Total Phone and Email Database Proposed In UK 434
mishmash writes "The Times of London is reporting a proposal for a massive government database holding details of all phone calls, emails, and time spent on the Internet. This is to be justified as being 'part of the fight against crime and terrorism.' Quoting: 'Internet service providers and telecoms companies would hand over the records to the Home Office under plans put forward by officials.' If you want to write to representatives to let them know your views, contact details are available at Write to Them." UK telecoms are already required to keep records of phone calls and text messages for 12 months, accessible by subpoena; the requirement is already slated to expand to records of Internet usage, emails, and VoIP. This new proposal aims to centralize all that information in a single database in the Home Office.
Mr. Orwell! (Score:5, Insightful)
Mr.Orwell! A telephone call for Mr.Orwell ....
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Mr. Orwell! (Score:4, Funny)
Simply dial any random number and deliver your message to whoever answers. Give it a little while and the relevant catchwords will be identified and stored in the central database for easy retrieval by unaccountable government drones. 'Correctional' officers will then be dispatched to visit you and 'correct' your views on certain matters.
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I am not sure this is so funny. Not so long ago this sort of a joke would be something told with a tone of moral superiority about the old USSR, where the tourists were told, half-in-jest, to speak into the flower arrangements on the hotel table.
Oh how far the mighty have fallen....
And how quickly!
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Is that you, Airstrip One?
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no no no - in this situation, there is no need to page anyone.
if the Men In Charge(tm) want you, they'll come get you. in person. sometimes they may even forget to knock before entering.
its part of the new super-service our tax dollars have been paying for.
Remember, Remember the 5th of whenever! (Score:5, Interesting)
I would like to see us have an Osama Bin ladin day where we burn his effigy to fireworks and general celebration
- and Guy fawkes never actually carried out the gunpowder plot
AND nobody seems to forget the bloody goverment reprisals that have taken place under the guidance of the old Kings and Queens, mostly due to religious differences. here I name but a few:
The rampage of Bloody Bonner during the reign of Queen Mary I
The Bloody Assizes of Judge Jeffreys in the reign of King James II
The repression in Scotland against the highlanders after the first Jacobite rebellions which some historians have called genocide
The Peterloo Massacre in 1819
Have the English forgot all of these thousands of government killings and yet still remember Guy Fawkes who did not manage to kill a single person?
If I were British I would be considerably more afraid of my government than any terrorist.
Re:Remember, Remember the 5th of whenever! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Remember, Remember the 5th of whenever! (Score:5, Interesting)
Why do people go on about the vote as if it makes a difference? In China they have had elections for decades and nothing has changed. The party puts forward a few suits to chose between and the people choose a puppet to stand in front of them. In Britain we get to choose between 3 suits and in the US they get to choose between 2... It is a long time since we have been any different to China or Russia.
Russia and China are moving in one direction and becoming more free. The UK and the US are moving in the other direction. Russia has closed its gulags and the US has opened its own...
In a few years we will be different to Russia and China again when they become the representatives or the free world.
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I think a few Russian journalists would beg to differ (if they were still alive, that is).
Re:Remember, Remember the 5th of whenever! (Score:4, Insightful)
Russia is moving toward becoming more free? Under Putin the state control of the media increased massively, the President's powers were increased hugely and the Duma was reduced to almost nothing. Now we have Medvedev, who won in a landslide that could never have been anything other than a landslide, while Putin is Prime Minister and still hugely powerful, leading a party with a constitutional majority and his hand-picked successor as president.
China is pretty much the archetypal example of a repressive regime working today. A country employing the most complex control system ever built to prevent the people exercising any control and employing methods that have been associated with tyranny since the days of Aristotle.
Claiming that these countries are as free as the UK or the US is a very strong statement, especially when you assert it with no evidence or information of any sort. It's a long time since we have been any different? The Republic of China has existed for 58 years, the Russian Federation for 16. And even if we just look at the UK it's difficult to see what you could be talking about.
In the UK we have a three party system. The candidates embody genuine differences in philosophy, have massive differences in their manifestos and represent different sides of the political divide. It's very popular at the moment to make fun of the parties for having no real differences in policy, but it's mostly popular among people who have no idea what the parties' policies are. People "go on about the vote as if it makes a difference" because it does make a difference - you sound like you're in the UK so you have probably noticed there are some by-elections on at the moment, and the peoples' votes are forcing the Government to give people what they want. If the by-elections are as bad for Labour as many people expect, their entire policy agenda will have to change. This accountability is one of the things the vote guarantees; politicians have to govern reasonably or lose office.
