Leading UK ISP Says It Will Defy Government’s Net Censorship Bill

A leading internet service provider in the UK has declared that it will refuse to follow government orders to restrict, slow down or cut off its customers’ internet access under rules set out in Lord Mandelson’s (pictured) Digital Economy Bill.

The provider, TalkTalk, which has over 4 million internet users, has declared the legislation “draconian” and says it will not cooperate with its provisions.

Andrew Heaney, TalkTalk’s director of strategy and regulation has said the company will repel any instructions to disconnect customers unless instructed to by the courts.'

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Police Secretly Snapping Up to 14 Million Drivers a Day

Police chiefs are facing the threat of a High Court privacy action over a nationwide network of cameras that is being used to take up to 14m photographs of motorists every day.

The images are being stored daily on a huge “Big Brother” database linked to automatic numberplate recognition (ANPR) technology to track vehicles’ movements.

The records not only include details of car registrations, but often photographs of drivers and front-seat passengers, a police document has revealed.

They are being held on a database in Hendon, north London, for at least two years without drivers’ knowledge or permission.'

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Pupils Fingerprinted Without Parental Consent, ATL Conference Hears

Pupils are having their fingerprints taken without their parents’ consent, teachers have warned.

The Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) voted for urgent policy on the use of biometric data in schools at their annual conference yesterday.

Schools use fingerprints in place of swipe cards to save time identifying pupils when they are buying their lunch or during registration. But some are taking data without parents or pupils’ permission, teachers said.

“Parental consent should be compulsory, it’s outrageous that pupils' fingerprints can be taken without the parents' consent,” Hank Roberts, executive member for ATL, said.'

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The McCain-Lieberman Police State Act

If enacted, it will advance what this writer addressed in a December 2007 article titled, "Police State America - A Look Back and Ahead," covering numerous Bush administration laws, Executive Orders (EOs), National and Homeland Security Presidential Directives, edicts, and various illegal acts targeting designated domestic and foreign adversaries, dissent, civil liberties, human rights, and other democratic freedoms.

Straightaway post-9/11, George Bush signed a secret finding empowering the CIA to "Capture, Kill or Interrogate Al-Qaeda Leaders." He also authorized establishing a covert global gulag to detain and interrogate them without guidelines on proper treatment.

Other presidential directives ordered abductions, torture and indefinite detentions. In November 2001, Military Order Number 1 empowered the Executive to capture, kidnap or otherwise arrest non-citizens (and later citizens) anywhere in the world for any reason and hold them indefinitely without charge, evidence, due process or judicial fairness protections of law.'

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New EU Gestapo Spies on Britons

Millions of Britons face being snooped on by a new European intelligence agency which has been handed frightening powers to pry into our lives.

Europol can access personal information on anyone – including their political opinions and sexual preferences – if it suspects, rightly or wrongly, that they may be involved in any “preparatory act” which could lead to criminal activity.

The vagueness of the Hague-based force’s remit sparked furious protests yesterday with critics warning that the EU snoopers threaten our right to free speech.'

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Dissenters To Be Detained As 'Enemy Belligerents'?

Since the establishment media is convinced that tea party members, 9/11 truthers, libertarians, Ron Paul supporters, and basically anyone with a dissenting political opinion is a likely domestic terrorist, they should be celebrating the fact that a new bill would allow the government to detain such people as “enemy belligerents” indefinitely and without trial based on their “suspected activity”.

The “Enemy Belligerent, Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2010,” introduced by Senators John McCain and Joseph Lieberman on Thursday with little fanfare, “sets out a comprehensive policy for the detention, interrogation and trial of suspected enemy belligerents who are believed to have engaged in hostilities against the United States by requiring these individuals to be held in military custody, interrogated for their intelligence value and not provided with a Miranda warning,” writes the Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder.'

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Hundreds More Town Hall Staff to Get Police-style Powers

Almost 1,700 people, also including car park attendants and dog wardens, already have powers to hand out a string of fines and even take photographs of low level offenders under the Community Safety Accreditation Scheme.

But the Government has quietly announced it plans to review the scheme with chief police officers to see how it can be expanded further.

