UK government plans yet another massive surveillance database
Dear Labour Party: Nineteen Eighty-Four is not a manual for statecraft.
Chris Grayling, shadow home secretary, said: “The government seems to be building databases to track more and more of our lives.Spy centre will track you on holiday (Thanks, Richard!)“The justification is always about security or personal protection. But the truth is that we have a government that just can’t be trusted over these highly sensitive issues. We must not allow ourselves to become a Big Brother society.”
Some immigration officials with knowledge of the plans admit there is likely to be public concern. “A lot of this stuff will have a legitimate use in the fight against crime and terrorism, but it’s what else it could be used for that presents a problem,” said one.
“It will be able to detect whether parents are taking their children abroad during school holidays. It could be useful to the tax authorities because it will tell them how long non-UK domiciled people are spending in the UK.”
The database is also expected to monitor people’s travel companions.
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As if I needed one more reason not to visit the UK.
Given the state of Anglo-Saxon banking (which includes Wall St.), we are likely to see massive government intervention in the economy for at least a decade, possibly two decades. This may well be either in the form of center/left coalitions, or covert Fascist models, or a swing between each depending upon the election cycle.
Guess which way I think England is going.
how tight is the French coastline? Can you still get a small boat ashore quietly? If you could make it there, you'd be home free.
Yes, but... I am sincerely curious what you would suggest we do about this:
Telegraph:
CIA warns Barack Obama that British terrorists are the biggest threat to the US
Barack Obama has been warned by the CIA that British Islamist extremists are the greatest threat to US homeland security.
Thickdot @1: Is this an unsubtle revenge on all those who said during the Bush years, "One more reason not to visit the USA"?
The scary part about 1984 is not the constant surveillance, it's the laws that surveillance is used to enforce. If all this stuff (the cameras, the databases, etc.) is just used to more efficiently watch for and keep track of stuff law enforcement would already be allowed to know if it were paying attention, you've got nothing to worry about. In fact you should be thankful, since a more universally and automatically enforced law means the enforcement is not arbitrary, which ought to be a civil libertarian's goal.
WORRY ABOUT THE LAWS. Don't worry *more* effective law enforcement. That's counterproductive.
I am sincerely curious what you would suggest we do about this
I say we blast off and nuke the UK from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
In the 1940s there was a song of which a portion of the lyric was:
Who's going to watch the man
The man that's going to watch the man
The man that's going to watch me?
So much is collected by these spook intrusions that it's like trying to find a needle in a galaxy. But if you're looking for the most incompetent people on the planet, most of them would be in the intelligence community.
I've noted before that General Groves' high security safe at Los Alamos went through WWII set with the default combination from the manufacturer.
@#5 nah, I don't travel too much anymore and any reason not to travel is a good reason. Just goofing around.
#1 thickdot
Cory Doctorow as far as I gather is Canadian and lives in the UK.
North America, again as far as I know from personal experience, i.e. going there nearly every year over the last fifteen years, has had a similar database up and running for at least the last ten years.
Unless they've been wasting my time taking my fingerprints every trip.
You obviously feel that by leaving the US (?) an assumption of mine perhaps, you could be North Korean but somehow I don't think so; you're leaving a relatively free country to visit one that's lost the plot a bit freedomwise.
I know how you feel.
#9 thickdot
Previous comment posted before your followup appeared.
Anyone remember how much money was raised for the "There probably is no God, so enjoy your life" campaign? Around £500.000 in a couple of weeks. I'm willing to put down money to buy advertising space on the buses and underground pushing these issues more into public awareness.
Anyone interested in pulling this or something similar off, (complete with a website that explains to the general public why this is a problem) get in touch: public at coffeemoon dot eu
regards,
coffeemoon
@Piers W
Well, it must not have been official policy pre-9/11 because I travelled regularly to the USA for years, a couple of those as an adult after 9/11 and *never* got finger printed, neither did I ever see my mother ever finger printed. And that was on a tourist visa as a black person with a funny first and middle name.