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"Oh but stop moaning, there are twelve kinds of butter in the supermarket".
Pah, Viz comics bottom inspectors [blogspot.com] are looking more like prophecy every day !
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Re:Remember, Remember the 5th of whenever! (Score:4, Insightful)
The power of the house of lords has been curtailed quite a bit over history, especially at the beginning and end of the 20th century.
They can only delay bills, 1 month for monetary bills (new taxes etc) and 2 sessions of parliament or 1 year for other bills.
I believe that much of the opposition against the current police state has actually come from the house of lords.
I personally think that having a second house who's members don't have to worry about reelection to allow delays for second thoughts on legislation is actually a good idea.
Re:Mr. Orwell! (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe something like this.
Loudspeaker: Paging Mr.Orwell. Mr.Orwell to the nearest white courtesy phone.
Orwell: Hmmm... Ok.... Um... there's a sign here that says 'Courtesy Phone', but the phone is black.
Loudspeaker: No, the courtesy phone is white.
Orwell: No, it's black.
Loudspeaker: It's white.
Orwell: It's black. It's the same color as my suit and watchband.
Loudspeaker: I don't know how you could be so mistaken. It's clearly white.
Orwell: How can you not know your black courtesy phones are black?
Loudspeaker: It's white.
Orwell: It's black.
Loudspeaker: Paging the nearest Civil Protection Team. Civil Protection Team to the nearest white courtesy phone.
Useless information (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Useless information (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Useless information (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Useless information (Score:5, Interesting)
Sending all that information to the database system is going to generate just as much traffic as spam generates. How on earth are they going to differentiate between spam with forged E-mail addresses and real E-mail, when they won't have access to the actual message contents?
Re:Don't forget... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Don't forget... (Score:5, Informative)
Sounds Like A Reasonable Proposal (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Stop supporting Israeli terrorism
2. Stop acting the lapdog to the United States rampaging through the Middle East in an effort to secure oil resources and pipelines and wacky Christian end of world judegement day type crazyness.
More like... (Score:2)
Well... (Score:2)
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This is brilliant! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This is brilliant! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:This is brilliant! (Score:4, Informative)
Laws don't stop crime, but perhaps you should actually go and look up some statistics on per-capita gun crime in various countries, then decide whether or not the UK has a real problem with it?
We also do not have cameras everywhere - I can't think of a single one in the area of London that I live in. Yes, the centres of the cities and large towns have a lot of cameras, and yes I'm somewhat ambivalent about that, but no they are not "everywhere".
now the only two armed groups in the Uk are the military and the criminals
And the police, and the secret services, and a large number of farmers and other such people who own licensed firearms...
awesome (Score:3)
Re:awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
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I predict that it'll be a funny side effect of trying to do complete citizen monitoring is that you'll be LESS able to monitor the people the government claims it's trying
Republicans (Score:4, Insightful)
Have you guys seen what's been happening to the republican assholes who've been running our government?
I won't blame the Republicans, the powers that the PATRIOT Act gave Bush Clinton tried to grab as president too.
FalconRe:awesome (Score:5, Informative)
Association is a guaranteed way of convicting an innocent person.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birmingham_Six [wikipedia.org]
Re:awesome (Score:5, Funny)
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I don't think so (Score:4, Funny)
So *now* you know.
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Not only that, wait 'till someone who wants to move up the ladder starts making up bullshit! It's happened in state-run crime labs before.
Re:awesome (Score:5, Funny)
"Agreed. Hopefully he hasn't finished that triggering mechanism or we're all screwed!"
Re:awesome (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:awesome (Score:4, Informative)
Re:awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
And it is. It's not just the government though - it's also overpopulation, and the fact the the average Brit is happy to work all hours for faceless corps who don't give a fuck about them, because they're all up to their eyeballs in mortgage debt (and are led to believe that owning ones own house is the be-all and end-all of existence, so it's all worth it really). Towns are unfriendly and jammed with cars - there are now so many cars you can't move for the fucking things, being used or just parked. Housing estates are horrible hideous anonymous places with bad architecture, built so shoddily and close together that everyone's at each others' throats about the noise and where everyone shuns their neighbours because there is just no fucking privacy anymore. Simple fact - 60 million people and counting simply do not FIT into the British Isles.
