappropriate to comment further at this time."

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/u ... 659409.stm

 

[lupinwick]

And some doubts as to whether or not collating all this information on folks will make a difference...

OK so this applies to the US but I'd suspect that this report (and its findings) will apply to all countries.

The most extensive government report to date on whether terrorists can be identified through data mining has yielded an important conclusion: It doesn't really work.

A National Research Council report, years in the making and scheduled to be released Tuesday, concludes that automated identification of terrorists through data mining or any other mechanism "is neither feasible as an objective nor desirable as a goal of technology development efforts." Inevitable false positives will result in "ordinary, law-abiding citizens and businesses" being incorrectly flagged as suspects.

The whopping 352-page report, called "Protecting Individual Privacy in the Struggle Against Terrorists," amounts to at least a partial repudiation of the Defense Department's controversial data-mining program called Total Information Awareness, which was limited by Congress in 2003.

But the ambition of the report's authors is far broader than just revisiting the problems of the TIA program and its successors. Instead, they aim to produce a scholarly evaluation of the current technologies that exist for data mining, their effectiveness, and how government agencies should use them to limit false positives--of the sort that can result in situations like heavily-armed SWAT teams raiding someone's home and shooting their dogs based on the false belief that they were part of a drug ring.

The report was written by a committee whose members include William Perry, a professor at Stanford University; Charles Vest, the former president of MIT; W. Earl Boebert, a retired senior scientist at Sandia National Laboratories; Cynthia Dwork of Microsoft Research; R. Gil Kerlikowske, Seattle's police chief; and Daryl Pregibon, a research scientist at Google.

They admit that far more Americans live their lives online, using everything from VoIP phones to Facebook to RFID tags in automobiles, than a decade ago, and the databases created by those activities are tempting targets for federal agencies. And they draw a distinction between subject-based data mining (starting with one individual and looking for connections) compared with pattern-based data mining (looking for anomalous activities that could show illegal activities).

But the authors conclude the type of data mining that government bureaucrats would like to do--perhaps inspired by watching too many episodes of the Fox series 24--can't work. "If it were possible to automatically find the digital tracks of terrorists and automatically monitor only the communications of terrorists, public policy choices in this domain would be much simpler. But it is not possible to do so."

A summary of the recommendations:

* U.S. government agencies should be required to follow a systematic process to evaluate the effectiveness, lawfulness, and consistency with U.S. values of every information-based program, whether classified or unclassified, for detecting and countering terrorists before it can be deployed, and periodically thereafter.

* Periodically after a program has been operationally deployed, and in particular before a program enters a new phase in its life cycle, policy makers should (carefully review) the program before allowing it to continue operations or to proceed to the next phase.

* To protect the privacy of innocent people, the research and development of any information-based counterterrorism program should be conducted with synthetic population data... At all stages of a phased deployment, data about individuals should be rigorously subjected to the full safeguards of the framework.

* Any information-based counterterrorism program of the U.S. government should be subjected to robust, independent oversight of the operations of that program, a part of which would entail a practice of using the same data mining technologies to "mine the miners and track the trackers."

* Counterterrorism programs should provide meaningful redress to any individuals inappropriately harmed by their operation.

* The U.S. government should periodically review the nation's laws, policies, and procedures that protect individuals' private information for relevance and effectiveness in light of changing technologies and circumstances. In particular, Congress should re-examine existing law to consider how privacy should be protected in the context of information-based programs (e.g., data mining) for counterterrorism.

By itself, of course, this is merely a report with non-binding recommendations that Congress and the executive branch could ignore. But NRC reports are not radical treatises written by an advocacy group; they tend to represent a working consensus of technologists and lawyers.

The great encryption debate of the 1990s was one example. The NRC's so-called CRISIS report on encryption in 1996 concluded export controls--that treated software like Web browsers and PGP as munitions--were a failure and should be relaxed. That eventually happened two years later.

Source

 

[OneWingedBird]

i'm not defending a plot to blow people up... but since when was owning a copy of The Anarchists Cookbook a prosecutable offence as it's now a 'terror manual'?

'Bomb plot' Dewsbury boy left teachers 'disturbed'

A SCHOOLBOY accused of downloading a terror manual and plotting to make a bomb was an outspoken, intimidating and single-minded young man who left a "disturbing" impact even on experienced teachers.
Waris Ali, 18, from Ravensthorpe, Dewsbury, is accused of possessing digital copies of the Anarchist's' Cookbook and of hoarding chemicals which could potentially be used to prepare explosives.

