UK government pushing ahead with surveillance powers bill
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
I am giving this example only to show that when the British government cant enforce existing laws using available evidence, you cant expect them to dig up anything new with more powers.
It is something Mahatma Gandhi pointed out years ago about the British. In one of this Satyagrahas related to Champaran farmers, Gandhiji's modest and only demand was that the British must only acknowledge that there is a problem which needs to be solved. According to Gandhiji's colonial power's unwillingness to even show empathy to people means they are essentially uninterested in the helping people with their problems.
Law of Karma I guess.
[1] http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/nri/other-news/Indian-ori... [2] http://www.tribuneindia.com/news/comment/death-of-liberalism...
So you are assuming that he "escaped the law" without having found any evidence. The articles I've found indicates that a bail amount was set. He probably met it, pending trial. Unless you've seen him out and about outside of the UK, you have no basis for assuming he escaped anything.
It's also worth pointing out that he was arrested following a sting by a vigilante group. There's going to be all kinds of issues with chain of custody of the evidence etc. that makes this almost entirely unlike a case handled by police from the start.
It was even heavily criticized in the House of Lords, but still made it through to Royal Assent on the 28th July 2000. The bill started in February of the same year and was pushed through as fast as possible in order to "prevent internet crime and paedophilia".
The core criticisms [1] surrounded the inclusion of the requirement for suspects to give up encryption keys or face prison (reverse burden of proof), and the expansion of the act to allow almost any government body to snoop secretly on the public.
It was dubbed the "Snooper's Charter" [2], and here we are 16 years later and that bill is now law and abused every day by councils across the UK to snoop on people "putting their rubbish bins out on the wrong day" [3]. Seriously, I'm not making this shit up.
Make no mistake; There is little we can do within the current political framework, in order to prevent this bill from passing into law, albeit with minor amendments and other hidden little nasties that we discover later were snuck in on the quiet.
The government is playing the long game, against a public that doesn't even realise they are even supposed to be playing the game.
Meanwhile the public are more concerned that "I'm a Celebrity get me out of here" is about to start, and the tax on petrol and beer to due to rise in the next budget.
"The only way to win the game is not to play", sadly doesn't apply to this game.
[1] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2000/oct/24/qanda
[2] http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/libertycentral/2009...
[3] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/3333366/Half-of-counc...
First of all, "I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here" doesn't start until autumn time.
In all seriousness the lack of concern by the general public surprises me especially after the high profile coverage of Edward Snowden. I spoke to someone training as a lawyer (specifically in human rights) and they'd never heard of Snowden or mass surveillance - and didn't seem to care either when I explained. That was pretty worrying.
On the other hand the decline of privacy rights has concerned me so much that I plan to retrain in Law (been in technology for about 9 years since I left high school) with the sole aim of working to maintain our privacy rights. So although not everyone cares right now (they probably will when it's too late) I'm sure there are enough people who do who are willing to do what they can to try fix this.
No because the sourcing will be outsourced to private companies.
They care for you on articles about salt intake or the lack of bees. State business they would sell you out in a flash.
We've seen this in the 2011 riots. We've seen this in the 2008 banking crisis and subsequent massive wealth transfers. Now we see it with state surveillance.
The BBC is on your side until it matters. I don't care what their charter says, I look at what they do.
The UK is preparing. As living standards continue to fall state surveillance will become more and more necessary to try and suppress alternate views. How long before posting a blog on the UK's intractable deficit and massive private debt is "financial terrorism"?
Also, ignoring for the sake of argument whether this is actually true, there are numerous possible caveats:
- Living standards could be better now, but also more fragile than at any time in history.
- Average living standards could be high, but with growing extremes and a shrinking middle.
- Living standards in a historical perspective are 100% irrelevant to someone who is currently living half the lifestyle they did five years ago because their industry dried up and they have to serve food for a living.
- etc.
There are plenty of places in the world where living standards are low. The UK is not one of them. If you live here, even if you are the poorest person in the country, you are rich beyond the dreams of half the population of the world.
I'm not buying into any of this "life is terrible, you should give me more" meme.
However, having said that, I do notice the "shut up, you're doing better than before" argument is only ever used on those at the bottom of the heap asking for more equality. No one ever seems to use it to respond to people complaining about progressive tax rates on the wealthy for example, despite it being even more true for them.
I can't really do it here, unless people in this thread would care to share what they earn.
Really? Have you ever been in The Work Programme? Have you ever visited a food bank? Have you ever had neighbours pleading with you for food for their children because they have no money? You can prefer to live inside of a cosy bubble of ignorance if you wish, but this is the UK in 2016.
