Beast System: Laying The Foundation Of The Beast

[oneofmany]

Daily Telegraph: US Officers Have Regular Meetings with PKK Terrorists

Daily Telegraph: US Officers Have Regular Meetings with PKK Terrorists​

British Daily Telegraph claimed that the US officers have regular meetings with the PKK terrorists in Northern Iraq. Damien McElroy in his report mentioned “US army helicopters are reportedly used to shuttle officers to regular meetings with Kurdish fighters”. Mr. McElroy interview with the head of the PKK terrorists, Murat Karayilan (means ‘Black Snake’ in Turkish language). Mr. Karayilan accepted the US assistance to the PKK yet argued that the US did very little for the Kurds and can do more.

Iran accused the US last week of supporting the terrorists against Tehran. Similarly the Turkish media blamed the Americans of being supporter of the PKK terrorism although the PKK is a terrorist organization according to the US laws.

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Ihsan Bal from Ankara-based USAK, one of the leading Turkish think tanks, told the JTW that the US should do something immediately against the PKK terrorists, otherwise Turkish-American relations will be damaged. Similarly Dr. Sedat Laciner said “All signs clearly show that the US ignores the PKK terrorists in Northern Iraq”. “The PKK is a terrorist organization. Americans and the EU say so. If US ignores or supports the PKK in the region, the US’ fight against global terrorism will lose its base. Turkey’s support, as moderate Muslim country, in fighting terrorism is crucial. However if you support my terrorists, I can not help you in fighting against your terrorists. The US’ strange policies regarding the PKK terrorism nourishes anti-Americanism in Turkey. The US lost at least 30 years in Turkey. If Washington thinks the Turkish people or politicians forget all these, they are wrong. Nobody in Ankara has forgotten the Johnson Letter for instance, and they will remember how the US is not co-operative against the PKK terrorism” Dr. Laciner added.

The PKK has armed terror bases in Northern Iraq. The number of bases is about 20. The number of the PKK terrorists is about 5.000 in Northern Iraq. The US promised to remove all of the PKK bases yet no concrete step has been taken.

 

[oneofmany]

NBC news: Chemtrails over California

NBC news: Chemtrails over California

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[oneofmany]

Most Britons believe we live in a 'surveillance society'

Most Britons believe we live in a 'surveillance society'​

Nearly six out of 10 people believe Britain has become a "surveillance society", according to a new survey.

The online poll for the civil rights group Liberty also found only 17 per cent of Britons trusted the authorities to keep their personal details completely confidential.

Liberty claimed people in the UK are losing their right to privacy in the wake of crackdowns connected with counter-terrorism.

Spokesman Gareth Crossman said: "In times of heightened insecurity we quite rightly compromise some of our privacy for public protection, but if we don't pause for thought right now our children will grow up without any sense of the value of privacy."

Last week Liberty won a six-month battle with the Avon and Somerset Constabulary to have the DNA of an innocent 13-year-old boy removed from the National DNA Database.

The boy had been falsely accused of writing graffiti and was one of about 100,000 innocent children whose details have been stored on the archive.

Liberty's report there was growing use of CCTV and databases, unprecedented phone tapping and massive expansion of the DNA database.

The group called for new laws to introduce tighter regulation of CCTV and more power and resources for the Information Commissioner, Britain's privacy watchdog, to investigate potential breaches.

Judges must also be allowed to review the way interception of email and phone calls is handled, the group added.

The YouGov poll surveyed a representative sample of 2,510 adults online, which found 57 per cent agreed Britain had become a surveillance society, while 19% disagreed and the rest were "don't knows".

 

[oneofmany]

Fox: Geraldo Mocks 9/11 Truth Protesters

FOX: GERALDO MOCKS 9/11 TRUTH PROTESTERS

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[oneofmany]

Walter Cronkite receives "Global Governance Award" from WFA

Walter Cronkite receives "Global Governance Award" from WFA

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[oneofmany]

Treaty could pave way for European ID card

Treaty could pave way for European ID card

Euro passports and ID cards could be on the way under new powers written into the EU Treaty, it was disclosed yesterday.

The Daily Telegraph has learned that existing safeguards preventing EU interference with national identity documents have been quietly dropped.

