CCTV Boom ‘Failing In Fight Against Crime’

From Prison Planet: (Sky News)

"An internal police report has raised serious concerns about whether CCTV is being used effectively in the fight against crime.

The document reveals that CCTV footage was used to solve less than one crime for every 1,000 cameras in London.

Obtained from Scotland Yard using the Freedom of Information Act, the report recommends an overhaul of the way CCTV is handled across the UK.

The criticisms in the study make uncomfortable reading for both senior police officers and politicians alike"

But if you read the article what it's actually saying is CCTV isn't effective enough, and we need more of it.

Local Council workers digging into core ID card database

A couple of stories from the Guardian I wanted to mention briefly. One of them this story I saw on Henry Porter's Blog:

"The government must be quietly grateful to the distractions of August. Only Computer Weekly noticed that nine local authority workers have been sacked for accessing the personal records of celebrities, and their acquaintances held on the core database of the government's ID scheme.

This is a significant story because government ministers have always dismissed campaigners' claims that once all personal information is stored in a single database it will become vulnerable to abuse by those with access to the system. Ministers have repeatedly insisted that security will be absolute and that severe penalties will deter anyone tempted to read files illegally.

Not true. The magazine's website reported that the nine fired were among 34 people who illegally accessed information. Some were reprimanded, some resigned and some were sacked but none was prosecuted. Using a freedom of information request, Computer Weekly found that Cardiff and Glasgow Councils sacked people who had looked up celebrities in the customer information system (CIS) which is run by the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) and contains 90 million records. Various other councils sacked people for looking up their friends, their own details and in one instance, a girlfriends."

As I said on Henry's blog this is just the tip of the iceberg of this kind of thing unfortunately, but it's important to remember there is no such thing as 'right hands' and the 'wrong hands'. All of this stuff is just wrong in principle.

Quarter of UK's databases are illegal

I meant to post this from yesterday, the title is (from the Independent):

Quarter of UK's databases are illegal

(And the rest of them are 'merely' degrading, dehumanising, vile and utterly inappropriate - j)

"One in four of the major government databases is almost certainly illegal and should be scrapped, a report says. The national DNA database, the proposed national identity database and the ContactPoint system, which will hold records of all children in England, are among the systems singled out for fundamental reform or abolition.

Researchers called for 11 systems assessed as "almost certainly illegal" under human rights or data protection law to be scrapped or substantially redesigned.

The study, by the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust, also pointed to significant legal and practical problems with a further 29 databases, including the national childhood obesity one and the planned NHS summary care record system, and said they should be reviewed independently. Privacy experts were asked to compile the report after two discs listing the entire child benefit database went missing in 2007. Researchers said data-sharing should be authorised only for strictly defined purposes, and said sensitive personal information should be collected and shared only with the individual's consent.

The report's co-author, Professor Ross Anderson of Cambridge University, said: "Britain's database state has become a financial, ethical and administrative disaster which is penalising some of the most vulnerable members of our society. Often, computerisation has been used as a substitute for public service reform rather than a means of enabling reform. Little thought is given to safety, privacy and value for money."

Researchers highlighted legal problems with systems that held sensitive data where there was "no effective opt-out" such as ContactPoint, the index planned to record English children's relationship with public services. The report said: "Many question the consequences of giving increasing numbers of civil servants daily access to our personal information. Objections range from cost through efficiency to privacy. The emphasis on data capture, form-filling, mechanical assessment and profiling damages professional responsibility and alienates the citizen from the state."

A Home Office spokeswoman said: "We recognise the absolute necessity of striking the balance between the rights and privacy of the individual and the ability to disrupt, prevent and investigate crime effectively. That is why the Home Secretary [Jacqui Smith] has made it clear that a 'common sense' test must be applied to every action in this area to make sure it is proportionate, transparent and robust safeguards are in place.

"For example, the National Identity Scheme and ID cards will have independent oversight built in from the start, with every citizen given the right to see their data and who has accessed it. Technology such as DNA and CCTV is providing clear benefits in deterring and detecting crime, securing convictions and reducing fear of crime."