People pay insane prices for food and other basic needs, and put up with crap quality because they have gradually forgotten what good quality IS. Supermarkets have taken over every town and turned them all into identikit clones of each other - distinguishable only by the small differences in their dysfunctional traffic-saturated ring-road systems. And what are the supermarkets full of? Ready meals full of chemicals - for FUCKS sake Britain, cook your own food!
There's no pride in anything - ones work, ones environment, ones town, and nobody actually makes anything anymore - it's all "service industry" whatever the fuck that means, what 'industry'?
I don't believe in conspiracy theories generally, (after all, conspiracies require competence, and that's a precious commodity these days), but if some shady organisation had wanted to hatch a plot (in the 1960s, say) to turn Britain into a sleepwalking nation of compliant consumers that took any old shit thrown at them with a shrug, they could not have done better than what has actually taken place since then. Britain can be a beautiful place, and it has its good points, and good people, but as a nation it's lost its soul. Very sad. WAKEY WAKEY!!!
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The Aussies only complain about us whinging (not whining) if it's about Australia. Knocking Britain is fine
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Re:awesome (Score:4, Funny)
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4 (1)...
(2)If any person with the appropriate permission under Schedule 2 believes, on reasonable grounds --
(a)that a key to the protected information is in the possession of any person,
(b)that the imposition of a disclosure requirement in respect of the protected information is--
(i)necessary on grounds falling within subsection (3)
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Fail (Score:5, Insightful)
That way you can call it what it is.
Instead, the ISPs are being pulled into doing the dirty work, which means the gov't gets shielded from some of the heat.
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1. A totalitarian government spends its money and employs its people to build a Great Firewall. Expenses: $100 million. It Works.
2. A democratic government takes people's money, gives it to a few chosen private contractors to build a monitoring station that can intercept ten million telephone calls a day, and will work for first few hours before its database becomes full. Expenses: $1215 million. It never works. After a year and spending 10x times the budget, the government blames the c
Time to buy stock in storage providers.. (Score:2)
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You can store a phone call in WAY less than 128kbps per second, which is what 1MB/min amounts to.
Re:Time to buy stock in storage providers.. (Score:4, Informative)
If you record the audio in each direction as a different stream, then you get 128Kbps.
Who exactly is proposing this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Who exactly is proposing this? (Score:5, Funny)
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There's nobody from the Home Office mentioned by name in the article. If you are referring to Jonathan Bamford, the assistant Information Commissioner, then the ICO is an independent public body sponsored by the Ministry of Justice. If you are referring to David Davis, the Shadow Home Secretary, then he is part of the shadow government, i.e. he is the opposition party's counterpart to the Home Secretary.
Premature? (Score:5, Informative)
While I think Write To Them is a fine service and encourage people to use it more, I can't help but feel this is a little premature. This is just another hare-brained idea by the Home Office that MPs haven't even seen yet. Why don't we wait until they actually have a copy of the bill before bombarding them with complaints about it? Otherwise we run the risk of looking like paranoid kooks for protesting a bill that nobody has read because it doesn't even exist yet.
Re:Premature? (Score:5, Insightful)
In fact, if you can get enough people to write in fearing some sort of massive problem, any bill that can be seen to have the slightest association with that fear, no matter how much the original fear was inflated, will never come to pass.
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"Mr Prime Minister sir, we were going to start collecting data on everyone, but Mrs. Bugglesby from 3593 Pettycoat lane wrote us a letter....and well, we're just going to call the whole thing off."
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Re:Premature? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Sure! (Score:2)
Now more than ever (Score:5, Interesting)
UK? It's starting to sound like the USSK... (Score:2)
NIMBY! (Score:3, Interesting)
e-mail database... (Score:2)
to understand the source of this (Score:5, Insightful)
Here it is:
Part One [google.com]
Part Two [google.com]
Part Three [google.com]
Brilliant stuff. Really sad. But brilliant.
RS
Wow! (Score:4, Insightful)
er..... Nevermind....
I don't think this is good enough (Score:3, Funny)
How can we be safe from criminals and terrorists while we still retain the ability to communicate face to face without full disclosure to our loyal public servants?
I regard it as not only highly desirable but a moral duty to provide the contents of all non-electronically-mediated conversations - ideally a full video or audio recording would be made available, but at the very least a transcript or precis.
I just don't know how one could claim to be an upstanding citizen without providing such.
