Posts Tagged ‘TWAT’

I was intending to do a bit of almost-live blogging about this breaking news yesterday, but unfortunately my broadband went down about 5.30pm and has only just returned, albeit in a rather unreliable state (expect a rant about Virgin Media shortly). So, 21 hours late…

High drama in East Dulwich this yesterday afternoon, as a suspect device was discovered at the police station on Lordship Lane. The ‘Lane was closed at about 4.30pm from the Bishop pub up to the police station as specialist officers prodded it with sticks carried out a detailed examination. (more…)

Just time for a quick post about two very troubling stories that have appeared in the last day. The first is a report in the Times which reveals that Ministers are to consider plans for a database holding details of every phone call and e-mail sent in the UK.

A massive government database holding details of every phone call, e-mail and time spent on the internet by the public is being planned as part of the fight against crime and terrorism.

Now anyone with an ounce of intelligence can see that if - and what a gigantic ‘if’ that is - this plan were actually implemented, it would have pretty much zero impact in stopping terrorism. There are just so many ways around it, such as pay-as-you-go mobiles, pay phones, sat-phones, internet cafes, VPNs to offshore servers and even old fashioned letters and face-to-face meetings, that no serious terrorist would be deterred by it.

If the Government did have a database of all phone calls, emails and “time spent on the internet” (what does that mean anyway?) would they be able to resist the temptation to start data mining, profiling and scanning people’s communications to look for suspicious patterns, rather than performing targeted searches of known suspects? They can do the latter now anyway. Hmmm, total surveillance society anyone? So much for Article 12 of the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

Of course such a system would present some massive technological challenges, and we know what the Government’s track record is like when it comes to large-scale IT projects. And they’re not so hot at protecting our personal data either, are they? One would think that the merest mention of the word “database” would have Ministers running a mile by now, but sadly these ill-conceived IT ‘panaceas’ still seem to make them cream their pants. Still, least it would be a nice little earner for the likes of EDS.

Even if the whole story is just a bit of kite flying by the Home Office, the fact that anyone could contemplate floating the idea scares the hell out of me. I particularly liked this comment on the Times article by Alan Black:

I think someone ought to point out to the government that 1984 was meant as a critique and a warning, not a blueprint.

The second WTF! story today concerns the teenager facing prosecution for calling Scientology a ‘cult’.

The unnamed 15-year-old was served the summons by City of London police when he took part in a peaceful demonstration opposite the London headquarters of the controversial religion.

Officers confiscated a placard with the word “cult” on it from the youth, who is under 18, and a case file has been sent to the Crown Prosecution Service.

That’s despite a judge sitting at the Old Bailey previously stating that

Scientology is both immoral and socially obnoxious…It is corrupt sinister and dangerous. It is corrupt because it is based on lies and deceit and has its real objective money and power for Mr. Hubbard… It is sinister because it indulges in infamous practices both to its adherents who do not toe the line unquestionly and to those who criticize it or oppose it. It is dangerous because it is out to capture people and to indoctrinate and brainwash them so they become the unquestioning captives and tools of the cult, withdrawn from ordinary thought, living, and relationships with others.

As is so often the case, the Register came up with the funniest take on the story - their caption for the photo of the police confiscating the placard was “PC plodette extends the long tentacle arm of Xenu the law”.

Is it just me, or does the City of London police seem a little too cosy with the Scientologists? Perhaps Scientology is the new Freemasonry?

(If you have never seen it, you must watch the South Park illustration of what Scientologists actually believe.)

I think this is the first time I’ve actually typed an entry from the comfort of my bed; I’m not doing so because it’s late (although it is), but because it’s bloody freezing here. The builders arrived here on Monday to begin some rather major work on the place, and as a result there’s currently no heating or hot water. There’s no kitchen either, and what’s left of the bathroom is lying in a skip. But most importantly, I still have broadband!

It’s actually quite cosy - one of my cats likes to sleep on my bed, which is as good as having a hot water bottle, even if she invariably somehow manages to take up most of the room, leaving me to fit in around her. Oh dear, I’m suddenly reminded of the TV commercial that’s on at the moment in which a woman says (using what must be some terribly filthy euphamism), “I can’t get up without my furry alarm clock”; perhaps I just can’t go to bed without my furry hot water bottle. Besides the cat, the iBook on my lap generates a reasonable amount of heat too (I know, we’re not meant to, but having watched An Inconvenient Truth a few days ago, I’m starting to wonder if I’ll ever want kids anyway).

