Personal info from UK traffic cams open to the US government
You know all those traffic-cams throughout the UK that capture your license-plate and correlate it with your identity? The British coppers have found a spirit of sharing and will hand over their data to pretty much anyone:
THE UK Home Secretary secretively signed a "special certificate" last year that gives foreign security agencies real-time access to traffic camera images and related data monitoring British motorists on highways throughout the UK.Link (Thanks, Brady!)Opposition politicians and civil liberties advocates yesterday accused Gordon Brown's government of attempting to hide from Parliament its covert plans to facilitate international surveillance of UK citizens in violation of privacy laws.
Under the authorisation signed last July 4 by Jacqui Smith, video feeds and still images captured from roadside TV cameras, along with personal data derived from them, can be transmitted out of the UK to countries such as the US, that are outside the European Economic Area.
Home Secretary Smith failed to mention the exception in a statement she made to Parliament less than two weeks later on July 17, 2007 outlining Metropolitan Police exemptions to the 1998 Data Protection Act.
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Astonishing. So why isn't this on the front age of the broad sheets? What can one do? I doubt if I email my MP a link she will look at it. Hmmm.
Once again may I say how much I enjoy living in the UK.
Mr Bush, how far, exactly, would you care for me to bend over?
I heard today on NPR that they're pretty much giving the information out to anyone in the UK too. Some woman was (and I think this is right) registering her child for a public school in a posh area and instead of having her prove her residence by any of the normal means (home visit, utility bill, um...asking?) they instead asked for a copy of her driver's license. They then used the drivers license information to access her car information and then proceeded to pull the camera information on her. For two weeks! All around town. How's that for an abuse of power. Which is why everyone has to be super careful about ideas that seem harmless, good, beneficial. Inevitably, someone, somewhere, will see its potential for evil or at least impropriety
That Jacqui Smith is a nasty piece of work. She's the UK's answer to Condi Rice. Is using a woman to do the dirty work supposed to make totalitarianism more palatable?
I'm not sure why this is either news or surprising to anyone living in the U.K. About 7 years ago I was fingerprinted in a police station in England using what was then the new (now commonplace) electronic system. As part of the fingerprinting process I was told that the prints (and DNA sample) would be stored in the U.S. Later, my lawyer tried to have the prints destroyed (I was never charged) but we were informed that that wasn't possible because they weren't the property of the police "service" to destroy.
I'm just going outside to remove my huge "up yours Bush" bumper sticker. Can't take any chances on the M25 now!
If we ever get to hear Humphreys or Paxman interview her on this, when she answers their question, ignore what she says (I always do) and pretend she is saying: "Well we figure it is easier to let some foreigners keep tabs on whoever they like rather than expecting them to ask us to do it, even if we have built the best 'keeping tabs' infrastructure in the world. Because, obviously we've built such a good 'public realm' spying capability that we can't cope with the volume of spying it enables us to do. So obviously outsourcing it is the way to go if we want to get a good return on all those CCTV and ANPR cameras".
if your medical insurance billing and records are off-shored (because its "cheaper"!), also expect them to be the property of snoops, spooks and cops elsewhere.
I dearly hope this is all just a clever tribute to V For Vendetta.
Yet another reason that,
a) I am ashamed to be British, and
b) I am getting the fuck out of the UK as soon as I bloody well can.
It's disappointing (to us Brits) that it's been a LABOUR and not Conservative goverment that has been fundamentally destroying our civil liberties ever since they came to power in 1997; one would expect this sort of shit from right-wingers, not (supposed) lefties.
It'll teach us for believing in their "Things can only get better" bullshit I suppose...
How long until that data is being peddled to Wal-Mart?
@#9
But where the hell to go, though!
I'm sure that if you ask nicely you'll get all your rights back. Or write a sternly worded letter. It's bound to work. You could vote too, you do have those don't you? I can't quite remember the last one but I'm sure you'll get another one, someday. Maybe if you beg? Put a little extra tongue in next time, I hear they like that.
lefties have always been worse... just look at what used to happen in East Germany... Labour have always had wet dreams about doing that... My MP is useless, he's a boot-licking Labour toady... he publicly sucks up to GB on every occasion... Campaigned to save post offices, yet voted with the rest of his Labour toadies to kill them off, and claimed that he'd been elected to vote Labour on every issue... the man has no conscience... he won't question the Government on this issue...
#13: Just because Jonah Goldberg says something doesn't mean it's true.
The word police state just doesn't quite cover the scope of things it seems.
I AM ashamed to be British now and I HAVE left the UK - and have become a foreign tax payer. I am NOT going to help finance this essentially criminal government!
@ #11 - New York. That's not really America, is it???
@ #13 - I think you'll find that most 'New' Labourites are further to the right than many members of the Conservative party; hardly "lefties", by any means.
P.S. For further info about the British government's destruction of its citizens' civil liberties. I highly recommend this film: http://www.noliberties.com/
On the other hand, the CIA (or whoever) is probably thinking, "Hmm, from the people who brought you Terminal 5".
Does a person living in GB with some sort of workers visa have to watch what they say, especially when it concerns government security policies? I assume that there are plenty of Brits that talk about Big Brother in negitive terms. Since Doctorow is a journalist I don't think he has to worry. But I used to think that about the United States, but now I realise that people end up on lists if they aren't careful. Is GB as bad as the US? They sound worse to me in some regards.
But then, I've said public CCTVs are a good idea, but that very strict oversight needs to be in place.
We watch each other for sport; the government should allow access to public feeds but charge for it! It would make stalking so much eaiser! Alas, I do not live in London and expect the Detroit suburbs to be CCTV-free for the next hundred years, or so.
I take a certain enjoyment in the fact that the order was signed on July 4. That day has a particular meaning for us Americans.
Is that the same American Government that refused to pay the congestion charge that the cameras were supposedly brought in for?
Rational pedantic quibbling: It's not the 'British coppers' who hand over the data, it's the stupid brainless horrible government who I still can't believe won their third term after all they'd done in the first two. It's highly unlikely that the police run any of those camera systems, which is one of the reasons they don't work as well as they should - the police sometimes have a horrendous job getting hold of the data they need for a criminal investigation.
Reaction to the actual story: Do we get access to American surveillance data? All we hear about these days is that we're giving them this and that and the other, but we never seem to get anything in return. Information is power, after all - are we handing over all the power to the Americans?
No offence to American Boing Boing readers who I'm sure are largely intelligent and enlightened, but that's scary.