Similar situation in Canada when I came here as an international student. No fingerprinting. I heard about it being implemented in the USA eventually -- a NYT article states 2004 -- but for 15 years...? You're not from the axis of evil or something, are you :P?
In any case as an international student photographs and finger prints sound positively mundane in comparison to ID cards. UK has the one-up there.
Oh, I just noticed you typed "at least the last 10 years", pardon me. Either way the USA did not have a comparable programme to what the UK now wants pre-9/11 and Canada not at all and still doesn't unless you're a refugee or something. (Maybe I missed that news item?)
Next up knives with no points. That country is fucked. I hope the US doesnt go down this road. Inevitable I fear.
As a UK citizen, on the two occasions I've been to the US, I've been photographed and had my fingerprints taken. Seems to be the norm, as far as I'm concerned.
Though I'm not sure how I feel about this. My feeling is that this is yet another of those systems where the amount of information gathered is too much for anything 'useful' to be done with it.
But quoted for truth:
"WORRY ABOUT THE LAWS. Don't worry *more* effective law enforcement. That's counterproductive."
The scary thing about these laws is that some people react like this
"WORRY ABOUT THE LAWS. Don't worry *more* effective law enforcement. That's counterproductive."
Any database can be hacked. Which means any information available to the police will be available to anyone with enough money to hire a hacker or anyone who has a brother in the policeforce..
If the police are able to track GPS devices:
You will be able to know were all politicians are at any given moment.
You will know who visits gay bars.
You will know where and when meetings have taken place and who participated
Everyone commits crimes but everyone does not deserve to go to jail...
"Everyone commits crimes but everyone does not deserve to go to jail..."
Oh, please. So you'd rather have arbitrary law enforcement, with the decision for who does or does not deserve to be punished for breaking any particular law in the hands of each individual police officer? THAT is a police state.
Again, your problem SHOULD be with too many and too restrictive laws, and perhaps with too draconian punishments, but *not* with a trend towards more effectively and more universally (and therefore more fairly) enforcing those laws.
@18
Everyone needs to be equal in the eyes of the law but i'd rather we catch the repeat criminals then the first timers who will never do it again. (does not apply to murders etc.)
In a society where we know every move of every citizen people will worry about accidentaly breaking laws sutch as traffic violations, tasting a candy at the store, etc.
And if you didn't intend to do the crime you should not be punnished for it...
Still, the worst part of this is how the information could be used not how the goverment plans to use it..
So have minor or non-existant punishments for first-time offenders. Problem solved. And if you don't think people should be punished for breaking traffic laws, then your problem should be with the laws themselves. The objection to traffic cameras seems especially silly to me. Oh no! Actually *enforcing* our own laws, and enforcing them uniformly? A cop I can't flirt with or flash a PBA card at?! Why... then it would actually be FAIR! :::faints:::
I see a good gun analogy here.
This database CAN be used for good, just like a gun CAN be used to defend your homes.
But there's also a good chance your gun can wind up killing your child.
The shadow Home Secretary says "we have a government that just can’t be trusted over these highly sensitive issues."
NO government can be trusted with that amount of personal data. As a UK citizen living in the US, it sickens me to think that the Tories could get in again because Labour squandered their opportunity. When they got in in 1997, there were celebrations in the same vein as those now in the US (albeit more reserved - we're British after all).
All this time they fooled us into thinking the danger was from Russia, or China, or Muslims, when in fact the most sinister threat to the freedom of British people has been lurking within our own government.
They are taking our freedoms little by little, hoping we won't notice.
Come on folk, we must fight this insididious totalitarianism before it takes any further hold. I'm not sure how, but someone must have a bright idea, and there's a lot more of us than them.
Isn't this the same government that lost ALL their taxpayer's personal information on CD-ROMS in the mail...TWICE?
One of those bus-side campaigns sounds like a damn good idea RIGHT NOW.
I can imagine one now. Cartoon of one of the CCTV cameras with the quote "Big Brother is Watching You"...--Free to use, you have my permission if you want to run with it!