Six Greenpeace climate change activists have been cleared of causing criminal damage at a coal-fired power station in a verdict that is expected to embarrass the government and strengthen the anti-coal movement. ...

The jury was told that Kingsnorth emits the same amount of CO2 as the 30 least polluting countries in the world combined – and that there are advanced plans to build a new coal-fired power station next to the existing site on the Hoo Peninsula in Kent. ...

Guardian 10 September 2008

The youngsters are among almost 5,000 residents who in some cases are being offered £500 rewards if they provide evidence of minor infractions.

One in six councils contacted by the Telegraph said they had signed up teams of "environment volunteers" who are being encouraged to photograph or video neighbours guilty of dog fouling, littering or "bin crimes".

The "covert human intelligence sources", as some local authorities describe them, are also being asked to pass on the names of neighbours they believe to be responsible, or take down their number-plates.

Ealing Council in West London said: "There are hundreds of Junior Streetwatchers, aged 8-10 years old, who are trained to identify and report enviro-crime issues such as graffiti and fly-tipping."

Harlow Council in Essex said: "We currently have 25 Street Scene Champions who work with the council. They are all aged between 11 to 14. They are encouraged to report the aftermath of enviro-crimes such as vandalism to bus shelters, graffiti, abandoned vehicles, fly-tipping etc. They do this via telephone or email direct to the council."

Other local authorities recruit adult volunteers through advertisements in local newspapers, with at least 4,841 people already patrolling the streets in their spare time. ...

Telegraph 06 September 2008

Parliament is on holiday. No doubt to the relief of the officials driving forward the database state.

With the politicians out of the way, a cadre of Home Office and Cabinet Office cronies is free to extend the tentacles of Whitehall.

This August, long term plans to monitor your movements and communications have moved on significantly.

Your travel information, your phone and text records, your e-mail and internet usage are set to be monitored. Your personal details trafficked ever more widely among officials and to foreign powers.

The Home Secretary has been hyping "biometrics" at Manchester airport - a trial of 'facial recognition'. But in reality it is just an excuse to get your passport electronically scanned.

"e-Borders" is about collecting massive amounts of detailed information on every traveller's journey for official use.

The spin is all about 'foreigners' but the system applies with even greater force to UK citizens.

The spectre of road-pricing through a 'spy in the sky' technology has also reappeared.

Following everyone everywhere is the government's way of dealing with road problems.

And if you stay at home, you are to be watched there, too.

Many people have been shocked to discover that Local Authorities have spy powers.

But for years now hundreds of bodies have been able to authorise themselves to examine any of your phone, e-mail, text and web-browsing histories that have been held by phone and internet companies.

Now there are determined efforts to make that easier. The Home Office is seeking to build a massive database of all communications data. Massive funding is already secretly committed.

What could be done with such powers? Who would you trust with them?

Whatever the purpose, it is certain that the very private information involved will be lost or fall into untrustworthy hands.

NO2ID August 2008

The police will be able to question children without their parents or other relatives being present under a shakeup proposed by the Home Office yesterday.

Ministers also announced their intention to push ahead with plans for "shopping centre jails" - short-term holding centres in busy shopping malls and town centres - to detain low-level offenders for up to four hours so they can be fingerprinted and processed without being taken to a police station. ...

... a proposal for an extension of the national DNA database by allowing samples to be taken from people arrested for minor offences such as littering, which featured in an earlier consultation paper, has been "parked" pending the outcome of an important human rights case in the autumn.

The changes to the rules on interviews of child suspects would mean that the police would no longer have to wait for a parent, guardian or other relative to turn up at the police station. In future the presence of an "appropriate adult", a role often fulfilled by a trained lay visitor at the police station, would be sufficient. ...

Changes are also proposed in the rules surrounding extensions of detention in custody from 24 to 36 hours. Currently, they have to be approved by an officer of the rank of superintendent or above. In future the signature of a police inspector would be sufficient and reviews could be carried out by telephone or video link. ...

Tony McNulty, minister for the police, said that changes to Pace codes were designed to reduce police bureaucracy while ensuring they had the powers needed to carry out frontline duties.

Guardian 29 August 2008

Powers for council wardens and private security staff to issue fixed-penalty notices and on-the-spot fines for disorderly behaviour are being considered by the police and Home Office ministers. Chief constables are also looking at using security staff to tackle community problems in places where police involvement might be seen as excessive.