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Photography Under Threat: The Shooting Party’s Over

Put that camera away. Yes, you, put it away right now. This is a public place, you can’t take pictures here. What right have you got to take photographs? People might not like it. Did they say you could take photographs? Did they? No. Are you some sort of paedo? A terrorist? Gimme that camera. Delete those images. Delete your rights, delete trust, delete innocence before guilt. You’re nicked.

Perhaps I exaggerate a little: nevertheless, the days when you could photograph freely in public spaces are disappearing fast. In the eyes of many, the camera has become an offensive weapon, as Peter Dunwell discovered when he travelled from Grimsby to London in January. Coming down by train with a work colleague, Dunwell planned to make a photo-journal of their trip. At King’s Cross he took out his Sony Handycam and started to photograph the arrivals board and station. Two police community-support officers approached and told him to stop. Sure, PCSOs are agents of the state whose job it is to stand by while others drown (as happened in the case of a 10-year-old boy) but intervene in anything none too dangerous. And yes, King’s Cross is sensitive to the threat of terrorism because the London bombers arrived there before going their separate ways on the Tube to murder 52 people in 2005. But Dunwell, a middle-aged man of middle build with middling-brown hair, doesn’t look much of a terrorist. He looks more like the manager of a Jessops camera shop, which is what he is. Though his colleague has dyed blonde hair and pierced ears, there’s no law against that, yet.'

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U.S. Government Poses an 'Immediate Threat' To Citizens' Freedoms, Says Poll

A majority of Americans think the federal government poses a threat to rights of Americans, according to a new national poll.

Fifty-six percent of people questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Friday say they think the federal government's become so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens. Forty-four percent of those polled disagree.'

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Big Brother Not Just Spying On Schoolchildren Through Their Laptops

The scandal surrounding kids being spied on at home via webcams in laptops provided by schools extends further than just schoolchildren – four years ago Google admitted that it was implementing similar invasive surveillance technologies that would target all Americans.

In 2006, Google announced that they would use in-built microphones to listen in on user’s background noise, be it television, music or radio – and then direct advertising at them based on their preferences.

“The idea is to use the existing PC microphone to listen to whatever is heard in the background, be it music, your phone going off or the TV turned down. The PC then identifies it, using fingerprinting, and then shows you relevant content, whether that’s adverts or search results, or a chat room on the subject,” reported the Register.'

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School Used Student Laptop Webcams to Spy on Them at School and Home

According to the filings in Blake J Robbins v Lower Merion School District (PA) et al, the laptops issued to high-school students in the well-heeled Philly suburb have webcams that can be covertly activated by the schools' administrators, who have used this facility to spy on students and even their families. The issue came to light when the Robbins's child was disciplined for "improper behavior in his home" and the Vice Principal used a photo taken by the webcam as evidence. The suit is a class action, brought on behalf of all students issued with these machines.

If true, these allegations are about as creepy as they come. I don't know about you, but I often have the laptop in the room while I'm getting dressed, having private discussions with my family, and so on. The idea that a school district would not only spy on its students' clickstreams and emails (bad enough), but also use these machines as AV bugs is purely horrifying.'

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Airline Passengers Have 'No Right' to Refuse Naked Body Scanners

Airline passengers will have no right to refuse to go through a full-body search scanner when the devices are introduced at Heathrow airport next week, ministers have confirmed.

The option of having a full-body pat-down search instead, offered to passengers at US airports, will not be available despite warnings from the government's Equality and Human Rights Commission that the scanners, which reveal naked bodies, breach privacy rules under the Human Rights Act.'

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Once again it is a matter of the public 'en mass'  to refuse this infringement of their civil liberties - but will this happen?  Baaaaaa

It’s Official: A Majority Of Americans Would Give Up Liberty In Order To Be Safe From Terrorism

It is now official. A majority of Americans are willing to give up liberty in order to be safer from terrorism. A stunning new McClatchy-Ipsos poll has found that 51 percent of Americans agree with this statement: ”it is necessary to give up some civil liberties in order to make the country safe from terrorism.”

Only 36 percent of those polled agreed with this statement: “some of the government’s proposals will go too far in restricting the public’s civil liberties.”

So are Americans really this stupid?

Have they really been brainwashed into willingly giving up their essential liberties just so they can feel a little safer?

Maybe they have.'