A jury at Leeds Crown Court was told on Tuesday that at a pre-entry interview to do A-Levels at Mirfield Free Grammar School in September 2006, the then 16-year-old had left a sinister impression on the director of the sixth form, Simon Hawkins.

Mr Hawkins told the court: "Waris left a significant and disturbing impact upon me. I was very surprised the first time I met him.
"I was concerned about his demeanour. He seemed very single minded, to the point of being arrogant.

"What stuck in my mind was when he said 'I have very fixed views about things'. I was quite disturbed.

"He was arrogant, very very sure of himself. I felt there was something quite intimidating about him frankly."

The court was told that despite the initial concerns, Ali was enrolled to do A-levels in philosophy and ethics, history and psychology.

However, his vocal attitude in the classroom soon unsettled several members of staff – and within days they had expressed their concerns to Mr Hawkins.

The court heard Ali had become "excited and animated" by a picture of the 9/11 twin towers attacks which featured on one of his textbooks and had "challenged teachers in a really unhelpful way" about issues such as abortion and divorce. After a meeting with Mr Hawkins, Ali was eventually asked to go home in a bid to "cool him down a bit".
However he only attended once or twice more and eventually withdrew from the course completely.

It is in the following months that he is accused of downloading the Anarchists' Cookbook, ordering vast quantities of potentially lethal chemicals online and cooking up a naive plot – along with fellow accused and childhood friend Dabeer Hussain – to blow up the BNP.
Ali denies three counts of possessing an article with the purpose of terrorism. Hussain, also 18 and from Ravensthorpe, faces a similar charge in connection with the terror manual.

http://www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/n ... 4574343.jp

maybe i should be glad that my copy of Krousher's Physical Interrogation Techniques got stolen at a party back in '94

 

[lupinwick]

Versions still available on Amazon though.

 

[lupinwick]

And from a journalist who has worked closely with the Joseph Rowntree foundation...

Why is Britain such a fearful society? Levels of trust between people, which are linked to levels of happiness, are among the lowest in Europe, and fear of crime, which is completely out of kilter with the reality of falling overall crime, continues to soar.

The paradox is that while crime has fallen steadily since 1995, most believe it is rising, a conundrum the police have labelled the "success gap". Since coming to power, the government has put fear of crime, rather than crime itself, at the centre of its domestic policy agenda, with the enormous roll-out of CCTV and the antisocial behaviour agenda, underpinned by the need to provide reassurance and help people feel safer.

This approach was first announced by Jack Straw, who said fear of crime had become a contemporary "evil" on a par with the "five [giant] evils" of want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness that Beveridge vowed to tackle after the second world war.

Nearly 10 years later, when the Joseph Rowntree Foundation launched its own consultation into modern "social evils", growing fear and distrust emerged as one of the most disturbing trends. But rather than pressing the case for more security and punitive zero tolerance solutions, the evidence points to the fact that this approach is part of the problem, rather than the solution.

With 4.2m CCTV cameras - more than in the whole of Europe put together - Britain is the most watched society in the world, and new technologies - such as Drones or UAVs, the unmanned spyplanes used in Iraq - are set to come on stream. This is the architecture of fear and, unsurprisingly, it doesn't make people feel safer.

It may actually increase crime as well, according to research published by the Scottish Office, which found that although the public had welcomed the introduction of CCTV, believing it would make them feel safer, there was no improvement in feelings of safety after it was installed, and crime in fact went up in the area studied. The report concluded that "the electronic eye on the street" undermines the "natural surveillance" of individuals by each other and represents a retreat from "collective and individual responsibility to self interest and a culture of fear".

Alongside CCTV, concerns about security determine the look and feel of nearly all new development, based on an approach to design called Secured by Design. In town and city centres all around the country, new, privately owned and privately controlled shopping, office and leisure complexes - in the style of London's finance district Canary Wharf or the Broadgate Centre - are policed by private security. Nearly all new housing is also built according to this model, with high-security enclaves replacing traditional streets.

Although the causes of fear and distrust are complex, the evidence is that inequality is at the root of the problem, reflected by the low levels of fear and high levels of trust in Scandinavian societies. But it is not so much income inequalities as the visible physical impact of segregation - emphasised by the current obsession with security - that is behind the culture of fear. Paradoxically, although these security-based policies, from CCTV to Secured by Design, are there to make us feel safer, they are doing exactly the opposite.