By the way, today marks the the fifth anniversary of the arrival of the first detainees at Guantánamo Bay. There are still 385 prisoners there (including ten British residents), not to mention the other 13,600 ghost prisoners being held/tortured in secret US detention centres around the world. As Clive Stafford Smith says, today represents the anniversary of too many shameful acts..

If you didn’t see it last night, Channel 4 News’ piece on the two reports into the July 7th bombings is well worth watching online, particularly for the interview with two of the survivors and the husband of another. Apparently the reports make no direct references to the war in Iraq (robust allied action), which does suggest that they’re little more than whitewashes. Common sense dictates that in order to be able to take effective steps to prevent a similar act happening again, we have to know the full facts about the July 7th attacks, and what motivated the terrorists. And clearly the only way we’re going achieve that is through a public enquiry. If you agree, you can sign the petition calling for a public enquiry.

Obsolete has a very interesting take on the Clarke/Prescott news.

Meanwhile, the Register has a piece on a disturbing report by Statewatch (PDF). Apparently arms manufacturers have been put in charge of forming European civil security policy and strategy.

Responsibility for the formation of civil security policy and strategy have been given to the European Association of Aerospace and Defence Industries, a lobby group, and Thales, the European military giant.

So, no conflict of interest there then…

They have used their power to recommended giving themselves €1bn of subsidies, in addition to existing arms subsidies, to fund a raft of research projects for monitoring and controlling civil populations.

…

But it had no representation from the EU parliament or Commission, and no ethical or civil representatives.

Hard to disagree with the report’s author when he says The EU is basically funding the diversification of the ‘military-industrial complex’ into the highly profitable internal security field. The militarisation of policing and border controls will not prevent crime or terrorism, it does nothing to address ‘root causes’ while posing a massive threat to civil liberties.

So, today’s the day when we get to find out how few MPs have any principles or backbone left, as the Government seeks approval for its most appalling assault on civil liberties yet:

After a succession of U-turns and mixed messages, ministers have decided to stick to their original plan to give the police unprecedented powers to hold suspected terrorists without charge or trial for up to 90 days. This is more than six times as long as the existing 14-day limit and, taking current remission procedures into account, is equivalent to a six-month sentence. It is a huge breach of the 300-year-old habeas corpus principle that every arrested citizen has a right to be either charged or freed. Democracies are not supposed to allow imprisonment without trial.

An article in today’s Independent does a pretty good job of tearing apart the arguments for 90-day detention.

One of the victims of the July 7th bombings has written an excellent piece on the latest NuLabour legislation, and the disgraceful methods being used to push it through:

Why the rush if not for political gain? How dare you co-opt ‘the victims’ to defend this attack on liberties, as if we are all some amorphous bloodied mass that you can wave in front of the Commons as a fig leaf for your naked desire to be seen to be ‘tough on terror’?

As I type, the radio’s just announced that the 90-day internment proposal has been defeated (well, they didn’t actually use the word “internment”, but that’s what we’re talking about)! They’ll soon be voting on a “compromise” of 28 days.

I’ve just been reading David Mery’s account of his arrest on the tube. Not only was he arrested and placed in a cell, but some of his personal possessions were confiscated, his flat was searched, computer equipment and data were removed, and his fingerprints and DNA were taken (to be stored indefinitely). His crime? Carrying a rucksack and wearing a coat that was “too warm for the season”. Jesus. At least they didn’t execute him on the platform I suppose…

Elsewhere, Reporters Without Borders have put together a Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents (sadly in PDF format) containing info on:

how to to remain anonymous and to get round censorship, by choosing the most suitable method for each situation. It also explains how to set up and make the most of a blog, to publicise it (getting it picked up efficiently by search-engines) and to establish its credibility through observing basic ethical and journalistic principles.

Over on Bloggerheads they’ve been doing their bit to make Legoland’s Westminster display more realistic. Of course for total authenticity they ought to have some little plastic cops dragging him away for protesting peacefully.