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Corporate Media Doublespeak: Bodyscanners Increase Privacy

With the resistance to naked body scanners in airports building, the corporate media is now claiming that technology which allows fat TSA thugs sitting in back rooms to ogle your naked daughter actually “enhances privacy”.

In our Orwellian brave new world where down is the new up, University of Ottawa professor Mark Salter gushes over the virtual strip searches with a gusto that makes you wonder whether he’s on the same payroll as people like Michael Chertoff, who have been aggressively promoting the scanners they are invested in as a solution to the underwear bomber threat, no matter that such scanners would not even have stopped Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab from boarding Flight 253.'

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The Guardian: The War on Terror Has Been About Scaring People, Not Protecting Them

So there was no ticking time bomb. No urgent need ever arose to torture anybody who was withholding crucial details, so that civilisation as we know it could be saved in the nick of time. No wires had to be tapped, special prisons erected or international accords violated. No innocent people had to be grabbed off the street in their home country, transported across the globe and waterboarded. Drones, daisy-cutters, invasions, occupations were, it has transpired, not necessary.'

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Jesse Ventura Conspiracy Theory - Big Brother

ID Cards Now Available. Count Me Out

Clearly, I don't want an ID card and shouldn't register. But why am I protesting against it? It's a voluntary scheme, and people can take it or leave it, right?

The ID card may well be voluntary, but the underlying national identity register database reeks of compulsion. Registering for a card means being tracked for life by the largest state database system in the western world, which has no equivalent in European ID card systems.

The Home Office is keeping quiet about the fines for not keeping your information up to date on this database, the vast numbers of faceless bureaucrats who will have access, and their inability to keep it secure. They don't like to remind us that from 2011 we'll be forced on to the database to get a passport, and after that perhaps for a Criminal Records Bureau check, and then ...

I don't think it's fair for the government to trick people into this database state, which is likely to be scrapped after the general election. That's why I'm spreading the word – "Don't be a guinea pig, stop the ID card con!" '

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Perfecting The Trifecta

At the root of the corruption this time, there is a virtual trifecta that is being used to turn what was our way-of-life into a privatized and corporate-way-of-death. Using basic lies; the fascist-designers in service to the new-old greed and power centers have been able to move nations into tyranny, and finally into outright treason, to finish what they started so very long ago. Since September 11, 2001 this trifecta has been played-out in every arena of life; particularly in America, because all of this is about destroying the nation and its concepts of government along with everyone that resists this takeover.

Criminal law-enforcement of the new paradigm, since 911, has been led by the takeover of all the armed police and special-forces of the government that are now being used in pre-emptive strikes against the public in America. The civil police and sheriffs are being used as conditioning tools, shock-troops really, that have nothing to do with law enforcement or protection of the public; but everything to do with conditioning the public to barbarity, to torture and to assassination by police; in a governmental crackdown on any and all civil liberties nationwide. The downside for this never-before-contemplated theft of the natural-rights of all people; is that America now lives and dies by The Guns of the Government.

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Police Spying On Protesters Stirs Outrage in Britain

Britain has long been famous for its surveillance state. There are security cameras everywhere you go. The country has the largest DNA database in the world. And a national identity card program is well underway. But new revelations that British police have been spying on domestic protesters have infuriated citizens all along the political spectrum.

The spying came to light in a series of stories in The Guardian over the past month. In late October, the newspaper revealed that photographs of and personal details about thousands of activists who attend demonstrations, rallies and political meetings were being stored in secret national databases.'

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If You've Done Nothing Wrong, You Have Everything to Worry About

Whenever someone frets about the erosion of personal freedoms in our modern society, such as in the steady proliferation of surveillance cameras in public places, the stock answer, which is one I read all too often in my e-mail, is:

"If you haven't done anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about."

People who say this are fools, not to be too blunt about it. Not only are they willing to trade away my rights, since they haven't a basic appreciation of theirs, but their understanding of the relationship between government and the governed is one of subservience based on fear, and the idea that their fear is not only natural, but justifiably permanent given the state of the world.
Thus, we should all be fearful, all of the time. We should empower government to do whatever it feels necessary to protect us. The unquestioning nature of this logic not only institutionalizes fear, it makes it a patriotic duty. And the good citizen, the one who has done nothing wrong, will have nothing to worry about.

Oh, yeah?

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