UK: We risk a police state

[Lazy Lob]

Broon and our state has been dismantling our freedoms in a very surreptitious way.



Spy chief: We risk a police state

Dame Stella Rimington, the former head of MI5, has warned that the fear of terrorism is being exploited by the Government to erode civil liberties and risks creating a police state.


By Tom Whitehead, Home Affairs Editor
Last Updated: 6:08AM GMT 17 Feb 2009
Dame Stella Rimington


http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/9085/stellarimington1297199can4.jpg

Dame Stella became the first woman director general of MI5 in 1992 Photo: MARTIN POPE

Dame Stella accused ministers of interfering with people’s privacy and playing straight into the hands of terrorists.

“Since I have retired I feel more at liberty to be against certain decisions of the Government, especially the attempt to pass laws which interfere with people’s privacy,” Dame Stella said in an interview with a Spanish newspaper.

“It would be better that the Government recognised that there are risks, rather than frightening people in order to be able to pass laws which restrict civil liberties, precisely one of the objects of terrorism: that we live in fear and under a police state,” she said.

Dame Stella, 73, added: “The US has gone too far with Guantánamo and the tortures. MI5 does not do that. Furthermore it has achieved the opposite effect: there are more and more suicide terrorists finding a greater justification.” She said the British secret services were “no angels” but insisted they did not kill people.

Dame Stella became the first woman director general of MI5 in 1992 and was head of the security agency until 1996. Since stepping down she has been a fierce critic of some of the Government’s counter-terrorism and security measures, especially those affecting civil liberties.

In 2005, she said the Government’s plans for ID cards were “absolutely useless” and would not make the public any safer. Last year she criticised attempts to extend the period of detention without charge for terrorism suspects to 42 days as excessive, shortly before the plan was rejected by Parliament.

Her latest remarks were made as the Home Office prepares to publish plans for a significant expansion of state surveillance, with powers for the police and security services to monitor every email, as well as telephone and internet activity.

Despite considerable opposition to the plan, the document will say that the fast changing pace of communication technology means the security services will not be able to properly protect the public without the new powers.

Local councils have been criticised for using anti-terrorism laws to snoop on residents suspected of littering and dog fouling offences.

David Davis, the Tory MP and former shadow home secretary, said: “Like so many of those who have had involvement in the battle against terrorism, Stella Rimington cares deeply about our historic rights and rightly raises the alarm about a Government whose first interest appears to be to use the threat of terrorism to frighten people and undermine those rights rather than defend them.”

In a further blow to ministers, an international study by lawyers and judges accused countries such as Britain and America of “actively undermining” the law through the measures they have introduced to counter terrorism.

The report, by the International Commission of Jurists, said: “The failure of states to comply with their legal duties is creating a dangerous situation wherein terrorism, and the fear of terrorism, are undermining basic principles of international human rights law.”

The report claimed many measures introduced were illegal and counter-productive and that legal systems put in place after the Second World War were well equipped to handle current threats. Arthur Chaskelson, the chairman of the report panel, said: “In the course of this inquiry, we have been shocked by the damage done over the past seven years by excessive or abusive counter-terrorism measures in a wide range of countries around the world.

“Many governments, ignoring the lessons of history, have allowed themselves to be rushed into hasty responses to terrorism that have undermined cherished values and violated human rights.’’

A Home Office spokesman said: “The Government has been clear that where surveillance or data collection will impact on privacy they should only be used where it is necessary and proportionate. The key is to strike the right balance between privacy, protection and sharing of personal data.

“This provides law enforcement agencies with the tools to protect the public as well as ensuring government has the ability to provide effective public services while ensuring there are effective safeguards and a solid legal framework that protects civil liberties.”