A Home Office "audit" published yesterday of the use of council and private sector staff said they had been employed widely by police forces across England and Wales since their powers were established in 2002. "They are an extra pair of eyes and ears and if tasked properly they will get results, because unlike police officers who can get diverted, they are usually on the street for seven hours engaging with the community," said the report.

At present the powers used most by these "accredited" security staff are those to request a name and address if someone is acting in an antisocial manner; to confiscate alcohol from under-16s and from anyone drinking in a public place; and to issue on-the-spot fines for littering.

Those involved include park wardens, hospital and shopping mall security staff, council wardens and car park attendants.

A review of their powers is under way and senior police officers are looking at giving them the power to issue fixed penalty notices for a far wider range of offences, including disorder.

Guardian 27 August 2008

In the Queen's speech this autumn Gordon Brown's government will announce a scheme to institute a database of every telephone call, email, and act of online usage by every resident of the UK. It will propose that this information will be gathered, stored, and "made accessible" to the security and law enforcement agencies, local councils, and "other public bodies". ...

Two things have made this ghastly development possible: the technology, and politicians.

The technology is way ahead of the game: Siemens of Germany are already supplying 60 countries with a device that monitors and integrates data from phone, email and internet activity; its software establishes patterns of uses and alerts monitoring staff to deviations from the patterns.

As New Scientist reports, the system is already known to throw up huge numbers of false positives; that could have been predicted by a rudimentary acquaintance with human nature and human life. But it is a fact that has to be added to the brilliance and reliability of government and law enforcement agencies in keeping data secure, unhackable and unlosable.

The second point concerns the quality of our politicians. They say they are putting us all under suspicion for our own good. They wish to protect us against terrorists and criminals, and to make bureaucracy more efficient.

The efficiency of bureaucracy has one of its finest moments in the neat and sorted piles of false teeth, hair and spectacles at the gas chamber doors. Oh no: better the milling crowd than the police-disciplined queues of bureaucratic efficiency; better the irritation of dealing with human fallibility than the fear of dealing with jack-booted gendarmes whose grip on one's arms follows stepping out of the queue. ...

Guardian 26 August 2008

The government has been accused of creating laws that have a chilling effect on freedom of expression in the UK in a sharply critical report from the United Nations' committee on human rights. ...

Among the problems identified, the UN says:

· Terrorism Act 2006 provisions covering encouragement of terrorism are too broad and vague, and should be amended so that their application does not lead to "a disproportionate interference with freedom of expression".

· Libel laws should be reformed to end so-called "libel tourism", whereby wealthy foreigners have gone to the high court to sue over articles that would not warrant action in their own country.

· Powers under the Official Secrets Act have been "exercised to frustrate former employees of the crown from bringing into the public domain issues of genuine public interest, and can be exercised to prevent the media from publishing such matters".

The committee also warns that, in the age of the internet, Britain's unduly restrictive libel laws create the danger of affecting freedom of expression worldwide, contrary to a UN covenant on civil and political rights which guarantees the right to freedom of speech and to exchange ideas and information "regardless of borders". ...

Guardian 15 August 2008

Local councils, health authorities and hundreds of other public bodies are to be given the power to access details of everyone's personal text, emails and internet use under Home Office proposals published yesterday.

Ministers want to make it mandatory for telephone and internet companies to keep details of all personal internet traffic for at least 12 months so it can be accessed for investigations into crime or other threats to public safety.

The Home Office last night admitted that the measure will mean companies have to store "a billion incidents of data exchange a day". As the measure is the result of an EU directive, the data will be made available to public investigators across Europe.

The consultation paper published yesterday estimates that it will cost the internet industry over £50m to store the mountain of data ...

Guardian  13 August 2008

The police – primarily from the local Medway force but Metropolitan officers are also in evidence – have raided the camp twice now, confiscating items that included crayons, disabled access ramps, marker pens, banners, radios for relaying fire and medical emergency information, the nuts and bolts holding toilet cubicles together and blackboard paint.

They have found it necessary to use pepper spray without provocation, and several campers have been arrested and bailed off the site for "obstructing" increasingly aggressive police officers.