V for Vendetta (Score:4, Insightful)
You question the motives of our dear leaders? (Score:3, Funny)
But don't you understand? All this -- the surveillance, the monitoring, the foolproof IDs -- is going to ultimately eliminate crime in the UK and enable everyone to live in blissful peace and safety and harmony, correct? I mean, hasn't crime already slowed to a trickle because of all the CCTV and stuff?
What? It hasn't? But...but...how could this not work? I thought for sure...
Unless.....maybe this has nothing to do with battling crime and terrorism, but instead to establish total control over the lives of citizens? NO!!! NO!!! Perish the thought...not in a Western Democracy...we have freedom and all that other good stuff, not like those nasty totalitarian regimes, right? Must...eliminate...negative...thinking....all is well...all is well....all is well.....
Re:Is this even legal issue? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Seriously, what is wrong with the United Kingdom?! (Score:5, Insightful)
But what on earth is going on in the UK? Security cameras literally everywhere, compulsory DNA databases, laws permitting detention without charge or trial for long periods of time, that insane proposal for a law to allow laws to be made and abolished by regulation (i.e. without a vote in parliament), and this obsession with centralising government control over information, particularly insofar as it relates to the movements and communications of private citizens. The list goes on and on.
Britain stood virtually alone against fascism in World War Two, and was a bastion against the totalitarian Soviet bloc during the Cold War. Before then the UK resisted the power of the Catholic church, eliminated any real power for its despotic monarchs, and even briefly pioneered the field of total republican independence from hereditory rule, later embraced by some more celebrated republics. Before any of that you managed to write the Magna Carta, perhaps the greatest document on the rights of the individual in human history.
Why did you even bother, only to willingly turn yourselves into a bureaucractic authoritarian state? Sure, you're not murdering millions of your citizens in gas chambers, but you're only a hop, skip and a jump away from East Germany under the Stasi - total state surveillance and the tyranny of a huge, opaque executive government where faceless "officials" control the lives of citizens.
Wake up, before it's too late.
Re:Seriously, what is wrong with the United Kingdo (Score:5, Insightful)
History does repeat itself, or so they say.
1700-1900 is NOT that long of a time span at all in the grand scheme of things. Now consider all of the world changing events we saw in just two hundred years. The change saw are almost unimaginable by even the most creative of minds. What will another 200 years and scarce resources bring?
I do not think even the most intellectual of us can fathom what the world will look like in a hundred years. If it comes down to it, the police state WILL be enforced if deemed necessary, and it will all be already in place ready to go...
We think we are so different from those before us, but are you so naive to think that they did not feel the same way about their previous generations?
It really is time to get up and do something if you live in the UK. This kind of stuff makes me feel good to be in the US... for once.
Re:Seriously, what is wrong with the United Kingdo (Score:4, Insightful)
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Those at the top of the political heap always deem police states to be necessary because they wouldn't stay at the top of said heap unless they had an innate desire for controlling everyone else. The problem they have in democracies is convincing the public to let them have the powers they've always wanted.
"It really is time to get up and do something if you live in the UK"
They won't though, because Britain is now largely occupie
Re:Seriously, what is wrong with the United Kingdo (Score:5, Insightful)
All they need now is some curfews and laws against private gatherings.
Re:Seriously, what is wrong with the United Kingdo (Score:5, Informative)
They have a clip of Tony Blair saying that he knows a whole class of people who will grow up to be be criminals and ought to be registered as such *pre-birth*.
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Re:Seriously, what is wrong with the UK?! (Score:5, Insightful)
But what on earth is going on in the UK? Security cameras literally everywhere, compulsory DNA databases, laws permitting detention without charge or trial for long periods of time ...
I understand where you are coming from, and I hate being surveilled myself, but let's try to understand the context in which this is happening. Necessity is the mother of invention. For the better part of a half a century, the UK has been under constant terrorist threat and subject to numerous (often hightly deadly) attacks. They have a lot of experience dealing with this and these measures have developed over time (accompanied by some very poor curial decisions). This is not unqualifiedly good, but neither is it surprising.
Now that sections of Islam have declared war on Western civilisation, the UK faces a particularly nasty threat, namely a HUGE number of poorly socialised (into British culture) and radicalised Islamic youth living within their very borders. As we sit here from a safe distance, several hundred potential Islamic suicide bombers are devising way to kill the maximum number of Britons possible.