Sources close to negotiations suggest that Britain has allowed the safeguards to be removed in order to participate in EU security measures, such as biometric passports and ID cards.

William Hague, the shadow foreign secretary, said: "Gordon Brown has absolutely no democratic mandate to sign Britain up to a possible Euro ID card scheme.

"It illustrates how important it is that the British people have their promised say on this treaty."

Derek Scott, chairman of the I Want A Referendum campaign, said: "Under the Constitutional Treaty, work on harmonisation of identity documents would gain momentum.

"The EU is doing a lot of radical things in this area with far too little scrutiny, so it's no wonder that many people are uncomfortable with this."

 

[oneofmany]

The Fluoride Deception

The Fluoride Deception

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[oneofmany]

Outrage as DNA profile of seven-month-old baby is added to register

The DNA profile of a seven-month-old baby girl has been added to the register.​

Outrage as DNA profile of seven-month-old baby is added to register​

The DNA of a seven-month-old baby girl has been added to the police's national database designed to identify criminals.

The disclosure reignited the row over the growth of Britain's DNA register, which is the biggest in the world.

Human rights groups accuse the Government of building a genetic record of the entire UK population by stealth.

It was revealed this year that more than 100,000 DNA samples had been taken from children, aged ten to 16, who have never been charged or convicted of any crime.

Now the news that a baby's genetic profile is stored on the system saw leading campaigners react with horror and disgust.

She is one of 47 children under ten whose DNA has been recorded and will be retained by the police until after their deaths.

Civil liberties organisation Liberty said the baby girl's case was "a chilling example of how out of control the DNA database has become".

Children can be added to the register only with their parents' agreement, but Liberty director Shami Chakrabarti said: "This baby has not given her consent to be on this criminal database. Who knows the circumstances that led to her parent or guardian agreeing to put her profile on the system?"

She added: "DNA is the most intimate material. It can be used to identify who your parents are, and indicate your life expectancy.

"Should the police be able to keep this information about this little girl – and thousands like her – forever?"

Commons Home Affairs Committee chairman Keith Vaz said that the case was "unbelievable".

The former Europe Minister added: "This is not what this system was set up for and I will be demanding an explanation from Ministers."

The Mail on Sunday has learned that the baby's DNA sample was taken earlier this year by West Yorkshire Police.

According to the National Policing Improvement Agency, it was loaded on to the database "with parental/guardian consent as a volunteer victim".

A West Yorkshire Police spokesman confirmed they had taken the baby's DNA, but said it was at the request of West Midlands Police.

However, the Birmingham-based force refused to discuss the circumstances of the case.

Amazingly, a spokeswoman claimed they could not find any details without the child's name or date of birth.

The information about the baby girl's record came out after a Freedom of Information request by The Mail on Sunday which revealed that DNA samples of 47 children under ten were kept on the system.

Gavin McKinnon, of the NPIA, said profiles of 38 children were put on the register by police in England and Wales and nine by forces in Scotland.

Two of the English and Welsh samples were taken "following police contact", the others were "volunteered with written consent of a parent or guardian".

He added: "Separate written consent is also needed to load the sample on to the database."

In Scotland, where the age of criminal responsibility is eight, the nine samples were provided by children who had been arrested for an offence.

Mr McKinnon said that in England and Wales "officers cannot take samples from a child under ten without a parent or guardian's consent."

He added: "Volunteer samples for upload to the database can play an important role in an investigation."

They are normally taken to "eliminate an individual's profile" – for example, witnesses at a crime scene – and where there is a "need to establish a family link as part of an investigation".

A Home Office spokeswoman said samples from children under ten were only taken and retained on the database "with explicit written consent" of their parents.

She said: "Anyone can apply to the chief constable of the force that took the sample to ask for it to be removed."

But civil rights campaigners say that, in practice, it is very difficult to get your DNA wiped off the register.

Last week lawyers from Liberty finally won a six-month battle with Avon and Somerset Constabulary to have the DNA of an innocent 13-year-old boy removed from the national database. He had been falsely accused of writing graffiti.

The database permanently retains the DNA of approximately four million people.