Everyone who enters the site is being searched. Police officers are taking anything away that "could be used for illegal activity", with efforts being made to strip protesters of such hardcore weapons of choice as bits of carpet, biodegradable soap and toilet paper.

In the absence of any serious threat, the police clearly found it necessary to justify their presence with an unprovoked attack on personal hygiene.

When I met with Medway police ahead of climate camp, I asked if officers could be given specific information about the ethos behind climate camp and guidelines on proportional responses. I had hoped that the guidelines would be based on sensible use of discretion and grounds of precedent.

I am therefore horrified that police here have used pepper spray, riot gear, physical intimidation, and indulged in bizarre confiscations. It almost feels like an attempt to inflame tensions and provoke protesters into less peaceful behaviour ... ...

Guardian 04 August 2008

One million innocent Britons 'criminalised', says damning report

A generation of young Britons is being criminalised for life by the relentless expansion of the national DNA database, ministers are warned today.

Alarm and hostility over the massive scale of the collection of DNA has been uncovered by groundbreaking research funded by the Home Office among panels of members of the public.

The Human Genetics Commission found there was widespread mistrust among people presented with evidence of the size of the database, which now contains the genetic records of more than four million people. It called for the database to be taken out of the control of the Home Office and police altogether, with one panel member warning that the database was a "first step towards a totalitarian state".

Britain now has by far the largest DNA database in the world. It includes an estimated one million people who have never been found guilty of any offence, some 100,000 of whom are children.

About 40 per cent of young black men have been forced to provide samples, compared with 13 per cent of Asian men and 9 per cent of white men.

Genetic material is now taken from all people arrested by police, regardless of whether they are subsequently charged or convicted, and remains on file for life.

Offences covered include begging, being drunk and disorderly, taking part in an illegal demonstration and minor acts of criminal damage caused by children kicking footballs or, in one instance, throwing a snowball.

Detailed consultation on the database by the commission, the Government's genetic watchdog, found the public believed samples provided by the innocent should be destroyed and those of people convicted of lesser offences removed after a few years.

The damning verdict was delivered by panels in Birmingham and Glasgow. After studying evidence about the database they called for an array of reforms designed to reassure the public that it would not be abused. They concluded that the records of children convicted of minor offences should be removed after a short period. Warning that adults are "criminalised" by having their DNA permanently on record, the panels said the length of time it stays on the database should be proportionate to their offence. "Currently no distinction is made between someone who has been arrested for breach of the peace and someone who has murdered somebody," the commission's report noted.

It registered alarm over the "very lax security" protecting the database and concerns over "who had access to samples and profiles and for what purpose". The panel members unanimously supported a nationwide publicity campaign to raise awareness of the database, using the internet, posters, leaflets and school visits.

The public backed control over the database being transferred to an independent body comprising ministers, police and civilians. Juries should be given better information about DNA in trials, they said, with independent scientists explaining the evidence, in addition to those hired by the prosecution and defence.

The proposed destruction of many DNA samples would be strongly opposed by ministers, who argue that they have proved vital to solving a succession of "cold cases". A Home Office spokesman said: "The national DNA database is a key information tool which has revolutionised the way the police can protect the public through identifying offenders and securing more convictions. It provides the police on average with almost 3,500 matches each month." He said there had been 41,717 crimes in 2006-07 which yielded DNA matches, including 452 homicides, 644 rapes, 222 other sex offences and more than 8,500 domestic burglaries. ...

The Independent 30 July 2008

Tens of thousands of Britons are being covertly tracked without their consent in a technology experiment which has installed scanners at secret locations in offices, campuses, streets and pubs to pinpoint people's whereabouts.

The scanners, the first 10 of which were installed in Bath three years ago, are capturing Bluetooth radio signals transmitted from devices such as mobile phones, laptops and digital cameras, and using the data to follow unwitting targets without their permission.

The data is being used in a project called Cityware to study how people move around cities. But pedestrians are not being told that the devices they carry around in their pockets and handbags could be providing a permanent record of their journeys, which is then stored on a central database.

The Bath University researchers behind the project claim their scanners do not have access to the identity of the people tracked.

Eamonn O'Neill, Cityware's director, said: "The objective is not to track individuals, whether by Bluetooth or any other means. We are interested in the aggregate behaviour of city dwellers as a whole. The notion that any agency would seriously consider Bluetooth scanning as a surveillance technique is ludicrous." ...

