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Britain: Police State?

ted_bloody_maul said:
...

I'll believe we're a police state when we have as many CCTV cameras as Zimbabwe or Burma.
I wondered where all that aid money was going. :confused:
 
Pietro_Mercurios said:
I wondered where all that aid money was going. :confused:

Haven't you seen Mugabe's ornate jackets? I want one but M&S don't sell them, the bourgeois twerps.
 
Dr_Baltar said:
lupinwick said:
Hmmmm not good though. Which ever phrase you use for it.

http://policestate.co.uk/

If we truly lived in a facist police state, none of this information would be available to you and NGOs like Privacy International would have been crushed before they even got going.

Perhaps - not that I claimed it was a fascist police state. Chinese dissidents seemed to get information out OK though. I'm with Pietro in that the UK is becoming a surveillance state.
 
lupinwick said:
...not that I claimed it was a fascist police state.

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply you had. I thought the site you directed us to (and the links therein) was as good as saying that though.

I'm with Pietro in that the UK is becoming a surveillance state.

Perhaps. Surveillance isn't automatically a bad thing however. I know I'm stating the patently obvious here, but it does depend on who controls the surveillance and for what purpose. We keep hearing how there are more CCTV cameras pointed at us than in any other country in the world (and some even more outrageous claims). What we don't hear is precisely how many of these cameras are privately-owned, fixed-position cameras pointed at, for example, a car park in order to discourage crime. There's surveillance and there's "surveillance".
 
Dr_Baltar said:
Perhaps. Surveillance isn't automatically a bad thing however. I know I'm stating the patently obvious here, but it does depend on who controls the surveillance and for what purpose. We keep hearing how there are more CCTV cameras pointed at us than in any other country in the world (and some even more outrageous claims). What we don't hear is precisely how many of these cameras are privately-owned, fixed-position cameras pointed at, for example, a car park in order to discourage crime. There's surveillance and there's "surveillance".

Just as the major complaints over ID Cards are not about the bits of plastic with a chip in them but the database behind the scheme, my concern over increasing CCTV in our lives has been one of the effect OTT surveillance has on the psyche of the nation. Panopticon aside, this has been borne out by the report from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation which has researched the subject more intently than any of us I'm guessing.
One of the conclusions reached is that greater implementation of cameras have created a climate of fear in this country.

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".

Furthermore, while concentrating on technology to catch criminals after the event, how many millions could have been put into more effective programmes that stop criminals from committing crimes in the first place?
 
jimv1 said:
One of the conclusions reached is that greater implementation of cameras have created a climate of fear in this country.

Or is not possible that media coverage/hysteria over the greater implementation of cameras have created a climate of fear in this country?


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".

I think that says more about people than it does about cameras.

Furthermore, while concentrating on technology to catch criminals after the event, how many millions could have been put into more effective programmes that stop criminals from committing crimes in the first place?

A lot of people seem to want it both ways. Traditional policing methods, back in "the good old days", have generally centred around catching criminals after the event. "More effective programmes that stop criminals from committing crimes in the first place" sounds far more insidious to me.
 
As I say, I suspect the Rowntree Foundation has looked into this in great detail so it's not simply a case of media hyperbole in my opinion.

As for the insidious nature of prevention of crime, I can't remember the details but there was a Professor of some university who suggested a programme of listening, respecting the opinions to adolescents would be more effective and less costly than chasing and clearing up after them.

I haven't got the provenace for this right now..i'll have a looksee.
 
Perhaps, but CCTV cameras are only a part of the issue and the jury is still out as to how effective these are. The perceived relevance of reports from the Rowntree foundation etc. depend largely on the viewpoint of the reader and their own bias. Perhaps we should be looking closely at the at the problems with CCTV and the value it brings to society (if any).

The ongoing moves to record internet traffic, phone usage etc. are more worrying. Especially given the piss-poor record this government (and industry) have on maintaining data in a safe manner, let alone delivering an IT project of the scale required. In the end, do we need to do it? Does it provide valuable information about criminal or terrorist threats? (Not according to US research). Will it be well monitored and secure? (More than lip-service please) Can we trust the government not to fuck it up? Will the data be safe?
 
well so much for our 'terror manual':

Teenage bomb plot accused cleared

Two teenagers who were accused of discussing a plot to blow up British National Party (BNP) members have been cleared of terror charges.