This month Appeal Court judge Lord Justice Sedley called for it to be expanded to include everyone living in or visiting the UK.

 

[oneofmany]

Wheelchair-Bound Woman Dies After Being Shocked With Taser 10 Times

Wheelchair-Bound Woman Dies After Being Shocked With Taser 10 Times

A Clay County woman's family said it's seeking justice after their loved one died shortly after being shocked 10 times with Taser guns during a confrontation with police.

The family of 56-year-old Emily Delafield said it would take the Green Cove Springs Police Department to court, according to a WJXT-TV report.

In April 2006, officers with the police department said they were called to a disturbance at a home in the 400 block of Harrison Street just before 5 p.m.

In a 911 call made to the Green Cove Springs, Delafield can be heard telling a dispatcher that she believed she was in danger:

Dispatcher: And what's the problem?

Delafield: My sister is waiting on my property.

Dispatcher: Your what?

Delafield: My sister (inaudible) is on my property trying to harm me.

Officers said they arrived to find Delafield in a wheelchair, armed with two knives and a hammer. Police said the woman was swinging the weapons at family members and police.

Within an hour of her call to 911, Delafield, a wheelchair-bound woman documented to have mental illness, was dead.

Family attorney Rick Alexander said Delafield's death could have been prevented and that there are four things that jump out at him about the case.

"One, she's in a wheelchair. Two, she's schizophrenic. Three, they're using a Taser on a person that's in a wheelchair, and then four is that they tasered her 10 times for a period of like two minutes," Alexander said.

According to a police report, one of the officers used her Taser gun nine times for a total of 160 seconds and the other officer discharged his Taser gun once for a total of no more than five seconds.

A medical examiner found Delafield died from hypertensive heart disease and cited the Taser gun shock as a contributing factor, the report said. On her death certificate, the medical examiner ruled Delafield's death a homicide.

The family said it plans to sue the Green Coves Springs Police Department now that it has all the reports regarding their loved one's death.

"We're going to try to compensate the estate and the family and try to get justice," Alexander said.

He said he believes the evidence weighs heavily in favor of Delafield's family and that justice will be served.

"I think that this evidence is going to show, along with some of the evidence we've collected outside of here, that there is no reason Emily Delafield should have died that day," Alexander said.

He said he plans to file a notice to sue sometime before the end of the year.

 

[oneofmany]

Veterans Disarmament Act To Bar Vets From Owning Guns

Veterans Disarmament Act To Bar Vets From Owning Guns

Hundreds of thousands of veterans -- from Vietnam through Operation Iraqi Freedom -- are at risk of being banned from buying firearms if legislation that is pending in Congress gets enacted.

How? The Veterans Disarmament Act -- which has already passed the House -- would place any veteran who has ever been diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) on the federal gun ban list.

This is exactly what President Bill Clinton did over seven years ago when his administration illegitimately added some 83,000 veterans into the National Criminal Information System (NICS system) -- prohibiting them from purchasing firearms, simply because of afflictions like PTSD.

The proposed ban is actually broader. Anyone who is diagnosed as being a tiny danger to himself or others would have his gun rights taken away ... forever. It is section 102((1)(C)(iv) in HR 2640 that provides for dumping raw medical records into the system. Those names -- like the 83,000 records mentioned above -- will then, by law, serve as the basis for gun banning.

No wonder the Military Order of the Purple Heart is opposed to this legislation.

The House bill, HR 2640, is being sponsored by one of the most flaming anti-Second Amendment Representatives in Congress: Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY). Another liberal anti-gunner, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), is sponsoring the bill in the Senate.

Proponents of the bill say that helpful amendments have been made so that any veteran who gets his name on the NICS list can seek an expungement.

But whenever you talk about expunging names from the Brady NICS system, you’re talking about a procedure that has always been a long shot. Right now, there are NO EXPUNGEMENTS of law-abiding Americans’ names that are taking place under federal level. Why? Because the expungement process which already exists has been blocked for over a decade by a "funds cut-off" engineered by another anti-gunner, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY).

So how will this bill make things even worse? Well, two legal terms are radically redefined in the Veterans Disarmament Act to carry out this vicious attack on veterans’ gun rights.