Every so often I feel moved to send in comments on BBC programmes; sadly I have yet to have one selected for their site, and my comment on Monday’s The New Al-Qaeda was no exception (Update: my comment subsequently appeared on the site). The first part of Peter Taylor’s series was BBC documentary at its worst: shallow, sensationalist and deeply flawed. For the programme to have been any more tabloid, it would have had to have been presented by a Page 3 Stunna, offering the chance to win £10,000 in a bingo game at the end.

As the majority of comments chosen by the BBC could have come straight from the Daily Mail’s letters page, I might as well post the one I submitted (perhaps not the greatest critique ever written, but what the heck!):

Whereas The Power of Nightmares provided an informative, intelligent analysis of the current Islamist threat and its origins, this was nothing more than dumbed-down terror-porn masquerading as insightful documentary. No amount of “edgy” camera angles could disguise the fact that the majority of the programme was taken up with tabloid-style stating of the obvious (wow, who’d have thought that bad people sometimes use the internet too?). Taylor’s unquestioning interviews with US military officials and self-proclaimed security experts never challenged any of their assertions. A year to research? I could have come up with a more informative documentary in a week.

Elsewhere, John Lettice provides a pretty thorough (and amusing) debunking of much of the programme in his review for the Register, and Spy Blog discusses some of the serious legal implications of the documentary.

Incidentally, I recently started reading Al-Qaeda: The True Story of Radical Islam by Jason Burke, and highly recommend it to anyone looking for intelligent analysis of the subject.

Following the initiative to get everyone to store their next of kin’s phone number in their mobiles under ICE (In Case of Emergency), Bloggerheads has details of the ICIGSITBOTH initiative:

Eight out of ten people aren’t carrying information that would help if they were accidentally or mistakenly shot in the back of the head. Storing next-of-kin details in your mobile phone can assist the emergency services if you’re unable to tell them who to contact because your brains are spilled all over a railway platform.

…

ICIGSITBOTH stands for “In Case I Get Shot In The Back Of The Head”: it’s what the emergency services will look for if you’re somewhat dark in colour, happen to be wearing a heavy jacket on a sunny day and/or fail to stop when plain-clothed men holding automatic weapons chase you down the street.

And for an extra dose of dark humour in these dark days, try this Photoshopped LU notice.

When the server suffered a disc failure at the weekend it wiped out all the posts I’d made following the bombings in London. Rather than try to recreate what I’d written, I’ll just add the two main links I’d mentioned:

The London News Review published A Letter To The Terrorists, From London which summed up a lot of people’s feelings on the tragic events.

Talk Politics featured an excellent response to the dangerously moronic editiorial in The Scum following the attacks.

RIP habeas corpus. RIP the presumption of innocence.

You might however consider whether you should not unfold as a background the great privilege of habeas corpus and trial by jury, which are the supreme protection invented by the English people for ordinary individuals against the state. The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to law, and particularly to deny him the judgement of his peers, is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist…

Winston Churchill

After 800 years of the right to a fair trial in this country, Blair and his spineless MPs have just removed some of our most fundamental civil rights. I thought we were meant to be fighting this “War on Terror” to preserve and spread democracy, freedom and justice?

I’m genuinely shocked, not to mention angry and a little scared, by the news that the Court of Appeal has ruled that evidence obtained by torture can be used in UK courts. In a 2 to 1 decision, Lord Justice Laws and Lord Justice Pill granted the Home Secretary the right to hold terror suspects on the basis of intelligence from prisoners tortured abroad.

Human rights groups and experts on international law said Britain had, in effect, been given the green light to trawl for evidence from torture victims across the world.

The one sane judge, Lord Justice Neuberger, said that:

democratic societies, faced with terrorist threats, should not readily accept that the threat justifies the use of torture, or that the end justifies the means. It can be said that, by using torture, or even by adopting the fruits of torture, a democratic state is weakening its case against terrorists, by adopting their methods, thereby losing the moral high ground an open democratic society enjoys.