In her interview, in La Vanguardia newspaper, Dame Stella also described the shock of her two daughters when they discovered she was a spy and told how she used most “gadgets” when she was in office except for “a gun’’.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/lawandorder/4643415/Spy-chief-We-risk-a-police-state.html

[a_very_ex_STAB]

And of course all the febrile armchair 'Oh Noes the Caliphate is coming!!!!!111' islamophobes that infest this site are more than happy to help Tony Bliar, Gordon Mugabe etc to establish their police state :roll:

[Lazy Lob]

Don’t get me wrong. I’m pretty intolerant of intolerance and you can apply the caliphate thingy to me but we already have more than enough tools to deal with the mad mullahs. We just lack to political will as well as the “by the numbers” approach established by Neu Arbeit.

It is blindingly obvious what’s going on with Broon’s government deciding when we should take a piss or a dump. And having Armitage Shanks installing cameras in their wares.

[AmandlaEwetu]

As said by a journalist "1984 was meant as a warning about the future,not

a blueprint"(or words to that effect):-(

[rgjbloke]

In Northern Ireland in the seventies, you could stand in a sangar and as the traffic drove by, you could call the number plate numbers through the intercom to the ops room and within 4 or 5 seconds, they knew who the car belonged to, where they lived and worked, what religion they were, how many kids they had, any public or non-public positions held, etc etc etc. The age of computers doing surveilance work was alive and kicking well before the general public had any inkling whatsoever of what was coming to them twenty years later. I can certainly see parrallels between then and what is happening across Britain now. Some of this is useful not just to the authorities but also to the public as well. For example if you drive a car, the police can check whether you have car tax, insurance and if the car has an MOT without actually stopping you. They use onboard computers to tell them if you are all legal. This means law abiding members of the public are not inconvenienced by the police physically stopping you unless of course, you are not legal. Community safety is another area where this technology is useful to the public. Using CCTV controlled by computers to cut down on crime and anti social behaviour both on housing estates where there are problems and in the high street is a great benefit to us all. Then of course there is the immense value of having this stuff to fight terrorism of any description. A lot of people would call this good progress. The down side is that the authorities can, and quite often do, use the same technology to do stuff that the public do not see as a benefit to them. A good example is speed cameras. It's one thing to use speed cameras to control speeding motorist's but what about when they place them where there is not a danger to anyone and the main benefit seems to be to fill the governments coffers with fines. Another example is a friend of mine stopped at a kentucky fried chicken for some food one night. He ate the food in his car without realising he was parked on a single yellow line. A week later the fine came through his front door with a nice picture taken from a surveilance camera as proof that he owed them. That bit of chicken cost him £43.50p. Why was the camera on him so he could be fined £40 rather than being used to pick up any troublemakers in the high street? Well, he would love to know the answer to that. Most people would call that bad progress. Then there is the legislation being brought in. The authorities will say there are safeguards to stop the law abusing the public. Explain that to people who are doing something non-offensive such as using their right to protest about something who then find they are being hindered or held against their will by the authorities using anti-terrorist laws in spite of promises that that would never happen. I have in the past worked as a local authority officer and have had first hand experience of some of the issues and because of that, in the main, I do support this technology and legislation. It's the same as everything though. It has to have the proper checks and balances to stop abuse by the authorities and there has to be a mechanism that works so they can't just do it anyway.

[a_very_ex_STAB]

As said by a journalist "1984 was meant as a warning about the future,not

a blueprint"(or words to that effect):-(

Yeah in the UK we have a government who see it as an instruction manual rather than as a political satire.

With OBL cast in the role of 'Goldstein'.

[JCR]

Big Brother UK 2010.

- 1 house
- 12 candidates
- no microphones
- no cameras
- no possibility of checking on them for 30 days.

Will they survive??
rofl

[MaverickCowboy]

Yeah in the UK we have a government who see it as an instruction manual rather than as a political satire.

With OBL cast in the role of 'Goldstein'.

Why? No one trusts their citizens anymore? your own populations is your enemy so are Terrorists? who are friendlies?

[LordKitchener]

And of course all the febrile armchair 'Oh Noes the Caliphate is coming!!!!!111' islamophobes that infest this site are more than happy to help Tony Bliar, Gordon Mugabe etc to establish their police state :roll:


Well it's a good thing we have you 'oh noes da government be putting camera in my house soon' drones to set them straight.