Guardian  21 July 2008    Keeping an eye on city lives

Bluetooth monitoring can bring many benefits

Cityware - Urban Design and Pervasive Systems

A central database holding details of everyone's phone calls and emails could be a "step too far for the British way of life", ministers have been warned.

Plans for such a database are rumoured to be in the Communications Data Bill.

But Information Commissioner Richard Thomas said "lines must be drawn" to defend "fundamental liberties".

The government says the growth of the internet means changes must be made to the way communications are intercepted in order to combat terrorism and crime.

In his annual report, Mr Thomas addressed speculation about plans for a government-run database holding details of telephone and internet communications of the entire British population ...

BBC NEWS 15 July 2008   

Primary school children should be eligible for the DNA database if they exhibit behaviour indicating they may become criminals in later life, according to Britain's most senior police forensics expert.

Gary Pugh, director of forensic sciences at Scotland Yard and the new DNA spokesman for the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo), said a debate was needed on how far Britain should go in identifying potential offenders, given that some experts believe it is possible to identify future offending traits in children as young as five.

'If we have a primary means of identifying people before they offend, then in the long-term the benefits of targeting younger people are extremely large,' said Pugh. 'You could argue the younger the better. Criminologists say some people will grow out of crime; others won't. We have to find who are possibly going to be the biggest threat to society.' ...

The Observer 16 March 2008

Two things are striking as you read through the oral evidence presented to the Joint Committee on Human Rights. The first is the measured calm of the majority of your witnesses and, indeed, of the majority of the committee, in the face of the most serious attack on personal freedom and privacy ever mounted during peacetime in this country. British democracy is on the brink of being changed beyond recognition, yet nothing seems to disturb the equanimity of your proceedings. Even allowing for the well-mannered traditions of parliamentary committees, the lack of urgency and of a sense of crisis seems remarkable. ...

The shocking loss of rights in Britain is now being noticed with bafflement abroad by people who do not understand this turn of events in one of the oldest democracies in the world. On a book tour last month in France, I was repeatedly asked by journalists: 'Why in Britain? Why are there no demonstrations?'

There are complex answers to these questions, but an obvious one is that the government has consistently advanced the argument that new laws meet singular threats from crime, terror and antisocial behaviour. We accepted these appeals with a rare faith in the wisdom and benevolence of our leaders, a faith, incidentally, that I increasingly do not share. After a decade, the account shows a devastating loss of the freedoms that we once regarded as our birthright, the self-evident and self-perpetuating virtue of the British people and their constitution.

The shocking part of it all is that it has occurred with almost no coherent analysis, scrutiny or opposition in Parliament, no debate about the direction of our society and only a little understanding and exposition in the media. ...

The Observer 09 March 2008

Nearly 1.5 million 10 to 18-year-olds will have been entered on the national DNA database by this time next year, sparking claims that Britain's youths are being criminalised and disproportionately 'targeted'.

Changes to the law have meant police can arrest anyone over the age of 10 on suspicion of committing a 'recordable' offence - which includes even minor crimes - and place their details on the register. But the government has been reluctant to discuss the issue of minors, confirming last year only that the profiles of some 358,012 children are currently on the register.

But campaign groups claim that this figure masks the bigger picture. A close analysis of the register by Arch and the pressure group Genewatch reveals the profiles of more than 1.1 million young people aged 10 to 18 have been added between 1995, when the database started, and April last year. Of these, they calculate 521,901 were aged 10 to 16 and 604,590 were between 16 and 18. ...

Genewatch calculates some 100,000 children on the database are 'innocent' in that they have not even received a caution after being arrested. It also claims that between 1995 and 2007 only 189 minors have successfully applied to have their details taken off the register. ...

A spokeswoman for the National Policing Improvement Agency, which oversees the register ... added: 'The retention of a person's DNA profile... is not a criminal record. If a young person has DNA stored on the database but does not have a conviction, this database record will not show on criminal record checks for education or employment matters.'

The Observer 09 March 2008

Communications

· Under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (2002), government agencies make 500,000 secret interceptions of email, internet connections and standard mail.

· Since summer 2007, the government and some 700 agencies have had access to all landline and mobile phone records.

Databases

· Police build network of ANPR cameras on motorways and in town centres. Data stored for two years.