Source


So the introduction of cameras etc. has done nothing to make people feel safer but rather may contribute to the problems.

 

[ted_bloody_maul]

i'm not defending a plot to blow people up... but since when was owning a copy of The Anarchists Cookbook a prosecutable offence as it's now a 'terror manual'?

Perhaps when it's downloaded around the same time as "ordering vast quantities of potentially lethal chemicals"?

 

[OneWingedBird]

so why not just knacker them in court for ordering the chemicals? it's still the same book that's on sale on amazon?

 

[ted_bloody_maul]

so why not just knacker them in court for ordering the chemicals? it's still the same book that's on sale on amazon?

The existence of this literature gives greater credibilty to the charge of possessing articles for terrorist purposes. If he had one and not the other it would be more speculative to suggest that he was planning a terrorist attack. You can defend the Anarchist's Cookbok on the grounds of research or even curiousity. Likewise you can defend the chemicals on other grounds - obviously both are legal and in most cases unlikely to pose any kind of threat but the combination of the two would certainly suggest a plausible threat. It would be difficult to prove the existence of such a threat without setting them in the context which they create, just in the same way that it's perfectly legal for someone to have on them a Stanley knife or for them to enter a nightclub but it's suspicious - and illegal - when they do both.

 

[OneWingedBird]

oh, i don't doubt the person possessed it for terrorist purposes - i just don't see why the sudden change of status of a book that's been available for several decades.

this can't be the first time someone's tried to use it for nefarious purposes - but it still wasn't a 'terror manual' until now.

 

[Ginando]

oh, i don't doubt the person possessed it for terrorist purposes - i just don't see why the sudden change of status of a book that's been available for several decades.

this can't be the first time someone's tried to use it for nefarious purposes - but it still wasn't a 'terror manual' until now.

While this may be the first time Blackriverfalls and I have agreed on something re the law, what worries me is that with increased monitoring of e-mails, web browsing habits etc, whats to stop the merely curious from being prosecuted for looking at websites, (and there are hundreds) which show how to make viable explosives, or how to employ guerrilla warfare tactics. Everyone knows that controls need to be put in place, but at what point does the government or MI5/MI6 decide that someone has crossed a line of legality/illegality, and will we see in this country the imposition of blocks on sites as used in China to prevent the viewing of certain sites there?

 

[goth13girl666]

'Bomb plot' Dewsbury boy left teachers 'disturbed'

A SCHOOLBOY accused of downloading a terror manual and plotting to make a bomb was an outspoken, intimidating and single-minded young man who left a "disturbing" impact even on experienced teachers.
Waris Ali, 18, from Ravensthorpe, Dewsbury, is accused of possessing digital copies of the Anarchist's' Cookbook and of hoarding chemicals which could potentially be used to prepare explosives.

A jury at Leeds Crown Court was told on Tuesday that at a pre-entry interview to do A-Levels at Mirfield Free Grammar School in September 2006, the then 16-year-old had left a sinister impression on the director of the sixth form, Simon Hawkins.

Mr Hawkins told the court: "Waris left a significant and disturbing impact upon me. I was very surprised the first time I met him.
"I was concerned about his demeanour. He seemed very single minded, to the point of being arrogant.

"What stuck in my mind was when he said 'I have very fixed views about things'. I was quite disturbed.

"He was arrogant, very very sure of himself. I felt there was something quite intimidating about him frankly."

The court was told that despite the initial concerns, Ali was enrolled to do A-levels in philosophy and ethics, history and psychology.

However, his vocal attitude in the classroom soon unsettled several members of staff – and within days they had expressed their concerns to Mr Hawkins.

The court heard Ali had become "excited and animated" by a picture of the 9/11 twin towers attacks which featured on one of his textbooks and had "challenged teachers in a really unhelpful way" about issues such as abortion and divorce. After a meeting with Mr Hawkins, Ali was eventually asked to go home in a bid to "cool him down a bit".
However he only attended once or twice more and eventually withdrew from the course completely.

It is in the following months that he is accused of downloading the Anarchists' Cookbook, ordering vast quantities of potentially lethal chemicals online and cooking up a naive plot – along with fellow accused and childhood friend Dabeer Hussain – to blow up the BNP.
Ali denies three counts of possessing an article with the purpose of terrorism. Hussain, also 18 and from Ravensthorpe, faces a similar charge in connection with the terror manual.

http://www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/n ... 4574343.jp

maybe i should be glad that my copy of Krousher's Physical Interrogation Techniques got stolen at a party back in '94[/quote]

Firstly if he had no intention of trying or doing anything then why did he have the books and some or all of the chemical components, but also there is no real intention he ever planned to do anything, at the end of the day everyone is and will always have their onw views.