One term relates to who is classified a "mental defective." Forty years ago that term meant one was adjudicated "not guilty" in a court of law by reason of insanity. But under the Veterans Disarmament Act, "mental defective" has been stretched to include anyone whom a psychiatrist determines might be a tiny danger to self or others.

The second term is "adjudicate." In the past, one could only lose one's gun rights through an adjudication by a judge, magistrate or court -- meaning conviction after a trial. Adjudication could only occur in a court with all the protections of due process, including the right to face one's accuser. Now, adjudication in HR 2640 would include a finding by "a court, commission, committee or other authorized person" (namely, a psychiatrist).

Forget the fact that people with PTSD have the same violent crime rate as the rest of us. Vietnam vets with PTSD have had careers and obtained permits to carry firearms concealed. It will now be enough for a psychiatric diagnosis (a "determination" in the language of the bill) to get a veteran barred for life from owning guns.

Think of what this bill would do to veterans. If a robber grabs your wallet and takes everything in it, but gives you back $5 to take the bus home, would you call that a financial enhancement? If not, then we should not let HR 2640 supporters call the permission to seek an expungement an enhancement, when prior to this bill, veterans could not legitimately be denied their gun rights after being diagnosed with PTSD.

Veterans with PTSD should not be put in a position to seek an expungement. They have not been convicted (after a trial with due process) of doing anything wrong. If a veteran is thought to be a threat to self or others, there should be a real trial, not an opinion (called a diagnosis) by a psychiatrist.

If members of Congress do not hear from soldiers (active duty and retired) in large numbers, along with the rest of the public, the Veterans Disarmament Act -- misleadingly titled by Rep. McCarthy as the NICS Improvement Amendments Act -- will send this message to veterans: "No good deed goes unpunished."

 

[oneofmany]

UK Police Claim Filming Them Is an Offence

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfQrDK9YHas

 

[oneofmany]

California could be 3rd state to ban forced RFID implants

California could be 3rd state to ban forced RFID implants​

It would be an interesting feature of an employee’s first day: sign a contract, fill out a W-2 and roll up your sleeve for your microchip injection.

Sounds like sci-fi, but it’s happened, and now a handful of states are making sure their citizens will never be forced to have a microchip implanted under their skin.

If Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) signs a bill passed Sept. 4, California would join Wisconsin and North Dakota in banning human implanting of these tags without consent.

No one’s quite sure how real a threat these forced implants might be, or why states are feeling compelled to protect their residents from being physically tagged. Lawmakers are calling the legislation pre-emptive, while the industry that produces the technology sees the states’ action as fear mongering.

Radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags – tiny, data-storing microchips about the size of a grain of rice – are in passports, in Wal-Mart factory shipments and in subway passes in cities from New York to Taiwan. They are also in humans. On one less-than-likely episode of "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit," a paranoid actor Bob Saget even uses one to monitor his adulterous wife.

Unlike Global Positioning System (GPS) technology, which is used for constant, real-time tracking, RFID tags are scanned at close range – usually from a few feet to a few inches. The tags are tracked by scanners installed at checkpoints, such as office doors or warehouse loading docks. The systems are also commonly used in highway toll collection and as theft protection in car keys.

In humans, they have been used to store medical information, to track movement and to gain access to locked rooms. To date, 2,000 RFID chips have been sold for implantation in humans, says VeriChip Corp., the only manufacturer with a Food and Drug Administration-approved implantable chip.

The company is focusing its technology on medical patient identification, and about 400 patients, including those with Alzheimer's disease, have RFIDs implanted. Other VeriChip human implants have been used by a Spanish nightclub to allow VIPs with implanted chips to bypass entrance lines and by the Mexico attorney general’s staff to safeguard identity information at a time when the kidnapping of government officials there is not uncommon.

Some customers are using them as high-tech keys. Ohio security firm CityWatcher.com raised eyebrows in 2006 when it requested that some of its employees be “chipped,” or implanted with tags for access to certain rooms. According to published reports, only two employees got the implants before the company dropped the program. CityWatcher.com has since shut down.

But forced chipping has been a rare practice, leading some industry spokespeople to decry regulation as “scare tactics.”