· The National Identity Register will store details of every verification made by ID card holder. Data used without knowledge of citizens.

· ID card enrolment will require biometric details and large amount of personal data.

· The Home Office plans to take 19 pieces of information from anyone travelling abroad. No statutory basis.

Free expressions

· Public-order laws have been used to curtail free expression.

· The Race and Religious Hatred Act (2006) bans incitement of hatred on religious grounds.

· Terror laws are used to ban freedom of expression in some areas.

The courts

· Asbo legislation introduces hearsay evidence which can result in jail sentence.

· The Criminal Justice Act (2003) attacks jury trial.

· Admissibility of bad character, previous convictions and acquittals.

· The Proceeds of Crime Act (2002) allows confiscation of assets without prosecution.

· Special Immigration Appeals Court hearings held in secret.

Terror laws

· Terror laws used to stop and search. Current rate is 50,000 per annum.

· A maximum of 28 days detention without charge.

The Observer 09 March 2008

The Government consultation on ‘Managing Protest around Parliament’, which closed on 17 January, began as a review of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act (SOCPA) 2005, s.132-138, which controversially restricts demonstrations in a 1km zone around Parliament [2,3]. While it had previously been reported that Prime Minister Brown intended to repeal the unpopular provisions of the legislation [4], the consultation paper’s questions on the possible ‘harmonisation’ of the existing legislation suggest that the Government plans to extend current restrictions on protest around Parliament to the whole country. This means giving the police the power to censor the number, size and content of banners and placards; and existing laws requiring prior notification of and the power to impose restrictions on, and even ban, protest marches - covered by the Public Order Act 1986 – could be extended to all demonstrations ...

RINF.COM 28 February 2008

In his annual report for 2006, Sir Paul found that the majority of requests related to the supply of communications data - telephone calls, emails and post - rather than actual bugging of phone conversations.

This means that information held about a person by phone companies and internet providers can be accessed to reveal their network of friends and colleagues, how often and when they are communicated with and where the person has been when the communication has taken place.

Of 253,557 applications to intercept private communications under surveillance laws in the last nine months of 2006, it is understood most were approved.

BBC NEWS 04 February 2008

The US, the UK, China and Russia are "endemic surveillance societies", according to a recent study examining privacy protection around the world that gave the four nations the lowest possible rating.

The 10th annual report showed a global increase in surveillance and a decline in privacy safeguards during 2007, as concerns over immigration and border control continued to dominate national policy agendas.

The 2007 International Privacy Ranking, published by advocacy groups Privacy International of the UK and the Electronic Privacy Information Center in the US gave Britain the "black" or "endemic" ranking for the second year in a row.

Gus Hosein, of Privacy International, justified the UK's low ranking, noting that the country has the world's largest network of surveillance cameras, plans for national identity cards rich with personal and biometric information, and little government accountability when personal information is lost.

"This government has access to its people and technology that China doesn't," says Hosein. "It really is that bad here." ...

New Scientist 07 January 2008

More than 100,000 people, including children as young as 10, will be asked to provide saliva tests and DNA samples in a new annual survey of the lives, behaviour and beliefs of people in the United Kingdom.

The UK Household Longitudinal Study will replace the long-running British Household Panel Survey. It will be the most expensive and ambitious survey of its kind in the world, costing an initial £15m and covering 40,000 households. ...

The study will incorporate the existing survey, which has been running since 1991, but will ask those taking part to allow interviewers working for the National Centre for Social Research to take a saliva sample and allow a range of physical examinations. 'The sample could be sent to a medical laboratory to look at indicators of health, such as sugar and cholesterol levels, and for genetic tests that use the DNA contained in saliva,' said Buck.

The sample will not be tested for diseases such as HIV but interviewers may ask those taking part for permission to store a small amount that can be used as medical tests become more advanced. 'If a certain gene is found in the future to be associated with a certain illness, then being able to go back to previously gathered samples and testing to see how common that gene is will help to plan healthcare,' said Buck.

The Observer 30 December 2007

How much did you drink last week? In Harrogate 26.4% of you had between 12 and 17 “large” glasses of wine (depending on your sex), in Mole Valley 25.5% of you did, and in Leeds 25.3%. Don’t ask me how the government knows this. It apparently wants to “target middle-class drinkers”. Public money must be squandered, so why not measure the nation’s drinking habits?