'Criminal' records Singled out for abolition

*National DNA Database

Holds 4 million individual profiles

ContactPoint

A national index of all children in England

*The NHS Secondary Users Service

Summaries of hospital and other treatments

*The Common Assessment Framework

Children's welfare needs

*ONSET

A Home Office system used to determine whether young people are at risk of offending

*Dept for Work and Pensions data sharing programme

Matches data with government and outside agencies

*Audit Commission National Fraud Initiative

Matches data within central and local government bodies to detect fraud and error

*The Prum framework

An international agreement which allows police information to be shared

PROPOSED

*Communications database Would bring together details of emails, telephone calls and web use

*National Identity Register Will store biographical information and biometric data linked to ID cards

*The NHS Detailed Care Record Will hold GP and hospital records "

Melanie Phillips on the police state and its causes.

Quite an interesting article by Melanie Philips in yesterday's Mail and well worth a read.

To cut a long story short and I certainly recommend people read Melanie's article, but according to her- a wider culture of so called human rights legislation, anti-discrimination laws, political correctness etc. have helped play a role in laying the groundwork for a police state in the UK (although she herself doesn't yet like that term). She says:

"It may be thought a curious irony that the Human Rights Act was introduced in 1998 to tackle precisely the concerns expressed last weekend of a slide into tyranny - and yet liberty has been seriously eroded in the past decade.

In fact, this isn't curious at all. Although the campaigners would sooner cut off their hands than admit it, the one has followed directly from the other. The idea that human rights law expands freedom was always a serious mistake. It has the opposite effect."

It's a pretty interesting article, of course a lot of people know Melanie Phillips and either love her or hate her but I don't believe any serious conservative grass roots campaigners against the police state in the UK represents anything like the culture she describes, although others may do.

Sometimes I've referred to something like the European Court of Human Rights, not because I think it's necessarily ideal and that it would in an perfect world supersede national laws but because the system has been so skewed, become so entrenched and the whole thing such a mess now, and the UK such a damaged blot that's what's there currently in this big mess.

And even if the culture Melanie describes is historically on the right lines, things like the European Court of Human Rights also happen to be rebuking the national Labour regime over things like their vile DNA stock-piling.

Certainly though Melanie could well be correct about a lot of it as far as it goes. I think these things probably have helped create the framework for a lot of this, and loosely you might throw these things under the heading of internationalism, post World War II.

Organizations like Liberty advocate a culture of human rights and egalitarianism rather than freedom per se, and the media tend to do a good job of obscuring this and presenting a case about 'civil liberties and human rights'. And this has the implication that the notion of freedom must be bound to other concepts as a kind of intellectual taxation and must now be 'handed down' rather than something you just have with inalienable implications.

And actually in fact I would quite expect the media to advocate, or some organizations to play up to the very notions Melanie is complaining about. I.e to promote people who are anti-police state but somehow enveloped in a culture of political correctness or maybe pro-hate laws or have some flavor of that about them; having the effect to slightly dilute and distract from the the real message and the main issue people are fighting against. It certainly wouldn't surprise me.

And certainly Melanie is absolutely correct to suggest that human rights, or in particular the culture that has now become associated with human rights should not be seen as any kind of a replacement for liberty and freedom.

I did see a leaflet for an event I think it was called 'Taking Liberties' off the top of my head (And I believe our friends at Irdial may have attended) and it listed Germaine Greer and Peter Tatchell as main speakers on a panel. And I agree that they may not like the police state but they are also not necessarily representative shall we say but represent something else.

This isn't an issue to do with feminism or gay activism.

Of course sometimes we all have to find common ground on those issues that are serious and important with widespread implications and that's a good thing, and I don't believe that is incongruous to anything else, but certainly that must be without loosing sight of what those big issues are.

What Melanie didn't mention of course is this police state/surveillance culture is being cultivated in the United States and Europe too. I don't know if you can pick Britain out in that way other than it's way ahead of the others.

Information Commissioner warns of surveillance culture

The Times from 27/2/08:

"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.”