Have you ever had people pleading with you for food/money and, instead of berating people on the internet, got them into the drugs treatment programme that they desperately needed? Have you ever got people to correctly file appeals when the jobcentre made a mistake and didn't give them the money they were entitled to? Have you ever taught people the skills they need to be productive members of society and provide for themselves?
Because I've also done all of those things on multiple occasions, and I think I have a much better sense of the problems that we face than you do. I also think that your refusal to admit these are the real problems and put work into fixing them is one of the major reasons why we still have them. It's very easy to say "I want more, it's not fair", and much harder to figure out why things aren't working when there's plenty for everybody and get something done about that.
Oh no wait they are pushing back all the problems...
For some, yes.
For some, and that growing inequality is the problem. Food bank use and rough sleeping are rising steeply over the last few yeas, and that's not a problem of perception, it is based in fact. But everything is fine for me, so what's the problem, right?
Like I said "living rough" i.e. the stereotypical homeless person is basically not a real thing in the UK. They do it because they either choose to do so or have other mental or social problems that prevent them from seeking free help.
I don't know what fantasy world you're living in, but in London homelessness is very real and very present. Go take a walk through the city at night, it's eye-opening.
I've noticed it has become considerably worse (by number of homeless) over the past year or so.
That is unsubstantiated opinion (to put it mildly), and does not even address the main point that these examples are intended to show: inequality is growing, and that this causes problems, or that the statement "living standards are better" is not true for many people.
While your statements might resonate with a certain mean-spirited kind of person, they don't even make logical sense - Do you really think that food bank use is increasing because "certain social classes" have found them all of a sudden? Why now? What other forces might be at play at this time that caused it to happen now not 10 years ago? Are there gourmet buffets on offer that weren't there before perhaps?
See also "The Thick Of It".
Dr. Kelly killed himself in a field, and BBC head Greg Dyke was forced to resign and pushed in the political wilderness for a decade.
The big issue with the BBC is not bias (I'm not saying there is none - I don't believe that is possible, but I don't think it is a major problem), it is that they're spineless: They try exceedingly hard to avoid taking a stance. Any stance. Even over relatively un-controversial things.
And that is ironically usually what causes them to be attacked as being biased, because people tend to assume that when someone isn't condemning thing they see as obviously bad, then it implies a bias rather than the absence of a stance.
As far as I can tell, the BBC article is actually quite balanced, including both sides views. And while I disagree that the new privacy concessions are sufficient, it seems that the headline is factually accurate.
What the article doesn't do, is actually try to weigh the arguments up against each other or carry out much actual journalism, by for example questioning the statements (of either side) in any remotely critical fashion and arriving at a conclusion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDYba0m6ztE
Dara O'Briain talking about how giving a 'balanced' opinion.
They are the oldest landlords.
Oh no, not me
I never lost control
You're face to face
With The Man Who Sold The World
It's going to continue, probably until all the Cabinet's entire search history is found to be in the database and it's pastebin'd.
They're absolutely not going to stop, in my opinion, until something makes 62m people realise it was a silly idea. By which time, it is of course, too late.
The only thing that can stop them now is the media, but it really is not their job to be the opposition.
What we need is a data disaster. What's the phone number for Anonymous? :)
Even if the UK could theoretically launch Trident without US authorisation, they wouldn't in practice.
The nukes on the subs can be launched without US approval. As members of NATO we would discuss before firing under most circumstances, but that is a rather different scenario to the "UK requires US authorisation to fire nukes" being implied elsewhere.
When it comes down to brass tacks we have complete operational control of our nukes independently. That in most situations we would discuss with our allies before nuking someone does not mean our nukes are not independent, nor does that we reduce costs by sharing maintenance of nukes not in our subs with the US mean we have lost independence.
So the argument that we do not have independent control of our nukes fails.
So now, after Crimean acquisition, we know that the Russian signature in nuclear treaties is worth nothing.
Furthermore, if Britain did give up Trident they wouldn't be the first nuclear power to give up on nuclear weapons, South Africa did it first.
I'd suggest Japan has the right idea with regards to nuclear weapons... retain the knowledge about how to build nuclear weapons, but don't retain an active stockpile you're not going to use.
If you're looking for pushback against Orwellian government over reach you're unlikely to find it there.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interception_Modernisation_P... [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_order
I was hoping for a few "buck your ideas up we can stop this" replies... As I said further down in the comment tree I will definitely be writing to my MP before any Commons readings of this bill.
However, I really can't see how to win this one. Both of our major political parties are seemingly totally committed to erosion of civil liberties, the security services have such a vast control already and I can't see meaningful opposition surviving the tabloid newspaper treatment. Also I know intelligent people who support this bill (and similar laws) and even more people who just don't see it as a priority.
I think that it will take a total change in public opinion for the creeping erosion of civil liberties to be reversed and I don't see that happening with our current media until British people have experienced a Statsi-like situation for themselves.