Meanwhile the makers of the film, The Bourne Ultimatum, needed a location where a character could be watched by police as he moved step by step about the city. Did they use Moscow or Berlin or New York? No, they used London. They did so because Britain is the world capital of surveillance, deploying a fifth of the global stock of closed-circuit television cameras, even though the Home Office admitted last week that they were next to useless. ...

Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, wants to give the police and others access to all mobile phone records - and one day possibly the satellite tracking of car movements. Smith wants to supplement this material with electronic identity cards, including personal and criminal details, and computerised medical records. If the lord chief justice and others get their way the DNA of every native of, and visitor to, Britain will be added to this mighty store.

Given the number of access points - police, National Health Service, Whitehall, local councils and insurance companies - and given the ease of modern computer hacking, every Briton’s life story will be open to all and vulnerable to all. One result is that millions may find it impossible to get credit or insurance cover. ...

Sunday Times 21 October 2007

This summer one of our biggest debates cycled down the road from Westminster and set up camp outside Heathrow, where environmental protestors (ranging from seasoned eco-warriors to suburban housewives) became a magnet for concern about the impact of the vast expansion in air travel on climate change.

However, the aim of the protest was not just to challenge public opinion and get people to change their minds about flying. It was also aimed at getting governments to do something.

The role of our domestic legislature was an essential part of the story in another way, too. For what few noticed is that the parliamentary Act used to challenge the climate camp makes any protest virtually illegal, interpreted to the boundaries of its meaning.

The 1997 Protection from Harassment Act, as amended by the 2005 Serious Organised Crime and Police Act (SOCPA), creates an offence of trying "to persuade any person ... not to do something that he is entitled or required to do" or "to do something that he [or she, presumably] is not under any obligation to do" in a way that harasses them.

Harassment is defined as "alarming the person or causing the person distress". Alarm and distress are left undefined. As such, they become catch all categories – rather like “terror” in legislation directed at combating what the experts rather forensically call “asymmetric, non-state sanctioned violence, designed to intimidate people and public institutions.”

Public demonstrations are, by definition, trying to get someone or somebody alarmed or distressed about something – the treatment of workers, environmental damage, human rights, global poverty, or whatever. And increasingly, the legislature is forcing the executive and the judiciary to ban them. ...

Ekklesia 07 September 2007

If nothing else, police attitudes at the climate camp indicated that the road to sustainability is likely to be a rocky one. If the camp's media collective seemed to be pumping out the message that a peaceful negotiated solution to climate change is just on the horizon, and airhead mass-media celebs confuse low-carbon living with the Atkins diet, the Metropolitan Police at least seem to realise that any genuine attempts to push our society towards a carbon-neutral and eco-friendly future will mean a total smashing of the status quo. And needless to say that's something the boys in blue and their bosses are none too keen on. ...

Throughout the week campers were subjected to assaults, constant stops and searches, sexist comments, aggression and sarcasm from the Met. One element of police repression which attracted some mainstream media attention were the searches under Section 44 of the Terrorism Act. In fact by Wednesday most stops were being conducted under Section 1 of PACE (this meant that the police claimed to suspect everyone of 'going equipped to cause criminal damage'). One man was stopped on the basis that he was thus 'equipped', even though two minutes before he was being kicked out of West Drayton police station with no possessions and wearing a paper suit! Stops and searches were carefully coordinated with a team of police photographers making sure that everyone stopped had their mugshot taken. People were forcibly and illegally detained until the happy snaps could be shot. Of course 99% of these searches produced no evidence of anything ...

schnews.org 24 August 2007

What does the phrase "Serious Organised Crime" conjure up in your mind? Violent murder, drug gangs, and protection rackets perhaps?

High-level fraud and corruption, corporate tax evasion and dodgy arms deals maybe?

Think anti-social behaviour, and peaceful protest, and you'll be on the right lines.

SOCPA is a long document, setting up the ‘Serious Organised Crime Agency’ but also introducing clauses that target protesters in this country in various ways.