Perhaps the problem was that the British state (which after all is not separated from the Anglican church), has been too tolerant of religious diversity in the past.</irony>
Sorry I'm not up to speed here. Delegated legislation is long established and is in use in virtually every common law country in the world. That's what a 'Regulation' (as opposed to an 'Act') is. Which particular insane proposal are you referring to that puts a new twist on this?
Britain stood virtually alone against fascism in World War Two, and was a bastion against the totalitarian Soviet bloc during the Cold War ... Why did you even bother, only to willingly turn yourselves into a bureaucractic authoritarian state?
Here you are simply committing an error of logic. While it is true that a "bureaucractic authoritarian state" would benefit from a highly surveilled society, a highly surveilled society by no means implies a "bureaucractic authoritarian state!" (Neither is the absence of effective surveillance a guarantee against authoritarian rule). This really depends on how robust British democracy is, how safe the legal framework is regarding the proper use surveillance, presumptions of innocence vs. protection of the public, data protection, privacy etc. etc. I don't think you should write off British democracy just yet (I mean it's not like they use electronic voting machines! ;)
Wake up, before it's too late.
I believe that's what they are doing! And one hopes that their basic liberal-democratic* values survive the challenge.
*I mean 'liberal-democratic' in the traditional sense of the term (ie. representative democracy through free elections balanced by respect for the rights of individuals, as embodied in the rule of law), not in the recent abusive misuse of the term to signify left-of-centre US Democrats, as employed by people who got their politcal education off the back of a Corn Flakes pack.
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I stopped reading at ...
Ah now that's where you went wrong, you see, being closed minded and being well informed are mutually exclusive. And because you were not informed about the rest of my comment, your make a critique is somewhat lacking in relevance.
Let me fix that for you: "Now that Western imperialist wars on Islamic countries have triggered terrorist responses.."
Had you continued to read, you would have noticed that this was not about "Islamic countries" (which should in any case not exist)*
Re:Seriously, what is wrong with the United Kingdo (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Britain stood alone against fascism? A bastion against the Soviets? I am not surprised your government wants to keep a close eye on you. An island nation with an ego like that definitely requires close supervision.
Yes. Remember that part where the Axis powers made it to the western coast of France? And America was staying neutral militarily because Japan had not yet bombed the hell out of Pearl Harbour? And London and most of the UK were subjected to the Blitz while the Axis considered the best way to invade the UK, until (in the Battle of Britain) British aircraft won a decisive air victory which led to the war gradually turning in favour of the Allies? Yeah. That whole thing.
I will admit I was thinking in ter
Re:Seriously, what is wrong with the United Kingdo (Score:5, Informative)
Don't forget they have actually had a number of terror related incidents... more than one the US has had.
How many incidents do you think it would take to get the US on this track? (Keep in mind we've already got surveillance in NY where 9/11 hit hardest)
We love to think we're so brave and treasure our liberty above our security, but human nature is human nature. I'd say we'd cave similarly quickly in the same position...
* 2000 1 June: Bomb explodes on Hammersmith Bridge
* 2000 20 September: RPG attack SIS Building
* 2001 4 March: A car bomb explodes outside the BBC's main news centre in London.
* 2001 16 April: Hendon post office bombed
* 2001 6 May: The Real IRA detonate a bomb in a London postal sorting office.
* 2001, 3 August: The last Real IRA bomb in Britain explodes in Ealing, West London, injuring seven people.
* 2001, 4 November: Car bomb explodes in Birmingham
* 2005 7 July: The 7 July 2005 London bombings conducted by four separate suicide bombers, killing 56 people and injuring 700.
* 2007 January - February: The 2007 United Kingdom letter bombs
* 2007 30 June: 2007 Glasgow International Airport attack
source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in_the_United_Kingdom (modified slightly for brevity's sake)
(This is just 2000-present. IRA bombs kill just as well as Al-Qaeda)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
2000 - a couple of incidents, neither serious nor fatal.
2001 - a cluster of 'Real IRA' incidents - again, none fatal.
Then a gap of 4 years, until a small group of misguided Islamists actually manage to get it together to cause mayhem - bad, but only about a weeks worth of road deaths in the UK.
Then another gap of two years, and two unrelated incidents - the Glasgow attack was particularly inept and risible, the letter bombs were the work of a nutter rather than organised terrorism.
I live
Re:Seriously, what is wrong with the United Kingdo (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't forget they have actually had a number of terror related incidents... more than one the US has had.