Waris Ali, 18, from Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, was found not guilty of three counts of possession of an article for a terrorist purpose.


His school friend Dabeer Hussain, 18, was acquitted of one count of the same charge at Leeds Crown Court.

After the 13-day trial Mr Ali said he was "extremely relieved".

Friends and family of the two men hugged in the public gallery as the jury returned their verdicts after deliberating for two and a half hours.

During the trial, the court heard that the two men had discussed a plan to spy on and blow up members of the BNP.

They were both accused of possessing a terrorist manual on their computers, called the Anarchists' Cookbook, and researching bomb-making techniques from "recipes" on the internet.

Mr Ali, of Dearnley Street, Dewsbury, was also accused of buying and storing significant amounts of potassium nitrate and calcium chloride, chemicals which can be used in the preparation of a bomb.

But the teenager said he was a "prankster" who was interested in experimenting with fireworks and making smoke bombs.

Teenage chat

Mr Hussain, of Clarkson Street, Dewsbury, said he had been sent a copy of the Anarchists' Cookbook but had not read it and was not interested in politics.

Speaking outside the court after the verdicts, Mr Ali said he was "extremely relieved" that he had been cleared of the charges but was angry about how he had been treated.

"I believe that if I was not from a Muslim background, I would not have been prosecuted," he said.

"I have had to live in fear of being branded a terrorist.

"I feel it was completely obvious once the police looked up the evidence that I had nothing to do with terrorism at all.


"Silly teenage chat and things I said at school were taken out of context and presented as if it was evidence that I was an extremist."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/bradford/7685636.stm
 
While its not a police state right now,I believe we are heading in that direction.Its true that you wont be shot for uttering the "poof" word or the "nigger" word-YET,but it can lose you your job,or land you in court charged with hate crime and whatever else.The seeds are being sown in my opinion.....a police state cant be set up overnight,it takes a decade or so,and unless things are changed it most likely will happen.
 
dougiedonnelly said:
While its not a police state right now,I believe we are heading in that direction.Its true that you wont be shot for uttering the "poof" word or the "nigger" word-YET,but it can lose you your job,or land you in court charged with hate crime and whatever else.The seeds are being sown in my opinion.....a police state cant be set up overnight,it takes a decade or so,and unless things are changed it most likely will happen.
I think it's kind of cool that we have strong legislation against discrimination ....

... I'd also argue it doesn't take a decade or more to set up a police state - the most authoritarian regimes are pretty quickly cobbled together out of whole cloth after some sort of coup.

Still, I do think Britain is pretty shit and getting worse. I'm not expecting to be rounded up and sent to the salt mines for saying so just yet though.
 
dougiedonnelly said:
While its not a police state right now,I believe we are heading in that direction.Its true that you wont be shot for uttering the "poof" word or the "nigger" word-YET,but it can lose you your job,or land you in court charged with hate crime and whatever else.The seeds are being sown in my opinion.....a police state cant be set up overnight,it takes a decade or so,and unless things are changed it most likely will happen.

But offensive language is not used in isolation, there's context to be taken into consideration. If you're using it for illustrative purposes as you do here, then it's allowable even if it's not the kind of thing you want on the six o'clock news, but if, as is more often the case, it's backed up with extremely offensive behaviour then it's more understandable that the offensive person should be admonished.

That said, I've never heard of a police state that forced its citizens to be nicer to each other.
 
gncxx said:
That said, I've never heard of a police state that forced its citizens to be nicer to each other.


Maybe we should have a separate thread - Britain: Polite State?
 
ted_bloody_maul said:
gncxx said:
That said, I've never heard of a police state that forced its citizens to be nicer to each other.


Maybe we should have a separate thread - Britain: Polite State?

Now that's somewhere I'd like to live!
 
ted_bloody_maul said:
Maybe we should have a separate thread - Britain: Polite State?
Jolly decent of you to suggest that, if I may say so. :D
 
I'm not defending anything this guy did (and he sounds like a real piece of shit)... but justifying extrajudicial 'punishment'... something's going pretty wrong here :(

Conman 'deserved' prison attack

A bogus workman who was beaten up in prison has been told "you deserve anything you receive" by a sheriff.

Eddie Newlands, 37, from Perth, was sent to jail for 10 months on Thursday after conning a 91-year-old woman out of £5,500 of her savings.