The school/college who enrolled him must not of thought there was anything wrong to begin with otherwise they would not of enrolled him, unless like with some colleges they enroll students to amke the quota up for the classes, which is sadly the case in some areas.

 

[OneWingedBird]

While this may be the first time Blackriverfalls and I have agreed on something re the law

lol usually when i disagree with people enough i start to work on the premise that it's because it's a subject that we both agree on, just differ on what we should be doing about it.

now that i read the evening post article again, it is quite a funny case. we're told he bought 'vast' quantities of potential starter chemicals for explosives, but not what constitutes vast or what they were.

Maybe the guy was some home grown terror threat. Or maybe just some adolescent dreamer who'd never have got further than having a downloaded 'subversive' book and several economy multipacks of nail varnish remover. That would have looked back on the whole thing as a bunch of teenage idiocy if he hadn't got busted for it.

Difficult to say... at what point does a bunch of otherwise legal things become illegal?

maybe i should be glad that my copy of Krousher's Physical Interrogation Techniques got stolen at a party back in '94

wow, you too. there must have been a spate of thefts of that book at parties back in '94! :shock:

 

[lupinwick]

oh, i don't doubt the person possessed it for terrorist purposes - i just don't see why the sudden change of status of a book that's been available for several decades.

this can't be the first time someone's tried to use it for nefarious purposes - but it still wasn't a 'terror manual' until now.

While this may be the first time Blackriverfalls and I have agreed on something re the law, what worries me is that with increased monitoring of e-mails, web browsing habits etc, whats to stop the merely curious from being prosecuted for looking at websites, (and there are hundreds) which show how to make viable explosives, or how to employ guerrilla warfare tactics. Everyone knows that controls need to be put in place, but at what point does the government or MI5/MI6 decide that someone has crossed a line of legality/illegality, and will we see in this country the imposition of blocks on sites as used in China to prevent the viewing of certain sites there?

How would you know (for smaller web sites) that access was being blocked or whether the site had gone down? The inner-workings of the internet make it very easy to restrict access to sites (accidentally too - think of the Pakistani ISP and youtube). The monitoring of email, website access etc. is not necessarily going to allow you to track down potential terrorists, at least one report discredits this approach.

From my point of view I own and have access to any number of books on computer hacking and security (how to do it and how to fix it), virus writing techniques, techniques to subvert systems and so on. These books could be used by terrorists (unlikely though - they're probably a several months behind the bleeding edge hackers). Does owning these books constitute a security risk (I work on governmental stuff) or represent an engineer doing his job. I'd hate for this government to start banning stuff just because "it could be used" for terrorist purposes. FFS you might as well ban the sale of computers, mobile phones etc.

Ultimately, in the case cited, the courts must surely demonstrate intent to harm.

 

[lupinwick]

And back to the recording of all email etc. in a giant database. You would have to assume that if your own terrorism watchdog condemns the idea then you must be on a hiding to nothing. Or should we be waiting for another plot which was prevented by the timely interception of a number of emails?

Early plans to create a giant "Big Brother" database holding information about every phone call, email and internet visit made in the UK were last night condemned by the Government's own terrorism watchdog.

Lord Carlile of Berriew QC, the independent reviewer of anti-terrorist laws, said the "raw idea" of the database was "awful" and called for controls to stop government agencies using it to conduct fishing expeditions into the private lives of the public.

Today the Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, is expected to signal the Government's intention to press ahead with proposals to collect more details about people's phone, email and web-browsing habits as she warns that the terrorist threat to Britain is growing.

The controversial measure will be included as a way of combating terrorism in the Data Communications Bill, which is to be introduced in the Queen's Speech in December. Ministers are known to be considering the creation of a single database holding all the information, which would include phone numbers dialled and addresses to which emails are sent but not details of phone conversations or the contents of emails.

An increasing number of influential figures from across the political spectrum have expressed growing alarm over the scale of the proposals that would give the state unprecedented access into the lives of its citizens.

Lord Carlile described the government's recent track record on handling public data as an "unhappy one", and said that searches of a new database should only be carried out with the authority of a court warrant.