Yup, and we had a whole load more terror related incidents in the decades prior to 2000 from the IRA. We didn't need to treat the whole population as potential terrorists to deal with the threat then so why do we need to now?
When I was younger, and we had a constant threat of IRA terrorism, everyone always downplayed the dangers in an effort to keep people calm. Ever since 9/11, the US have been making a big deal about terrorism and (rather stupidly) the UK government have aligned themselves with the US. These days, the UK government seems to be following the US's lead and actively *hyping up* the terrorist threat - trying to make the public as scared as possible so they can push through new legislation like this.
This is not helped by the modern media who try to sensationalise stories as much as possible, to the detriment of the society as a whole. You don't even need to look at terrorism to see the effects the media have - last year, sensationalist reporting caused a run on the Northern Rock bank which was only saved from collapse by being hurriedly nationalised.
Back in the IRA days, it was often said that if we change the way we live because of terrorist threats then the terrorists have won. Well I guess we know who's won now don't we?
Who are the terrorists these days? Extremists - yes, they are going around blowing people up as they always have. The government - definitely, they are now terrorising the public by overstating the extremist threat in an effort to further their own political agenda.
Re:Seriously, what is wrong with the United Kingdo (Score:3, Insightful)
Except there isn't
compulsory DNA databases,
If you're charged with a crime, you get a DNA sample taken. If it doesn't go to court for whatever reason, or you are not found guilty, the sample is destroyed (unless you've got a prior criminal record)
laws permitting detention without charge or trial for long periods of time
Yeah, the US has *nothing* like that that
insane proposal for a law to allow laws to be made and abolished by
Re:Seriously, what is wrong with the United Kingdo (Score:5, Informative)
Completely incorrect. If you are even arrested for a "recordable offence" (which most are) your DNA can be taken, and kept even if you aren't charged, (or even if the arrest was completely baseless). The only place where it is automatically destroyed is in Scotland, which is may be what you are thinking of.
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Fight back! (Score:3, Informative)
NO2ID [no2id.net] is the main campaign opposing mass surveillance. We are the fastest growing campaign in the country, are very well organised and have driven most of the bad press these Big Brother plans have received.
But we are short on people (and money). So register your support. There is no obligation and how many opportunities do you get to save your country?
Re:You forgot to mention the sheep.... (Score:5, Informative)
Watching Sky news (one of the two main news stations) earlier today they referred to the data retention law as an EU law, but that isn't entirely correct.
When the UK was president of the EU it brought in Europe wide data retention laws. It was shortly after 7/7 and managed to get enough votes to be passed.
When an EU law is passed the member states implement it in their own way (all member states are required their phone companies / ISP's to log phone / internet data for at least 6 months, some do longer).
So while this is technically an EU law, it was brought into Europe by predominantly by the UK.
Allowing the data to be stored by the government is a new, UK only law.
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Re:Seriously, what is wrong with the United Kingdo (Score:4, Informative)
Huh! I wish! I was born in what was, at the time, a self-governing colony of Great Britain [wikipedia.org]. A couple of years later, it became independent of Great Britain [wikipedia.org] (the only significant change was that the government was appointed directly by the Queen on the advice of the the Victorian Premier, instead of on the advice of the British Foreign Office). However, neither before "independence" (Victoria of course remains a state of Australia, so it's not independent, merely independent of Great Britain), nor after it, was I entitled to a British passport.
And even of the former British colonies which have become practically independent of the United Kingdom more recently than my country, most people don't have access to a British passport.
And even of the present British colonies, or people who did whatever was necessary to retain a British passport in former British colonies, the mere possession of a British passport does not grant you right of abode in Britain. You need to have British Citizenship for that i.e. an association with Great Britain proper --- not just an association with a British colony.
France, on the other hand, is much more like you describe. You should check it out if you want scary weirdness.
Re:Seriously, what is wrong with the United Kingdo (Score:5, Informative)
Mods really are on crack today, or else don't know *anything* about the UK. (Or possibly the original poster is Melanie Phillips.)
Re:Seriously, what is wrong with the United Kingdo (Score:5, Insightful)
The reverse happens when America hasn't woken up when a story is published.
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This is the story pushed by the government and the press.
"We need these laws to keep you safe from all those nasty Moslem terrorists and Eastern European Maffia types. Things are so bad now that we need to track anybody or this will soon be an Islamic state. If you complain about this you are supporting