Wisconsin enacted the first RFID ban in May 2006, and North Dakota in April. Colorado and Ohio have bills in committee, and Oklahoma and Florida saw theirs die last session. Except for one U.S. House proposal to use RFID tags to track prescription drugs, Congress has not widely addressed the technology.

Legislators admit that the few laws being enacted are pre-emptive. Wisconsin state Rep. Marlin Schneider (D) had never heard of CityWatcher.com when he drafted the first implant ban.

“I had heard about this device from CNN or someplace, and I went into the office and said, ‘Get a bill drafted that prohibits this,’” he said. “This is beyond even what Orwell imagined.”

State Sen. Joe Simitian (D), who authored California’s bill, said he first looked into RFID legislation after grade schools in Sutter County, Calif., required students to wear IDs containing the chips to help monitor attendance. The move prompted privacy complaints from parents, and the school eventually stopped using the technology.

Simitian introduced four other RFID bills, dealing with criminal punishment for identity theft, security standards and use of these tags in driver’s licenses and school IDs.

All four proposals were originally pieces of California’s Identity Information Protection Act of 2006, which passed but was vetoed by Schwarzenegger. In a statement, he recommended waiting for standards from the federal Real ID Act, a plan to organize states’ driver’s licenses into a national system. The governor has until Oct. 14 to sign or veto the newly passed bill.

The lack of security in the chips is particularly alarming, Simitian said, and is a major reason he thinks the state should step in with regulation. A May 2006 story in Wired Magazine featured Jonathan Westhues, a 24-year-old engineer who demonstrated how he could (and did) covertly scan a company’s RFID employee badge and break into the office – all with a cheap, homemade reader. He’s since posted detailed instructions on how to make the reader on his Web site.

Westhues likens RFID chips to “a repurposed dog tag. … The Verichip is built with no attempt at security, and is therefore not very special to clone,” he writes on his Web site.

How low-tech are these homemade readers?
Determined to show the security flaws to skeptics in the Legislature, Simitian asked a tech-savvy grad student from his office to build one. The student then wandered the state Capitol one afternoon with the reader in his briefcase. In the process, he stole the security numbers of nine representatives. The reader could send out any of those numbers, getting him past any locked door a state senator would have access to. And he would appear as the senator in the electronic records.

Manufacturers and industry representatives say that no cases of such identity theft have been documented. But depending on the desired level of security, cameras and guards should be used in addition to RFID tags, says the AeA (formerly the American Electronics Association).

The technology is being embraced by a few government agencies. Both Vermont and Washington state have agreed to work with the Department of Homeland Security to test RFID driver’s licenses, although they won’t be required by citizens. The U.S. Department of Defense has been tracking shipments with RFID tags since 2003.

Besides possible privacy breaches, the new technology also has raised health alarms. Studies of implants used in the past 12 years have linked RFIDs to cancer in lab mice and rats, according to The Associated Press.

The studies did not have control groups for the cancer, and manufacturers report no complications with the millions of pets that have had various chip implants over the last 15 years. But the results were enough for some scientists to question the FDA’s approval of the technology.

 

[oneofmany]

School Security Guards Beat Teen over Cake Spill

School Security Guards Beat Teen over Cake Spill

Palmdale -- It all started with a piece of birthday cake, but it ended up with a high school girl being beaten and expelled. The incident, which occurred last week at Knight High School in Palmdale, was caught on a cell phone camera. Michael Brownlee was live in Palmdale with what the girl and her mother plan to do now.

Click the link and let the video load for the video presentation.

 

[oneofmany]

Navy to Alter Swastika-Shaped Barracks

Navy to Alter Swastika-Shaped Barracks​

CORONADO, Calif. (Sept. 26) - The Navy will spend as much as $600,000 to modify a 40-year-old barracks complex that resembles a swastika from the air, a gaffe that went largely unnoticed before satellite images became easily accessible on the Internet.

The Navy said officials noted the buildings' shape after the groundbreaking in 1967 but decided against changing it at the time because it wasn't obvious from the ground. Aerial photos made available on Google Earth in recent years have since revealed the buildings' shape to a wide audience.

The Navy approved the money to change the walkways, landscaping and rooftop solar panels of the four L-shaped barracks, used by members of the Naval Construction Force at the Navy's amphibious base at Coronado, near San Diego.