[MrScruff]

As said by a journalist "1984 was meant as a warning about the future,not

a blueprint"(or words to that effect):-(
There was a campaign a few months ago to send every MP a copy of the book with a similar message attached.

http://www.tomharris.org.uk/2008/10/30/an-orwellian-nightmare-oh-wake-up/
http://kerry-mccarthy.blogspot.com/2008/11/1984.html

Doesn't exactly fill you with hope when you look at the voting record of those two

[a_very_ex_STAB]

Well it's a good thing we have you 'oh noes da government be putting camera in my house soon' drones to set them straight.

Well don't start squealing to the rest of us for help when they come for you because you failed to ask Chairman Brown for permission to have a dump in the morning :roll:

[Invisigoth]

The sad part is, according to most studies I've seen the All-Seeing-Eye surveillance in Britain hasn't done **** to solve crime, let alone prevent it.

[a_very_ex_STAB]

The sad part is, according to most studies I've seen the All-Seeing-Eye surveillance in Britain hasn't done **** to solve crime, let alone prevent it.

Yup but it does help to keep IT companies in business with fat government contracts.

The problem is with the British political class rather than any particular party so don't expect it to change after the next election. In the old days of Empire they could make decisions with global ramifications. Nowadays they can't do that so in order to bolster their desire for power they have turned inwards in an attempt to exert ever greater degrees of control over the British population. This will of course bear down hardest on citizens who are already law abiding, employed, paying taxes etc because by definition they already know where they are at.

[Flamming_Python]

Every couple of months a new 'event' appears in the mass-media in Britain which then goes on to justify tougher measures, more checks, more security, more surveillance, etc...

Knife violence, then Baby P, now the sudden explosion of programs about fat people, the importance of keeping thin, how to diet, etc...

When you see the news anchors reporting on the news, they have a look in their eyes as if either they are completely brainwashed, or they are subtly warning you not to fall for it :)

[AmandlaEwetu]

yup,in the UK the state (both parties)pick on the law abiding and responsible and aids the criminal and feckless..in my opinion .:-(

[kosse]

And of course all the febrile armchair 'Oh Noes the Caliphate is coming!!!!!111' islamophobes that infest this site are more than happy to help Tony Bliar, Gordon Mugabe etc to establish their police state :roll:

Well, I certainly don't welcome the spread of Islam in Europe but limiting civil liberties is not the way to go to fight it.

UK just needs to shut it doors to immigrants from islamic world and kick out the ones not obeying the law. I don't see this happening though.

[Tokamak]

I think the problem is that the government gave them special treatment because of their culture, religion, etc. and even worst the rest of the population allowed these to happen.

[Mr Gently Benevolent]

Well, I certainly don't welcome the spread of Islam in Europe but limiting civil liberties is not the way to go to fight it.

UK just needs to shut it doors to immigrants from islamic world and kick out the ones not obeying the law. I don't see this happening though.Many of the new security measures were put force to cut crime (failed of course) rather than counter terror so lets kick out new European arrivals and Chinese. :|

[Col.O'neill]

A police state would be much better than a Muslim state. Though i think the UK is too far gone already.

[Britishhawk]

hmm I like how so many people that arent even from the UK comment articles like this as if they have lived there all their lifes.. I bet half of you havent even visited therefore have no right to act like they know what they are talking about :roll:

[cbreedon]

So if you don't live in a place you can't comment or have an opinion about it. That would have been nice during the last 8 years in the US to have the rest of the world quit their whinning. :-)

BTW I have lived in both the US and UK and I agree with the original post that we are losing our liberties... on both sides of the Atlantic, but Britain is leading the way..

[JCR]

Having never lived in lets say China or Russia (or Germany, for that matter) doesn't stop most UKers from turning into instant experts on these countries either
rofl

On the other hand, this is a trend in the whole western society, the UK is just in a very unfortunate leadership position.

[Lazy Lob]

In Britain the government is slowly building a state with no checks or balances. Together with more intrusiveness into our private lives we are creeping towards a monolithic state apparatus that answers only to the numbers, targets and quotas that IT established as if they were written in stone.