He criticised proposals going through Parliament to allow mass data sharing between government departments and the private sector. Campaigners have claimed that Section 152 of the Coroners and Justice Bill would enable the transfer of health and tax records to private companies such as insurance firms and medical researchers.

Last year Mr Thomas — who became head of the independent body charged with safeguarding privacy and freedom of information in 2002 — recommended to ministers that data sharing be allowed only in carefully defined circumstances such as law enforcement, improving public services and for research. They ignored his advice. The Bill “needs to be narrowed”, Mr Thomas said. He called on Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, to write into it that “anything to justify a data-sharing order has to come explicitly under one of those headings”.

Whitehall sources told The Times yesterday that Mr Straw would amend the Bill in the next few weeks to meet Mr Thomas's criticisms. Previously Mr Straw's department had maintained that there were sufficient safeguards, including a requirement for parliamentary approval for each data transfer.

The Bill also gives the Information Commissioner the power to investigate public bodies without their consent where there has been a suspected breach of data protection law. Mr Thomas complained that the powers did not extend to private companies.

Other government plans also risked undermining people's right to privacy, Mr Thomas said. Of the Home Secretary's proposal to build a database to store information currently held by internet service providers and telephone companies, Mr Thomas said: “A government-run database of the communications of all citizens, every phone call, every e-mail, every text, every internet use; a database of all those activities held by the Government would be a step too far for the British way of life.”

He dismissed Jacqui Smith's assurances that officials would have access only to data on who had contacted whom, rather than the content of the communication. “That A has telephoned B on a particular date from a particular location is actually quite intrusive,” he said. “If an MP logged on to a site selling Viagra, that tells you quite a lot. If a 16-year-old girl goes on to a website about abortion that tells you an awful lot about her too. I don't think there's a black-and-white distinction between traffic data and content.”

Mr Thomas made clear that he did not object to the monitoring of those suspected of involvement in terrorism and serious crime. “But I think that's a very different situation from monitoring the communications of the entire population,” he said. “We've got to have a much clearer distinction between those who are suspects and everybody else and I think we're at risk of making everybody a suspect if we go too far down this road.”

Security services have insisted that modernising the capacity to store and search telephone and internet information is crucial if Britain's ability to combat terrorists and serious organised crime is to be maintained.

Mr Thomas said that forcing government officials to make specific requests every time they needed information — as they currently have to do - provided a crucial safeguard. “If you have a security service or a policeman making an application [to an internet service provider for records], at least each of those applications has to go through a process and is scrutinised by the ISP. That's very different from it all being done behind the closed doors of a governmental agency.”

His concern about the erosion of the right to privacy extends to social networking sites. People did not realise that information put on sites such as Facebook and MySpace could come “back to haunt them”, he said.

Another area of concern for Mr Thomas is the use of surveillance cameras: he criticised the police for pressing to have closed-circuit television cameras installed in pubs. “We've come out against the requirement for pub licensees to fit CCTV as a condition of their licence,” he said. “This is hardwiring surveillance into British pubs. It is unacceptable.”

He also expressed concern that even some schools were now installing cameras in the classroom. He said that it might be acceptable in the case of a particularly unruly class, “but to roll out cameras in all classrooms is unacceptable”.

The Information Commissioner added his voice to criticism of ContactPoint, a computer database containing details on every child in the country.

“I can see the benefits of a national database of children at risk ... I'm less convinced that you need to have a database of every child in the country. Is it not better to have fuller details of children known to be at risk and make sure that information is used properly?”

Other key government surveillance measures had been “pushed through” without proper scrutiny or parliamentary debate. Of a database of DNA gathered from crime suspects, he said: “Clearly, the DNA database was set up with insufficient public debate. Part of the problem was that such debate took place on the assumption that it would be expensive to run DNA tests. The costs have absolutely fallen and it has become a matter of routine. We have to re-examine the issue in the light of current technology.”

He also lamented the lack of debate over the creation of a North London database that records details of car numberplates for up to five years. Mr Thomas questioned whether the Government had the legal authority for this and asked whether the public recognised that millions of their daily journeys were now being monitored. “We have to scrutinise every proposal very closely indeed to ensure that none involves a step too far.”