Source

 

[lupinwick]

And still bubbling on:

Jacqui Smith faces a parliamentary backlash over "Orwellian" plans to intercept details of email, internet, telephone and other data records of every person in Britain. Labour MPs joined opposition parties in expressing doubts about plans announced by the Home Secretary which could lead to a vast database of information about Britons' calls and internet habits.

They warned that MPs, emboldened by the Government's decision to ditch plans to hold terrorist suspects for up to 42 days without charge, would not accept this extension of state power.

The scale of the Government's ambitions to hold data on email, internet and phone use emerged as government sources made it clear they needed new powers to obtain details of social networking sites on the internet, video sites, web-based telephone calls and even online computer games.

Yesterday, Ms Smith said she would launch a consultation on the expansion of data and communications collection next year. She insisted, "it is a reality to which government needs to respond".

She warned: "If you want to maintain your ability to identify where the user of a mobile phone is, let's say... it may well be that the only alternative to collecting that data would be a massive expansion of surveillance." Ms Smith said there were "no plans for an enormous database" of the content of your emails, texts or your phone chats.

Instead officials are concentrating on capturing huge amounts of so-called "communications data" – background information about when and to whom electronic and phone messages are sent. They argue such data is a vital element in 95 per cent of serious criminal prosecutions and has helped avert scores of threats to life and kidnaps.

Civil liberties campaigners have expressed horror at the plans. Keith Vaz, chairman of the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee, warned: "Extreme caution needs to be taken. The Government needs to ensure that information-gathering is targeted and wiped and not collected just because it's possible."

Labour left-winger John McDonnell called the proposals "Big Brother gone mad", while Ian Gibson, Labour MP for Norwich North, added: "There is not a lot of confidence that we can hold on to data we collect already."

Source

So traffic analysis it is then. Discredited though (Schneier). And with prize tossers like Hoon supporting this crap you can only hope its going to fail.

 

[waitew]

Come on!You have 1/2 the CCD cameras in the entire world in a country of barely 100,000 square miles & you wonder IF you are a police state!!LOL!! What's it gonna take?Ovens?Perhaps not even then..that's the sad part.

 

[stu neville]

Hell yeah! Before you know it, we'll be holding people without charge for years on end in an offshore base and intermittently torturing them for information many of them plainly never had in the first place, forcing all incoming travellers to take off their shoes, restricting the amount of liquid people can take on aircraft and insisting that even their firmest and oldest of allies have to suddenly obtain visas before setting foot in the country.

Oh, hang on...

 

[Analogue Boy]

Come on!You have 1/2 the CCD cameras in the entire world in a country of barely 100,000 square miles & you wonder IF you are a police state!!LOL!! What's it gonna take?Ovens?Perhaps not even then..that's the sad part.

Extensive CCTV does little to prevent crime, it just records it happening.
Speed cameras won't limit the habitual speedster.
So will continually posting here about the infringement of our Rights and Civil Liberties change the views of authority? Probably not.

I do feel the subject is potentially the greatest issue we have to face in this country but that is just my personal opinion.

 

[Pete Younger]

Speed cameras won't limit the habitual speedster.

I bet average speed cameras will though, bring em on I say.

 

[ArthurASCII]

Hell yeah! Before you know it, we'll be holding people without charge for years on end in an offshore base and intermittently torturing them for information many of them plainly never had in the first place, forcing all incoming travellers to take off their shoes, restricting the amount of liquid people can take on aircraft and insisting that even their firmest and oldest of allies have to suddenly obtain visas before setting foot in the country.

Oh, hang on...

On the other hand, when you've had a loved one senselessly blown-away by a radical nutcase it's remarkably difficult to maintain your sense of fairness and objectivity.

 

[Analogue Boy]

Speed cameras won't limit the habitual speedster.

I bet average speed cameras will though, bring em on I say.

But will we then see queues of cars parked up in inconvenient places just waiting as they're unsure what their average time is supposed to be?

 

[Pete Younger]

The new generation of cameras will solve all the old dodges...
http://www.autocar.co.uk/News/NewsArticle/AllCars/235349/

 

[ted_bloody_maul]

Come on!You have 1/2 the CCD cameras in the entire world in a country of barely 100,000 square miles & you wonder IF you are a police state!!LOL!! What's it gonna take?Ovens?Perhaps not even then..that's the sad part.

I'll believe we're a police state when we have as many CCTV cameras as Zimbabwe or Burma.

 

[stu neville]

Hell yeah! Before you know it,....
Oh, hang on...

On the other hand, when you've had a loved one senselessly blown-away by a radical nutcase it's remarkably difficult to maintain your sense of fairness and objectivity.

