The introduction of internment without trial and the suspension of habeas corpus.The plans to introduce the National ID register and ID card scheme.The introduction of biometric passports and government interrogation centres to be attended in order to get a passport, only to be forced to answer 53 questions before being allowed to leave the UK....
The UK government is looking at ways to turn the bus pass which entitles one in four people in Scotland to free travel and reduced price access to leisure services, into an ID card linked to the National Identity Register.The Home Office in London see this as a way to push forward the ID card scheme at a reduced cost, a sneaky move that will be strongly resisted by the Scottish government and a majority of MSPs at Holyrood, who have long made it clear that any ID card introduced by London should not be used north of the border to link devolved public services.Bus passes could be used, say London think-tank New Local Government Network, to document citizens' mental health and their "reporting a crime, attending an accident and emergency department or claiming benefits.The Scottish...
Britain, which is now a Surveillance Society which is increasingly using electronic surveillance tools on children to soften them up for a lifetime of control by government and police, seems to go further down the slippery slope towards totalitarianism by the week.A school in Yorkshire is now tracking pupils with the aid of microchips embedded in their uniforms, in a so called 'trial.'A trial that will no doubt become a permanent feature of that school, and a system that will spread quickly, encouraged, no doubt, by our authoritarian Labour government and various law and order agencies.“Tagging is what we do to criminals we let out of prison early,” said David Cleater, from Leave Them Kids Alone, which campaigns against the finger-printing of pupils. “It is appalling.”It is a sad...
With one CCTV camera for every twelve people in the UK, 80 per cent of footage is of such poor quality that the cameras are mostly used to catch motorists instead of criminals.This is the conclusion of a report, 18 months in the making, by the government's own Home Office officials, who say the majority of cameras are only useful to keep an eye on people for slips, trips, falls and staff crime.The "real time" roving CCTV cameras which are the heart of the network are often useless for crime detection, despite the naive belief of the general public that they make the streets safer.Officials do not even know how many CCTV cameras there are.Government and police chiefs want to extend the network which monitors British citizens to cover all "public space".See also: BRITAIN IS NOW A...
I recently suggested in this post that the fingerprinting of young children in schools was an easy and convenient way of fostering meek acceptance of identity cards, government databases and loss of civil liberty, by getting kids used to submitting to fingerprinting and biometric scans in schools at an early age.A handy technique indeed, for those beaurocrats and state officials who would control a surveillance society.Now, in Scotland alone, it appears that fourteen educational authorities have already introduced biometric ID systems, with at least two others planning them.Despite assurances that information is retained only on local secure servers, not shared with any external bodies, and that the data will not be compiled on any national database, all the systems are potentially...
A primary school in Inverness has installed a £1,000 biometric system to track library books using pupils fingerprints.Drakies Primary School is the first in the Highlands to make use of the 'Junior Librarian' biometric system and the children, in their innocence, have taken to it, seeing it as more like a game.The human rights organisation Liberty questions whether the introduction of such systems can be properly regulated. A spokesperson said: "Unfortunately these fingerprint schemes may be using technology just for the sake of it and without proper regulation."Before schemes like this become the norm we must question if the biometric data of children is being shared, has permission been sought from parents, and is there truly no alternative?" Of course there are plenty other less...
We know Gordon is WATCHING us all - for our own good, you understand, because he cares so much about us - but from now on he will be LISTENING to us too.From tomorrow, phone companies, mobile and landline, are obliged to keep details of every phone call made in Britain, details which will not only be available to government officials, the police and security services, but to nearly 800 public bodies including local councils, tax authorities, Department of Health, immigration, and even the Charity Commission.It is not yet clear whether Sybil, the Downing Street cat is included in the list of new snoopers tracking our every move.The new law was slipped through by Home Secretary Jacqui Smith under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, with no parliamentary debate.RINF - Big...
Blair and New Labour turned the British into the most spied-on people in the western world. What then, is life going to be like for the UK's citizens given a further five or ten years of 'Brown's Britain' when DNA samples are likely to be collected, by force if necessary, from everyone, and we are all obliged to carry ID cards - “Papers please” - linked to the National Information Register? Already children as young as five are being fingerprinted and having biometric eyeball scans taken. Make no mistake, this is the Britain Gordon Brown wants for us all, and those sheep, and there are frighteningly many of them, who bleat "if you've nothing to hide, you've nothing to fear" are in for a terrible shock - when it is too late.This is not the sort of country I want to live in, and I...
Gordon Brown yesterday gave his first speech as Prime Minister to the Labour Party Conference in Bournemouth.For the first time anyone in the hall could remember, a Prime Minister quoted the Bible to a party conference. "Suffer the little children to come unto me," he said, adding: "No Bible I have ever read says, 'Bring just some of the children'."Brown's Vision: A British One-Party StateGordon Brown's Vision: UK as a Work...
Prime Minister Tony Blair talks about his legacySee all recent...
Pensions Secretary John Hutton says lie detectors are to be used to help root out benefit cheats.“This technology aims to tackle fraudsters while speeding up claims and improving customer service for the honest majority.”In other words the “honest majority” will be treated like fraudsters until proved otherwise.See all recent...
Home Secretary John Reid has announced that talking CCTV cameras which tell off people if their behaviour is deemed “unacceptable” to the watchers are being introduced in England.Competitions are being held at schools in many areas for children to become the voice of the cameras.It's sad to think that parents or schools would allow any child to have any part in a sick scheme such as this.See all recent...
The British are the most spied upon people in the world, watched over by 4.2m public CCTV cameras - one for every 14 people - and the average citizen is caught on camera up to 300 times a day, and over and above that there are thousands of cameras to catch motorists who break the speed limit.Speed cameras, or ‘safety cameras’, as they are now officially known, are not popular and are widely seen as a source of revenue from fines rather than a way of preventing accidents, and in the Scottish borders attacks on the cameras are affecting the raking in of cash by the Lothian and Borders Safety Camera Partnership."Every time it happens it is inconvenient, it is costly and it is a crime," said Colin McNeil, who heads the group.“One option is to have cameras trained upon the...
The most spied-upon society in Europe, with more CCTV cameras than the rest of the European Union combined, Britain under New Labour and Tony Blair has become a Surveillance Society, the British a people without a basic right of privacy.Identity cards and biometric recognition on the way, the national DNA database (which the inventor himself has described as out of control) being steadily added to with the details of ordinary, innocent people.A £224 million national children's index planned, which will contain the details of every child in Britain. Everything from vaccinations, developmental information, whether a child is eating enough fruit and vegetables, or is struggling in the classroom. Two warning flags on a child's record could trigger an investigation.Sebastian and Samantha are...