Fight against terror 'spells end of privacy'

I guess that's that then.

"Privacy rights of innocent people will have to be sacrificed to give the security services access to a sweeping range of personal data, one of the architects of the government's national security strategy has warned.

Sir David Omand, the former Whitehall security and intelligence co-ordinator, sets out a blueprint for the way the state will mine data - including travel information, phone records and emails - held by public and private bodies and admits: "Finding out other people's secrets is going to involve breaking everyday moral rules.

His paper provides the most candid assessment yet of the scale of Whitehall's ambitions for a state database to track terrrorist groups. It argues that while the measures are essential, public trust will be maintained only if such intrusive surveillance is carried out within a strong framework of morality and human rights" (Guardian)

As we said before, it's like a child. In this case a child that wants to do something but is embarrassed or shy to do it, it keeps getting closer to what it wants to do, then runs away again and if asked by an adult the child would say 'no I don't want to do that thing' when it's transparently obvious to any adults in the room that is what the child is trying to do.

And this has been the way of the Labour regime in trying to create a new social order, a new police state and to send the world backwards in time.

Now, like the small child as it's closer to its goal of a truly a truly radical pleb grid it's getting so emboldened it can just declare what it wants to do off the back of its previous efforts and the mess itself it has pooped out all over the place even though it said at every stage it wasn't trying to do it.

And we've seen this across the board with all of this menu of state terror that Labour have sought to deploy from ID cards, to the traffic spying grid, to this mass communications database it now desires and on and on and on.

I should say this is not strictly the Guardian's take on this. The Guardian's view is that David Omand, who they describe as a 'key architect of the national security strategy as it is now" is demonstrating 'great honesty' in telling us what Whitehall want to do.

The only problem with that is the police and security services have always had provisions to snoop and gather information where necessary in cases of serious crimes.

In the end of course it's not a question of the endlessly-repeated mantra about "maintaining security". If a civil servant like Omand were actually interested in that then he would have done well to take the advice of his colleagues in their own now infamous and rather obvious (yet feebly obvious warnings) about the invasion of Iraq.

Furthermore there is progressively becoming very little at all to 'secure' in the UK, it now represents such a damaged waste land. I think the real question is what is Britain, what are you protecting ?

Omand says, "This is a hard choice, and goes against current calls to curb the so-called surveillance society - but it is greatly preferable to tinkering with the rule of law, or derogating from fundamental human rights."

But that's not quite correct is it. Firstly it's not a 'choice' between liberty and security that's a false choice, secondly these spying and surveillance grids are the total undermining of the rule of the law by their very nature and presence, that's the whole point.

But what's even worse and actually breathtaking in its egregiousness is this notion, shared by the likes of Omand and elected politicians in the Labour government itself, of 'inevitable progression' and that this is something people will eventually 'understand as necessary' and just 'need to get used to', and then 'everything will be alright'. All of which accompanies the notion that it's simply a matter of the technology existing that decides if it should be deployed.

I don't think you could construct a more ridiculous, insane and dangerous error if you wanted to.

And if that's the case terrorism remains firmly a necessary tool of deception and staggering self-deception.

Sir David Omand, who according to the Evening Standard, was "among those to decide that [Dr Kelly] should be pursued for talking to the media about the Government's dossier on Iraq's alleged WMD" should be truly ashamed.

He has no business writing reports like this. He should instead be grovelling on his knees, begging for forgiveness for being the supine ridiculous wretch he is and that he has been a factor in taking things as far as they have already.

Omand needs to explain his macabre interest in creating a police state under a radical regime, and stop wasting everybody's time in trying to rationalise it. Instead the fact that Omand and those supporting him have produced this document shows how dangerously out of step with reality they are.

Perhaps the best way of summing this up though is in the editorial that goes along with this in today's Guardian, which is jokingly self-conscious about this itself and starts with the now all too familiar sentence we've all seen many many times:

"Britain is not a police state, but.."

Surely that says it all.

Labour government trying to make CCTV mandatory

Apologies for the lapse here. I'm just gonna pick a few things from the Mail yesterday.

