Britain 2009 - test state for the NWO surveillance society

[financeguy]

Laws that allow officials to monitor the behaviour of millions of Britons risk “hardwiring surveillance” into the British way of life, the country's privacy watchdog has warned.

Richard Thomas told The Times that “creeping surveillance” in the public and private sectors had gone “too far, too fast” and risked undermining democracy.

The Information Commissioner warned that proposals to allow widespread data sharing between Whitehall and the private sector were too far-reaching and that plans to create a giant database of every telephone call, e-mail and text message risked turning everyone into a suspect. “In the last 10 or 15 years a great deal of surveillance in public and private places has been extended without sufficient thought to the risks and consequences,” said Mr Thomas, 59. “Our society is based on liberty and democracy. I do not want to see excessive surveillance hardwired into British society.”

Information Commissioner Richard Thomas warns of surveillance culture - Times Online

Malevolent voices that despise our freedoms
To mark the Convention on Modern Liberty, the children's author has written this articlePhilip Pullman
Are such things done on Albion's shore?

The image of this nation that haunts me most powerfully is that of the sleeping giant Albion in William Blake's prophetic books. Sleep, profound and inveterate slumber: that is the condition of Britain today.

We do not know what is happening to us. In the world outside, great events take place, great figures move and act, great matters unfold, and this nation of Albion murmurs and stirs while malevolent voices whisper in the darkness - the voices of the new laws that are silently strangling the old freedoms the nation still dreams it enjoys.

We are so fast asleep that we don't know who we are any more. Are we English? Scottish? Welsh? British? More than one of them? One but not another? Are we a Christian nation - after all we have an Established Church - or are we something post-Christian? Are we a secular state? Are we a multifaith state? Are we anything we can all agree on and feel proud of?

Background
£34bn cost of state-run surveillance databases
Former spy chief says UK is now a police state
First ID cards are to be issued within weeks
COMMENT: that's a bit rich, Dame Stella
The new laws whisper:

You don't know who you are

You're mistaken about yourself

We know better than you do what you consist of, what labels apply to you, which facts about you are important and which are worthless

We do not believe you can be trusted to know these things, so we shall know them for you

And if we take against you, we shall remove from your possession the only proof we shall allow to be recognised

The sleeping nation dreams it has the freedom

Malevolent voices that despise our freedoms | Philip Pullman - Times Online

Ex-spy chief Dame Stella Rimington says ministers have turned UK into police state
(Arthur Edwards/The Sun)
Stella Rimington has been a vocal critic of the Government since she stepped down



Dame Stella Rimington, the former head of MI5, has accused the Government of exploiting people’s fear of terrorism to restrict civil rights.

Ministers risked handing a victory to terrorists who want people to “live in fear and under a police state”, said the former spy, who retired as Director General of the Security Service in 1996.

Dame Stella, 73, has been a harsh critic of the Government’s policies, including attempts to extend pre-charge detention for terror suspects to 42 days and its controversial ID cards plan.

“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,” said Dame Stella, in an interview with the Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article5750713.ece

 

[Kieran McConville]

Everytime I read stories like this, I see this guy...

 

[Vincent Vega]

I'm following how privacy is being diminished in the UK with great concern, as everything that happens here is something that our very own current Minister of the Interior would be pleased to introduce here sooner rather than later. And there is far too many in the EU who are also dreaming of such surveillance measures, let alone in the music and movie industry who would love to get their hands on that data. All just to stop crime and reduce the threat of terrorist attacks, of course.

The telephone list reminds me of something in the early 90s. After the wall came down a large bunker was found hidden deep in the woods of Thuringia, not far from the border. Inside, there were tapes with all phone calls made inside the GDR as well as from and to West Germany from the 1950s until the last day of the GDR. Almost none tape was ever listened to, it was just too many phone calls.
but with todays technology it's different. You can tape those conversations and then have computers filter those that might be worth a second listen and those that are not.

Too many possibilities to screw with, and none of these do what the politicians are trying to sell as they could do.

 

[U2lunatic]

Hmm, looks like George Orwell was good visionary...