Peter Carter QC, chairman of the Bar’s human rights committee, said the ruling meant that:

the Government was being allowed to “connive in torture”. He added: “Under international law there is an absolute prohibition on torture. This is not just because it is an inhumane act but because of the rationale that the fruits of torture are very likely to be wholly unreliable and so it is irrational to rely on information obtained by torture.”

The director of the human rights group Liberty is quoted as saying:

As long as the Home Secretary does not inquire into how the information was obtained he can use it in any way he wishes. This would surely make Britain complicit in international acts of torture.

Amnesty International is also appalled by the ruling:

The rule of law and human rights have become casualties of the measures taken in the aftermath of 9/11. This judgement is an aberration, morally and legally.

The Guardian’s Leader sums up the ruling quite well, going as far as to say that we have completely lost our way in this country legally and morally:

The ramifications of yesterday’s ruling in the appeal court that evidence obtained by torture should be admissible in the UK are awesome. We have warned before of the way in which Britain’s “Guant�namo Bay” law erodes the most fundamental principles of the nation’s criminal justice system. Under the 2001 Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act, rushed through parliament following the al-Qaida attack on the US, foreign suspects can be detained indefinitely without charge or trial. Yesterday’s verdict goes much further, by eroding fundamental principles of international law.

The Leader goes on to point out that the ruling breaches a range of international treaty obligations including the European Convention on Human Rights, the UN convention against torture and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

None of the other 44 states that have incorporated the European convention on human rights has introduced detention without charge or trial, let alone allowed evidence generated by torture. Similarly, none of the 150 states of the UN convention has publicly taken such a position.

The judgment must not be allowed to stand.

Of course, that insane fuck Blunkett doesn’t see it like that. In a ranting, unhinged letter to today’s Independent, the Home Secretary says:

That such a court says I acted lawfully should put an end to concerns in this newspaper and elsewhere that the detainees rights’ are not being respected.

“Elsewhere” presumably being Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights and the Committee of Privy Counsellors responsible for reviewing the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 (ATCSA), both of whom recommended the urgent repeal of powers allowing non-UK nationals to be detained indefinitely.

My commitment to civil and human rights is as profound as any leader writer of The Independent or its readers.

Well I read the Independent, so that’s clearly bollocks. Anyway…

…the powers are justified because there is a state of public emergency.

What state of fucking emergency?! This country is not in a state of emergency — unless one counts the dreadful erosion of basic civil rights under this government. A state of emergency is something that might be declared for a few days to deal with the aftermath of a terrible terrorist attack on the UK. But all we’ve got is a few rumours from our oh-so reliable intelligence services that some religious extremist may possibly, at some point in the future, perhaps try to carry out some sort of unspecified terrorist attack. Maybe. Well personally I think that threat is going to be with us for some years yet, even in a best-case scenario. So does that then mean that the UK is going to be in a permanent state of emergency, with Home Secretaries able to introduce whatever Draconian measures they see fit, in contravention of international law? State of emergency? State of hysteria more like.

I never cease to be amazed at how a newspaper which describes itself as “independent” can take such a rigid and stereotyped stance on justice and home affairs matters.

Pot. Kettle. Black.

Blunkett goes on to say that he wants “a rational debate but based on facts”. Like we had over WMD perhaps? I’d like to see people imprisoned based on facts, judged in a court of law, rather than on his whim.

To protect our human rights we are not allowing them on to our streets in order to resume the activities that they were engaged in before they were picked up.

If these activities were illegal, put them on trial and present the evidence — there are plenty of laws that allow people planning to commit crimes to be prosecuted. If these activities were legal just not to your liking, then locking people up indefinitely without trial suggests the beginnings of a totalitarian state.

As Home Secretary, I must balance legal theory with the practical job of protecting people.

And by “legal theory” I guess he means the law — surely something he’s meant to uphold, not interpret as he sees fit and ignore other parts of it. I think he’s been watching too many repeats of The Equalizer or something. Why stop with terrorists, Dave? Get rid of the ASBOs and go straight to the electrodes to the genitals for all trouble-makers? Just as with the ruling that evidence gained by torture is admissible in court: the end justifies the means.

Oh yeah, and before I end my rant (hey, it’s been a while!), yet another government whitewash has been released, this time into how Downing Street leaked the Hutton Inquiry report to the Sun. Allegedly.