"We don't want to be associated with something as symbolic and hateful as a swastika," Scott Sutherland, deputy public affairs officer for Navy Region Southwest, told the Los Angeles Times.

Online commentators remarked widely about the buildings' resemblance to the Nazi symbol.

Dave vonKleist, host of "The Power Hour," a Missouri-based radio-talk show, said he wrote to military officials calling for action.

"I'm concerned about symbolism," he said. "This is not the type of message America needs to be sending to the world."

The Navy decided to alter the buildings' shape following requests this year by Anti-Defamation League regional director Morris Casuto and U.S. Rep. Susan Davis.

"I don't ascribe any intentionally evil motives to this," Casuto said of the design. "It just happened. The Navy has been very good about recognizing the problem. The issue is over."

 

[oneofmany]

Big Brother Britain: Government and councils to spy on ALL our phones

Big Brother Britain: Government and councils to spy on ALL our phones​

Officials from the top of Government to lowly council officers will be given unprecedented powers to access details of every phone call in Britain under laws coming into force tomorrow.

The new rules compel phone companies to retain information, however private, about all landline and mobile calls, and make them available to some 795 public bodies and quangos.

The move, enacted by the personal decree of Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, will give police and security services a right they have long demanded: to delve at will into the phone records of British citizens and businesses.

But the same powers will also be handed to the tax authorities, 475 local councils, and a host of other organisations, including the Food Standards Agency, the Department of Health, the Immigration Service, the Gaming Board and the Charity Commission. The initiative, formulated in the wake of the Madrid and London terrorist attacks of 2004 and 2005, was put forward as a vital tool in the fight against terrorism. However, civil liberties campaigners say the new powers amount to a 'free for all' for the State snooping on its citizens.

And they angrily questioned why the records were being made available to so many organisations. Similar provisions are being brought in across Europe, but under much tighter regulation. In Britain, say critics, private and sensitive information will inevitably fall into the wrong hands.

Records will detail precisely what calls are made, their time and duration, and the name and address of the registered user of the phone.

The files will even reveal where people are when they made mobile phone calls. By knowing which mast transmitted the signal, officials will be able to pinpoint the source of a call to within a few feet. This can even be used to track someone's route if, for example, they make a call from a moving car.

Files will also be kept on the sending and receipt of text messages.

By 2009 the Government plans to extend the rules to cover internet use: the websites we have visited, the people we have emailed and phone calls made over the net.

The new laws will make it a legal requirement for phone companies to keep records for at least a year, and to make them available to the authorities. Until now, companies have been reluctant to allow unfettered access to their files, citing data protection laws, although they have had a voluntary arrangement with law enforcement agencies since 2003.
Many of the organisations granted access to the records already have systems allowing them to search phone-call databases over a computer link without needing staff at the phone company to intervene.

Police requests for phone records will need the approval of a superintendent or inspector, while council officials must get permission from the authority's assistant chief officer. Thousands of staff in other agencies will be legally entitled to retrieve the records once the request is approved by a senior official.

The new measures were implemented after the Home Secretary signed a 'statutory instrument' on July 26. The process allows the Government to alter laws without a full act of Parliament.

The move was nodded through the House of Lords two days earlier without a debate.

It puts into UK law a European Directive aimed at the 'investigation, detection and prosecution of serious crime'. But the British law allows the information to be used much more widely to combat all crimes, however minor.

The huge number of organisations allowed to access this data was attacked by Liberty, the civil liberties campaign group. Other organisations allowed to see the data include the Royal Navy Regulating Branch, the Atomic Energy Authority Constabulary, the Department of Trade and Industry, NHS Trusts, ambulance and fire services, the Department of Transport and the Department for the Environment.

A spokesman for Liberty said: 'Hundreds of bodies have been given the power to look at this highly sensitive information. It is yet another example of how greater and greater access is being given to information on our movements with little debate and little public accountability.

'It is a free for all. There is a lack of oversight of how and why public bodies are using these records. There is no public record of what they are using this information for.'

Tony Bunyan, of civil liberties group Statewatch, said: 'The retention of everyone's communications data is a momentous decision, one that should not be slipped through Parliament without anyone noticing.'