Any British government is answerable to the general public but only when a general election is called. It’s then when they harvest all the special favours they have dealt out to different sections of the electorate. This is a very divisive approach, but what do we or they care. In the long run we will and are already losing our identity and cohesiveness as a nation. The state is dividing large sections of Britain.

Quangos, tsars, special commissions, bureaucracy, regulations, inspectorates, units and targets are all there just to give the appearance that checks and balances exist when in reality they are all the same “person”. The very state that is so politicised it only answers to the government.

We moan about muslims, chavs, teenage pregnancies, state education that is close to collapse etc, etc. Government is at fault and we are complicit for not taking a more active role and interest in what they are doing “in our name” and stopping them.

Brown is blowing huge amounts of our money to keep himself in power and gambling it may work so as to safe face. WTF are we doing to stop him? Sweet FA.

We have a runaway, big government that I feel is suffocating us.

Rant over.

[Macs.]

http://i99.photobucket.com/albums/l314/Macs3000/1232396293001.jpg

[gazell]

Many of the new security measures were put force to cut crime (failed of course) rather than counter terror so lets kick out new European arrivals and Chinese. :|

Really? You have source for that , I suppose, well, I seem to be ignorant in this respect, what is 'other white' crime in the UK amount to that it needed such measures against?

I thought most of it was justified as counter terror measures, I might be very wrong, of course it is not. But an excuse for securing power. Funnily, when I first turned up in the UK, a couple of decades ago, I thought I entered a world of 1984, you can think, I'm making it up, but then, I can't help that.:)

[Lazy Lob]

From The Times

February 18, 2009

Surveillance will cost more than £34 billion say Convention on Modern Liberty

Sean O'Neill, Crime and Security Editor

The cost of Britain's state-run databases has soared to £34 billion over the next ten years, according to estimates from a new campaign against what it called the surveillance society.

Supporters of the Convention on Modern Liberty claim that spending on computer systems ranging from the NHS Spine to the ID card register is rising at an alarming rate across Whitehall.

The convention will hold its first meeting in London at the end of this month with a range of prominent supporters including Philip Pullman, the author, David Starkey, the historian, and Brian Eno, the musician, as well as politicians, lawyers and civil liberties campaigners.

The event has been timed to coincide with the publication by the Home Office of a consultation paper on the future of communications surveillance.

A Home Office working party has drawn up three options for surveillance of telephone calls, e-mails and text messages, one of which is the creation of a huge Government-run database. Opponents describe this as a Big Brother project that could cost £12billion over the next ten years. But the police say that access to data about the time and duration of calls and texts, and the location of callers and senders, is essential to investigations ranging from murder, kidnap and robbery to missing person cases.

Police sources emphasise that they are not seeking access to the content of calls and e-mails. But they believe that communications data must be retained in some accessible format.

At the moment mobile phone companies retain call logs for billing purposes, which can be obtained by detectives. The problem facing the police in future is that internet telephony networks, such as Skype, have no need for the data and do not collate it. One senior police source said: “We face a potentially disastrous loss of our investigative capability.”

Dame Stella Rimington, the former head of MI5, wrote in a Spanish newspaper interview, however, against the growth of surveillance powers. She said: “It would be better that the Government recognised that there are risks, rather than frightening people in order to be able to pass laws which restrict civil liberties, precisely one of the objects of terrorism: that we live in fear under a police state.”

Lord Bingham of Cornhill, the former Lord Chief Justice and a supporter of the Convention on Modern Liberty, said that citizens should use the Human Rights Act to challenge the spread of the surveillance society. “Perhaps the British are content to be the most spied upon people in the democratic world,” he wrote in The Guardian. “But this would be surprising given their traditional belief that the state should mind its own business. The right to respect for private and family life embodied in the European Convention on Human Rights is not an ideal weapon to counter the growth of a surveillance society, but failing adequate regulatory oversight, it may be the best weapon there is.”