Section 125 covers harassment (used on animal rights protestors), Sections 128-131 deal with military bases (with serious penalties on trespassers) and Sections 132-138 outlaw "unauthorised" demonstrations roughly 1 kilometre around Parliament ...

occupiedlondon.org 20 March 2007

Britain's biggest national security problem isn't so much law enforcement as a cycle of mutual hostility and alienation.

buddha9

November 14, 2006 02:14 AM

Max - your interesting, but ultimately unsatisfying article, raises some points which need rebutting -

1 - Why are Muslims the only underclass disaffected by economic deprivation, while white w/class are simply driven by race hatred? Neo-liberalism has created a situation where dissatisfaction is being increasingly felt by everyone (middle class included) and in fact, you could argue this widespread dissatisfaction is precisely what is being averted and headed off by being transformed into race hatred.

2- none of the chattering/political classes of whom you are member, have yet proved why the so called Muslim threat is any different than the much more potent IRA threat - after all that lasted generations, they were citizens of Britain. No one asked why Catholics weren't integrated/ couldn't integrate. Indeed the IRA threat lasted many years and let off more bombs and didn’t require, despite their open threat to UK sovereignty, the sort of exaggerated anti-terrorism legislation which is routinely considered now.

3- Why is it that when Muslims question the official narratives concerning the 9/11 and 7/7 bombings, they are automatically labelled terrorists sympathisers? 40% of Americans according to various polls think the US govt. knew off or sponsored in some form the attacks on the twin Towers. Are they all terrorists? Well perhaps they will be in a few years.

4 it is not Pakistan’s radicals who pose a threat to the population of Britain, but the Pakistan intelligence service as various articles tacitly admit. They are the ones rearming the resurgent Taliban, they are the ones who seem constantly to have some sort of connection to every claimed crazy radical caught in Britain. What do you propose to do about them? Well nothing of course.

5 your ref to the New East End is warranted, its a very good book. The liberals (and we're all liberals now) do dump people in areas of already existing poverty, without consulting the residents and when unrest happens the very same liberals from their sanctuaries in west and north London, utter pious homilies against the racism of the working class. Considering they are confronting the problems and they're under resourced already, I'm amazed (and I've worked in the east end) how little racism there is in these areas. Dump a lot of any sort of foreigners in Hampstead and see what you get.

6 i notice you claim al qaida (al-CIA-da) are indiscriminate, where the IRA weren't. Well Max some of us have long memories, and I don't recall the daily tele discriminating in this manner when the IRA bombs were going off.

Still, after all of that, I’ve seen much worse and more stupid articles about this topic than yours. The standard of the debate is getting better. The problem with your pious ending which of course everyone would wish were true, is that it fails to take into account the officially endorsed and ongoing violence that this system perpetuates on everyone, every day. Until that is resolved violence will occur. It’s just a matter of how you label it.

The first step away from this sort of violence is for the rich to admit that their 20 year endeavour to stuff as much of the GNP cake into their mouths as they possibly can without paying any social cost what so ever, has in fact endangered everyone including them. That's the root course of the problem: neo-liberalism and the rich’s greedy, anti-social behaviour that goes with it. No amount of finger pointing and scapegoating of Muslims will alleviate that. The Guardian 14 November 2006

The Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 has recieved most publicity for it's ban on unauthorised protests within 1 km of Parliament - widely accepted to have been devised to end the peace protest of Brian Haw.

Brian Haw has maintained a five year protest against the war on Iraq opposite the Houses of Parliament but, in May this year, the police began dismantling his site.

Maya Evans and Milan Rai were arrested at the Cenotaph on Whitehall for reading out the names of UK soldiers and civilians killed in the war in Iraq.

It is unacceptable that security laws should be used to protect Parliamentarians from legitimate protest. This is a significant attack on our traditional rights to free expression and assembly.

SOCPA also makes all offences arrestable, meaning that protesters who might previously have received a warning, could now be arrested.

It widens ASBOs, by allowing unaccountable bodies to seek them against individuals, and creates a new criminal offence of trespass on a 'designated site' on grounds of national security. 'National security' is not defined, which risks the new offence being used against protesters.

Specific provisions were also brought in against animal rights protesters. The crime of 'economic sabotage' not only extended the criminalisation of violent and unlawful protesters, but was so broadly drafted as to make criminals of many peaceful protestors who were simply calling for boycotts.

Liberty

We don't live in a police state yet, but we're heading there

The argument for social control goes like this: if you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear from a national data bank of identity/the terrorism act/the tapping of MPs' phones/the use of the public-order act to control protest and limit free expression/the new powers of arrest/the retention of DNA samples taken from innocent juveniles. ...