Last year, the voluntary arrangement allowed 439,000 searches of phone records. But the Government brought in legislation because the industry did not routinely keep all the information it wanted.

Different authorities will have different levels of access to the systems. Police and intelligence services will be able to see more detailed information than local authorities. And officials at NHS Trusts and ambulance and fire services can obtain the records only in rare cases when, for example, they are trying to save a patient's life.

The new system will be overseen by the Interception of Communications Commissioner, who also ensures security and intelligence services' phone taps are legal.

The commissioner, Sir Paul Kennedy, reports to the Prime Minister and already carries out random inspections of some agencies legally allowed to see phone records under the existing voluntary scheme. Last year inspectors visited 22 councils already making 'significant' use of their powers' to access phone records. A report said the results were 'variable', but within the law.

Privacy watchdog the Information Commissioner, which has responsibly for protecting personal information and policing the Data Protection Act had virtually no role in the new laws.

A spokeswoman said its only function was to ensure 'data security' at the phone companies, adding: 'We have no oversight role over the release of this information.'

The Home Office said there were safeguards to ensure the new law was being used properly. Every authority had a nominated senior member of staff who was legally responsible for the use the phone data was put to, 'the integrity of the process' and for 'reporting errors'.

A spokesman said: 'The most detailed level of data can be accessed only by law enforcement agencies such as the police. More basic access is available to local authority bodies such as trading standards and environmental health who can only use these powers to prevent and detect crime.'

A spokesman for the Local Government Association, which represents councils across England and Wales, said: 'Councils would only use these powers in circumstances such as benefit fraud, when the taxpayer is being ripped off for many thousands of pounds.'

He added that it was 'very unlikely' the powers would be used against non-payers of council tax or for parking fines 'as the sums involved are not sufficient to justify the use of this sort of information or the costs involved in applying it'.

 

[oneofmany]

Almost all CCTV systems are illegal, says expert

Almost all CCTV systems are illegal, says expert​

As many as 95 per cent of CCTV systems in the UK are operating illegally, according to a CCTV expert. The revelation comes as new legislation is about to take effect in Scotland which could render even more systems illegal.

Companies whose premises have CCTV systems in operation must alert the Information Commissioner that they are gathering personal information about the people they are recording. They must also put up signs to warn the public that recording is taking place.

A new law will come into force in Scotland on 1 November requiring those operating systems on a contract to have a separate licence. The law, which is already in effect in England and Wales, does not apply to operators working directly for the company whose premises are being surveyed.

Bernie Brooks of CCTV compliance consultancy DatPro told OUT-LAW Radio that he comes across few systems that operate within the law.

"From my own my experience after personally surveying many, many hundreds of buildings, I would say probably less than five per cent are compliant," said Brooks. "I would say that 95 per cent are non-compliant in one way, shape, form or another with the [Data Protection] Act. Obviously, that's quite a worrying thing. If the system is non-compliant it could invalidate the usefulness of the evidence in a court of law."

Brooks's assessment matches that of non-profit CCTV awareness raising body Camerawatch. It said in June that its research showed that over 90 per cent of the UK's 4.2 million CCTV systems were not compliant with the Data Protection Act.

"That has profound implications for the reputation of the CCTV and camera surveillance industry and all concerned with it," said Camerawatch chairman Gordon Ferrie in June.

The new law in Scotland could push even more systems into illegal territory. The new licences for individuals is operated by the Security Industry Authority (SIA).

"If you operate CCTV equipment monitoring public or private space and you are monitoring members of the public then it is likely you will need a SIA licence," said SIA head of investigations Jennifer Pattinson. "The reason for licensing is to remove the criminal element from the private security industry but also to improve levels of training and professionalism in the industry."

People who work directly for the firm which owns the monitored premises do not need a licence. Pattinson said that this was because companies which directly employ security workers are likely to conduct the kind of thorough background checks that it does when issuing a licence.

The news that almost all systems are likely to operate illegally will raise questions about the effectiveness of CCTV.

The news follows the revelation last week that London's dense network of CCTV cameras may not have an effect on the solving of crimes. An analysis of London's 10,000 cameras showed that boroughs with many cameras had no better crime-solving statistics than those with few cameras.