Perth Sheriff Court heard he had been "significantly assaulted" twice in custody by inmates angry at his crime.

Sheriff Margaret Gimblett said she had no sympathy and described what he had done to the pensioner as "despicable."

Newlands and another man had carried out "repairs" to Mary Hogg's house in Auchterarder between 18 and 22 July.

Afterwards, they told her they needed £5,500 in cash and made her go to the bank to withdraw the money.


You deserve anything you receive while in prison
Sheriff Margaret Gimblett

The pensioner's family called the police after hearing what had happened. They were told that the wrong spray had been used on the roof and that it would cost more than £4,000 to fix.

When officers came to question Newlands at his home on 1 October, he pulled out a knife and threatened to attack them.

Newlands' solicitor John McLaughlin said: "He has been significantly assaulted in prison on two separate occasions.

"This is the type of crime which is not looked upon favourably in custody and he realises he will have an exceptionally difficult time during his period in custody."

While passing sentence, Sheriff Gimblett replied: "You deserve anything you receive while in prison. What you did to this old lady was despicable."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/tay ... 688716.stm
 
I think the treatment received in prison was wholly justified, whether it should have been voiced by a sheriff is another matter.
 
Ronson8 said:
I think the treatment received in prison was wholly justified, whether it should have been voiced by a sheriff is another matter.
I think the idea, that prison is a place where some prisoners can decide on the further punishment of their fellow inmates, is deeply wrong.

For one reason, the State has already been delegated to decide the punishment of the guilty. That's the job of the justice system, not vigilante criminals.

For another, why should some prisoners salve their consciences, by deciding that there are others more guilty than they are, that much further down the pecking order and beating the crap out of them?

What gives them the right to commit acts of violence on their fellow inmates?

However tempting to thing that some of these characters are more deserving of a beating than others, the fact that it's somehow tacitly admitted too, or even encouraged, is an admission that something is wrong with the penal system.
 
"I'll believe we're a police state when we have as many CCTV cameras as Zimbabwe or Burma." Quote..by tea_bloody_maul.

Are you suggesting the UK has fewer CCD cameras than either Zimbabwe or Burma?I'd like to see your evidence for that.Can you produce it? Even if you can, are you content to be in the top 3? (and number ONE in terms of CCD cameras per square mile/per person?!) You see for a country that continually claims to be 'free' to even be in the top three is Bad! So,I guess your position is that unless you are the VERY WORST you are NOT a police state,BUT by that definition then there are NO POLICE STATES at all in this world! ( because you'll have MORE cameras by than the VERY WORST TODAY in a very short time & you know it!) If you claim to BE SO FREE why not compare yourself to the very BEST & then show how you are better? But I guess under the circumstances (ie..the TRUTH) it'd be obvious what you're country is! A POLICE STATE! Orwell called it (60 years ago..you had warning!) you let it happen! and in sheer Darwinian fashion you deserve it!Orwell & Darwin were both Britons.So, I guess it evens out!
 
Police to use handheld fingerprint scanners in the street

Every police force is to be issued handheld fingerprint scanners that will allow officers to carry out identity checks on people in the street.

The scheme, called Project Midas, will transform the speed of criminal investigations, according to the police.

It is thought the new technology could be in widespread use within 18 months.

Details of the scheme were revealed by the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA) at the Biometrics 2008 conference.

The Mobile Identification At Scene (Midas) project, will cost between £30 to £40 million. Fingerprints taken using the device will be compared against the national police database, which holds information on 7.5 million individuals.

Geoff Whitaker, a senior technology officer from NPIA, said Project Midas would save enormous amounts of police time and reduce the amount of wrongful arrests.

To take fingerprints currently, officers have to take a suspect into custody suites. Research shows this takes 67 minutes on average.

Mr Whitaker said: "If we scaled this [saving] up to the national level that would equate to 366 additional police officers on the beat."

He suggested policing of sporting events and festivals could benefit, as well as immigration and border control.

He said Project Midas would give the police "a full, mobile national capability" to check identities.

The system may potentially beam images of suspects back to officers - some US police forces are already using such technology.

Project Lantern, a trial of mobile devices, started in 2006. The devices were used in police cars using automatic number plate recognition technology and stopped vehicles logged as stolen or having no insurance.

Fingerprint checks often showed they were carrying false documents.

Response time for Lantern took between two to five minutes generally, and responses were graded as "high" or "medium" depending on how confident they were of a match.