And we'll start with this.

"Big Brother CCTV cameras are to be fitted inside shops and supermarkets on the orders of the state to keep track on anybody buying alcohol. A law is being quietly pushed through Parliament giving councils the power to order licensed premises to fit the surveillance cameras. Pubs will also be covered.

The footage of people innocently buying a bottle of wine in a shop or a pint of beer in a bar must be stored for at least 60 days, and be handed over to the police on demand"

I haven't covered the police state machinery stuff for a while, and there will be nuances in it I'm not currently up on, but it's well.. it's really bizarre, it's like it just still can't stop itself.

In spite of whatever critique is offered, no matter from whom, from the public itself or even when the media has started (and it has for some time now) to actually get concerned about this, or the government's own data tzars and even the European Court of Human Rights and so on, it doesn't seem to make to a lot of difference.

No matter who is ostensibly in charge the Labour regime remains like a child in an insane tantrum, it's totally unreasonable, and thinks every conceivable moment of existence is just another opportunity to inflict the machinery of the police state, no matter what else is going on around it.

We talked about this a lot a couple of years ago, in end you're just not in the territory of normal, appropriate, adult rational behavior, but behavior that's transparently about looking for ways to deploy this kind of thing no matter what, because it wants to change society into something very different.

And what's been demonstrated here very clearly is the extremely real danger of compliance. In the end the government will claim a mandatory status for the very culture of snooping, spying and fear they themselves have created and encouraged amongst the public and I think the writing was on the wall for this a long time ago.

End the nightmare in the UK - who wants to live here anymore seriously ?

Something else we should also mention today is this story about the rotting fetid tinpot regime's obsession to now start fingerprinting children. It's covered in all the media of course let's just pick the Scotsman:

"Liam Byrne, the immigration minister, said the idea was part of preparations for new biometric passports and identity cards. From next year, everyone over 16 applying for a passport will have their fingerprints - along with eye and facial scans - recorded on the National Identity Register.

But Mr Byrne said ministers were concerned that teenagers over 16 could end up travelling on passports without biometric details if they hold a five-year child passport issued between the ages of 11 and 15.

David Davis, the shadow home secretary, said widespread fingerprinting would change the relationship between the state and citizens.

"This borders on the sinister and it shows the government is trying to end the presumption of innocence," he said."

Any rational person should fully understand, that it is sinister that it is happening to anyone not just children, and this plan isn't new because it has been seen in the context of this European database.

When we see a government like this which is really just part of a global axis of misery and destruction, obsessed with trying to wipe out current society and replace it with a different kind of world, a world of a centralised elite dishing out political punishments from a lifestyle and information database and to find childish, really autistic justifications for doing so, we have to accept that we need to get rid of the regime, its supporters and the kind of thinking that it may leave behind.

I know some people still can't quite get their minds round this, and try instead to project a hopeless participation and consent onto these things, but we are beyond tolerating that bubble now and it needs to be popped. Furthermore, instead of complaining about the United States, or Europe and their own schemes on biometrics and passports to be trying to lobby these citizens of these countries against what is being created altogether.

According to a couple of the responses to the Scotsman's article, there really is still this small lost and I would say dying faction who is genuinely terrified of being blown up by terrorists, who really has tried to make excuses for this stuff in their mind, to try to find hoplessly inadequate rationalizations for it. Assuming those posts are genuine, which they are not always, this is the narrow band of support the regime relies on, the very easily manipulated in society, the extremely vulnerable.

And then this thing Byrne starts talking about the 'war on illegal immigration' ? Spare us the pathetic soundbyte to try to appeal to the Daily Mail's readership. It's not illegal immigration that is really a problem, this is such a disgusting distortion of everything going on. We really have to get a grip on this.

And perhaps the best way to do so, is to become not just anti-war, anti-ID cards, anti-rubbish tax, anti-tracking and tracing toll roads, anti-fingerprints but anti-regime and to identifiy it for what it is, as something inherently so vile and disgusting and awful that it must be wiped off the face of the Earth.

fingerprints children biometrics police state tyranny slavery