I was just making yet another of my idle, passing, vaguely puckish, off-the-cuff, light-hearted pot/kettle/darkness-type observations, but once again my flippancy and/or humour (discuss) has clearly let me down.

I'll get it right one day.

 

[Anonymous]

Come on!You have 1/2 the CCD cameras in the entire world in a country of barely 100,000 square miles & you wonder IF you are a police state!!LOL!! What's it gonna take?Ovens?Perhaps not even then..that's the sad part.

ok so you dont think we live in a police state then you must think this is ok then.

Passports will be needed to buy mobile phones.


Everyone who buys a mobile telephone will be forced to register their identity on a national database under government plans to extend massively the powers of state surveillance.

Phone buyers would have to present a passport or other official form of identification at the point of purchase. Privacy campaigners fear it marks the latest government move to create a surveillance society.

A compulsory national register for the owners of all 72m mobile phones in Britain would be part of a much bigger database to combat terrorism and crime. Whitehall officials have raised the idea of a register containing the names and addresses of everyone who buys a phone in recent talks with Vodafone and other telephone companies, insiders say.

The move is targeted at monitoring the owners of Britain’s estimated 40m prepaid mobile phones. They can be purchased with cash by customers who do not wish to give their names, addresses or credit card details.
The pay-as-you-go phones are
popular with criminals and terrorists because their anonymity shields their activities from the authorities. But they are also used by thousands of law-abiding citizens who wish to communicate in private.

The move aims to close a loophole in plans being drawn up by GCHQ, the government’s eavesdropping centre in Cheltenham, to create a huge database to monitor and store the internet browsing habits, e-mail and telephone records of everyone in Britain.

The “Big Brother” database would have limited value to police and MI5 if it did not store details of the ownership of more than half the mobile phones in the country.

Contingency planning for such a move is already thought to be under way at Vodafone, where 72% of its 18.5m UK customers use pay-as-you-go.

The office of Richard Thomas, the information commissioner, said it anticipated that a compulsory mobile phone register would be unveiled as part of a law which ministers would announce next year.

“With regards to the database that would contain details of all mobile users, including pay-as-you-go, we would expect that this information would be included in the database proposed in the draft Communications Data Bill,” a spokeswoman said.

Simon Davies, of Privacy International, said he understood that several mobile phone firms had discussed the proposed database in talks with government officials.

As The Sunday Times revealed earlier this month, GCHQ has already been provided with up to £1 billion to work on the pilot stage of the Big Brother database, which will see thousands of “black boxes” installed on communications lines provided by Vodafone and BT as part of a pilot interception programme.

The proposals have sparked a fierce backlash inside Whitehall. Senior officials in the Home Office have privately warned that the database scheme is impractical, disproportionate and potentially unlawful. The revolt last week forced Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, to delay announcing plans for the database until next year.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/p ... 969312.ece

 

[Anonymous]

when did the UK become more fascist than the US and are us Brits going to sit on their hands and watch the prison walls be built around us.

 

[_Lizard23_]

Tchoi, why don't they even mention SIM cards? Phones aren't pay as you go, or otherwise.

To be honest I was surprised when they started selling registration-free SIMs in the first place, so the all-seeing-eye is about a decade adrift on that one.

Still, annoying for us slightly paranoid minor criminals.

 

[wembley8]

Come on!You have 1/2 the CCD cameras in the entire world in a country of barely 100,000 square miles & you wonder IF you are a police state

With a comment like that, I do wonder if you know what a police state is.
It's about totalitarian repression - imprisonment without trial, no habeas corpus, extra-judicial punishment etc.

AFAIK all current police states work pretty well without CCTV, but they do rely on things like a suspension of democracy, which in our case we have not got.

 

[Pietro_Mercurios]

Come on!You have 1/2 the CCD cameras in the entire world in a country of barely 100,000 square miles & you wonder IF you are a police state

With a comment like that, I do wonder if you know what a police state is.
It's about totalitarian repression - imprisonment without trial, no habeas corpus, extra-judicial punishment etc.

AFAIK all current police states work pretty well without CCTV, but they do rely on things like a suspension of democracy, which in our case we have not got.

Good point. Britain is not yet a Police State, although the machinery which could be used for a truly efficient Police State is being put in place.

More accurate to say that it is a Surveillance State, striving to become a Panopticonic State.

 

[lupinwick]

Hmmmm not good though. Which ever phrase you use for it.

http://policestate.co.uk/