The convention said that estimates for establishment and running costs of current database projects came to just over £34billion over the next ten years, equal to Scotland's entire budget. It said: “How long can we continue to finance the huge rise in surveillance and data collection, which the House of Lords constitutional committee stated 'risks undermining the traditions of privacy and freedom which are vital for a democracy'?”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article5755524

[Walter Sobchak]

A police state would be much better than a Muslim state. Though i think the UK is too far gone already.

Because it is not politically correct to "profile" or watch those groups whose members have historically been the source of terror attacks, the modern liberal state just watches everyone with equal vigor. Now, they can see spy on everyone in the name of "public safety" without showing any "prejudice" or "intolerance".


In Britain the government is slowly building a state with no checks or balances. Together with more intrusiveness into our private lives we are creeping towards a monolithic state apparatus that answers only to the numbers, targets and quotas that IT established as if they were written in stone.

Any British government is answerable to the general public but only when a general election is called. It’s then when they harvest all the special favours they have dealt out to different sections of the electorate. This is a very divisive approach, but what do we or they care. In the long run we will and are already losing our identity and cohesiveness as a nation. The state is dividing large sections of Britain.

Quangos, tsars, special commissions, bureaucracy, regulations, inspectorates, units and targets are all there just to give the appearance that checks and balances exist when in reality they are all the same “person”. The very state that is so politicised it only answers to the government.

We moan about muslims, chavs, teenage pregnancies, state education that is close to collapse etc, etc. Government is at fault and we are complicit for not taking a more active role and interest in what they are doing “in our name” and stopping them.

Brown is blowing huge amounts of our money to keep himself in power and gambling it may work so as to safe face. WTF are we doing to stop him? Sweet FA.

We have a runaway, big government that I feel is suffocating us.

Rant over.

In America, this is called "Hope and Change", Chicago Style! Hell, the political machine that gave us "Big Bill" Thompson, Al Capone, Antoin ‘Tony’ Rezko, Rod Blagojevich, Richard M. Daley (Sr & Jr), Jesse Jackson (Sr & Jr) and Roland Burris gave us someone who can probably whup 'Merica back into shape!

[gazell]

Gypsy elder there for you, Walter, in the middle, a few seconds on:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzAxQ5c5qf0 (http://http//www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzAxQ5c5qf0)

'A police state would be much better than a Muslim state. '

Someone help me out about the differences there, please.

[oldsoak]

You can drink and look at pretty women and dont get bits cut off in one of them.

[Mr Gently Benevolent]

Really? You have source for that , I suppose, well, I seem to be ignorant in this respect, what is 'other white' crime in the UK amount to that it needed such measures against?In Scotland the justification given for increased surveillance is street crime mostly fighting and knife attacks rather than terror.

[Lazy Lob]

In Scotland the justification given for increased surveillance is street crime mostly fighting and knife attacks rather than terror.

Bunch of jessies. p-)

[Mr Gently Benevolent]

Bunch of jessies. p-)We have been slahing and stabbing each other for years on the West Coast and now its all big deal.p-)

[gazell]

In Scotland the justification given for increased surveillance is street crime mostly fighting and knife attacks rather than terror.

Right, crime, so why, are you on Europeans need to be kicked out?

Anyhow, when the banks are bailed out on drug money and the gov is selling private data I doubt they have any intention of fighting crime, if you have beliefs in that respect, my con-miserations.

[Mr Gently Benevolent]

Right, crime, so why, are you on Europeans need to be kicked out?

Anyhow, when the banks are bailed out on drug money and the gov is selling private data I doubt they have any intention of fighting crime, if you have beliefs in that respect, my con-miserations.I am not saying that all members from new EU memberships countries should be kicked out just the ones that break the law.

What makes you think it is drug money that is bailing out our banks and if so are our banks any different any other countries?

[gazell]

I am not saying that all members from new EU memberships countries should be kicked out just the ones that break the law.

What makes you think it is drug money that is bailing out our banks and if so are our banks any different any other countries?

I'm not saying Uk banks, the UN did not name them...

And just listen to this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWSYMpuCFaQ&feature=related