A NPIA spokeswoman said: "It will be up to each police authority to assess the benefits and see how many they want. Early indications are that the benefits will be huge."

Liberty, the civil rights group, has warned however that fingerprints taken in such a way would require them to be deleted straight afterwards - police have already insisted fingerprints would not be stored.

Gareth Crossman, Liberty's policy director, said: "Saving time with new technology could help police performance but officers must make absolutely certain that they take fingerprints only when they suspect an individual of an offence and can't establish his identity."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/lawandorder/3265229/Police-to-use-handheld-fingerprint-scanners-in-the-street.html

maximus otter
 
maximus_otter said:
Police to use handheld fingerprint scanners in the street

Every police force is to be issued handheld fingerprint scanners that will allow officers to carry out identity checks on people in the street.

The scheme, called Project Midas, will transform the speed of criminal investigations, according to the police.

...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/lawandorder/3265229/Police-to-use-handheld-fingerprint-scanners-in-the-street.html

maximus otter
Wow! Any personal thoughts on this one, Maximus?
 
Pietro_Mercurios said:
Wow! Any personal thoughts on this one, Maximus?

From an operational point of view, "quick & dirty" ID confirmation "out on the cobbles" would often have been very useful to me as a street bobby. Travelling criminals with multiple identities are common.

These days, when criminal fraternities are travelling to the UK from all over the world to prey on us, the ability to confirm the details of a Romanian pickpocket or an Irish distraction burglar is even more important.

On the other hand, misuse and "mission creep" of legislation such as RIPA has reminded me of Lyndon B. Johnson's wise words:

"You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered."

I note with a certain weary cynicism that the authorities assure us that the fingerprint info will not be retained. So they'll be deleting the DNA profiles of the 1,000,000 innocent citizens they hold at the moment, eh? :roll:

maximus otter
 
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waitew said:
"I'll believe we're a police state when we have as many CCTV cameras as Zimbabwe or Burma." Quote..by tea_bloody_maul.

Are you suggesting the UK has fewer CCD cameras than either Zimbabwe or Burma?I'd like to see your evidence for that.Can you produce it? Even if you can, are you content to be in the top 3? (and number ONE in terms of CCD cameras per square mile/per person?!) You see for a country that continually claims to be 'free' to even be in the top three is Bad! So,I guess your position is that unless you are the VERY WORST you are NOT a police state,BUT by that definition then there are NO POLICE STATES at all in this world! ( because you'll have MORE cameras by than the VERY WORST TODAY in a very short time & you know it!) If you claim to BE SO FREE why not compare yourself to the very BEST & then show how you are better? But I guess under the circumstances (ie..the TRUTH) it'd be obvious what you're country is! A POLICE STATE! Orwell called it (60 years ago..you had warning!) you let it happen! and in sheer Darwinian fashion you deserve it!Orwell & Darwin were both Britons.So, I guess it evens out!

No, I'm suggesting that we have lots more CCTV cameras than those states and yet they are repressive authoritarian regimes in which basic political freedoms and human rights are routinely ignored. The point is that the existence of CCTV cameras is not a prerequisite for what might looselt be termed a police or Orwellian state.

I'm assuming from your vision of Great Britain that you don't live here and haven't been recently. In that case might I ask why you trust such stories if (a) they are published here and are critical articles or openly criticised by British residents or (b) if they are published elsewhere in states also claimed to be Orwellian or potentially so (how would you know if they genuinely were)?

For the record the UK is ranked 23rd in terms of press freedom worldwide. Hardly the hallmark of a police state, is it?
 
dougiedonnelly said:
While its not a police state right now,I believe we are heading in that direction.Its true that you wont be shot for uttering the " the "n-" word-YET,but it can lose you your job,or land you in court charged with hate crime and whatever else.

A place where racial abuse and discrimination is accepted isn't exactly free for the minorities (or majorities) being abused; one where the law protects citizens from discrimination and violence is a great improvement.

A country where the police have to be polite to the citizenry is the opposite of a police state.
 
For the record the UK is ranked 23rd in terms of press freedom worldwide. Hardly the hallmark of a police state, is it?

your source please !!!

also if true I think that if we are 23rd in the world of how many country's ? is pretty abismal to be honest, what happened ??? have we allways been this low down ?

The uk should be leading the world in freedoms not coming in a lame 23rd.
 
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