If you put to one side Blair's addiction to summary justice and focus on the measures carried out in the name of security, you find two streams: those devoted to reduction of free speech and the right to protest, and those that concentrate on the surveillance and monitoring of innocent citizens.

The Serious Organised Crime and Police Act (Socpa) falls in the first category. Apart from increasing the police's powers of arrest, it removed the right to demonstrate within one kilometre of parliament, a right people still possess in Serbia and Ukraine.

Section 44 of the 2000 Terrorism Act, meanwhile, allows police to stop and search anyone in a designated area. This has been used to obstruct demonstrations against the Iraq war, global capitalism and arms fairs and even those who heckled speakers at last year's Labour party conference. Linked with issuing Asbos, it has proved highly effective in controlling demonstrations which offend the government.

To limit what can be said in public, the government also inserted a provision in Socpa that criminalises opinions that are held to stir up religious hatred. You may not make a joke about Islam, Judaism or Christianity without risking a criminal record. And section 5 of the Public Order Act allows police to prosecute if they believe a hate crime has been committed. ...

If anything, the strand of Blair's campaign devoted to surveillance and bugging is much more worrying. He has already granted MI5 and the police powers to pry on people's email and text messages. According to the Independent on Sunday, he now plans to allow MPs' communications to be intercepted by MI5. It is astonishing that parliament did not erupt.

If US senators and members of Congress were being bugged, there would be an outcry.

The constitution would be flourished, as it is now by Greenpeace, the Council for American-Islamic Relations and a number of well-known writers such as Christopher Hitchens and James Bamford in a case claiming the Bush administration's use of wiretaps is a violation of privacy and free speech. ...

Does anyone care about the proposals to extend the automatic numberplate recognition system throughout Britain's motorway network so that the details of every journey by every innocent member of the public are retained? I spent an entire day last week being batted from the Home Office to the Department of Transport and the Highways Agency trying to determine what legislation enables this scheme.

The answer is none.

I spoke to the pleasant chief constable of Hertfordshire, Frank Whiteley, who advocates this system on behalf of the Association of Chief Police Officers. He made points about the detection of criminals and terrorists, but conceded there was indeed a cost to civil liberties.

Piece by piece, that system is being built because the CCTV cameras already in place can also read numberplates. Yet there has been no debate in parliament, no special powers enacted, no one questioning the cost or the privacy issues. Make no mistake - we are wiring up for the police state.

The whole population and every UK visitor should be added to the national DNA database, a senior judge has said.

The present database in England and Wales holds details of 4m people who are guilty or cleared of a crime.

Lord Justice Sedley said this was indefensible and biased against ethnic minorities, and it would be fairer to include everyone, guilty or innocent. ...

Nick Clegg, Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, said there was "no earthly reason" why someone who has committed no crime should be on the database - "yet the government is shoving thousands of innocent people's DNA details on to the database every month".

The DNA database - which is 12 years old - grows by 30,000 samples a month taken from suspects or recovered from crime scenes.

There has already been criticism of the database - the largest in the world - because people who are found innocent usually cannot get their details removed. ...

BBC NEWS 05 September 2007

Richard Thomas, the information commissioner, has warned that Britain could be sleepwalking into an East German-style surveillance society, holding extensive but secret files on all citizens.

Mr Thomas said the government was planning three population databases that would make more personal information quickly available to more officials, yet citizens would not be able to find out what the government knew about them.

The projects, he said, were the home secretary's identity card scheme, the citizens' information project (a population register proposed by the Office for National Statistics), and a planned database of every child in the country from birth to the age of 18.

"My anxiety is that we don't sleepwalk into a surveillance society where much more information is collected about people, accessible to far more people shared across many more boundaries, than British society would feel comfortable with," he told The Times. ...

The Guardian 16 August 2004

Police State Britain: More Links

DNA evidence is far from foolproof

The Rules of the Game: Terrorism, Community and Human Rights

SOCPA

The Children's Index

The NHS Spine

Building Big Brother

We are already at the gates of the surveillance society

Britain's surveillance future

Britain: the most spied on nation in the world

The Surveillance Society - pdf

You ARE being Watched

Your Life in Their Lens

Surveillance Society - 2016

The most spied on society in Europe

Implant Tagging

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