 

[oneofmany]

President Bill Clinton Calls For A New World Order

PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON CALLS FOR A NEW WORLD ORDER​

 

[oneofmany]

Gordon Brown New World Order Speech

Gordon Brown New World Order Speech​

 

[The Dark Mind]

Yeah. A lot of this stuff is really disturbing.

 

[oneofmany]

UK police can now force you to reveal decryption keys

UK police can now force you to reveal decryption keys

Users of encryption technology can no longer refuse to reveal keys to UK authorities after amendments to the powers of the state to intercept communications took effect on Monday (Oct 1).

The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) has had a clause activated which allows a person to be compelled to reveal a decryption key. Refusal can earn someone a five-year jail term.

Part III of RIPA was in the original Act but was not activated. The Home Office said last year that it had not implemented the provision because encryption had not been as popular as quickly as it had predicted. It launched a consultation which culminated in Part III being made active on 1st October.

The measure has been criticised by civil liberties activists and security experts who say that the move erodes privacy and could lead a person to be forced to incriminate themselves.

It is also controversial because a decryption key is often a long password – something that might be forgotten. An accused person might pretend to have forgotten the password; or he might genuinely have forgotten it but struggle to convince a court to believe him.

Section 49 of Part III of RIPA compels a person, when served with a notice, to either hand over an encryption key or render the requested material intelligible by authorities.

Anyone who refuses to decrypt material could face five years in jail if the investigation relates to terrorism or national security, or up to two years in jail in other cases.

Controversially, someone who receives a Section 49 notice can be prevented from telling anyone apart from their lawyer that they have received such a notice.

The Home Office said that the process will be overseen by the Interception of Communications Commissioner, the Intelligence Services Commissioner and the Chief Surveillance Commissioner.

Complaints about demands for information must be made by the Investigatory Powers Tribunal. "The Tribunal is made up of senior members of the judiciary and the legal profession and is independent of the Government. The Tribunal has full powers to investigate and decide any case within its jurisdiction, which includes the giving of a notice under section 49 or any disclosure or use of a key to protected information," said a Home Office explanation of the process.

The Home Office said that the actions were consistent with the European Convention on Human Rights and the UK Human Rights Act as long as the demand for decryption was "both necessary and proportionate".

"The measures in Part III are intended to ensure that the ability of public authorities to protect the public and the effectiveness of their other statutory powers are not undermined by the use of technologies to protect electronic information," said the Home Office.

 

[oneofmany]

'Gay bomb' scoops Ig Nobel award

'Gay bomb' scoops Ig Nobel award

Pioneering research into a "gay bomb" that makes enemy troops "sexually irresistible" to each other has scooped one of this year's Ig Nobel Prizes.

 

[oneofmany]

US forces torture Press TV reporter

US forces torture Press TV reporter​

Press TV correspondent in Afghanistan, Fayez Khurshid has said that he was tortured by US forces after his illegal detention last night.

According to Khurshid, foreign soldiers stopped him on the way home, grabbed him by the collar and asked if he was a member of the IRGC (The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps) and worked for the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The Afghan journalist was rendered unconscious by a taser and taken to a US base where the officers in charge of interrogating him, forced him to watch all the reports he had made for Press TV, while "shocking him on an electric chair and beating him on the head".

He was threatened that if he continued to work for Press TV, his family would also suffer the consequences. Fayez repeatedly told his interrogators that he was a freelance journalist with no political ties to any foreign country.

Khurshid was released after an 18 hour detention.

Fayez had said in his latest report that the presence of the American forces in Afghanistan was the main reason for instability in the country and that Afghan authorities were instructed by foreign political forces to prevent the nation from chanting slogans against the US and Israel.

The Press TV correspondent made clear in his interview with the network that it is his duty to broadcast to the world what really goes on in Afghanistan, and the problems the presence of foreign forces has caused for the Afghan nation.

 

[oneofmany]

Vicente Fox hints about a North American Union

Vicente Fox hints about a North American Union

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYGrn0hZlCQ

 

[oneofmany]

Dragonfly or Insect Spy? Scientists at Work on Robobugs.

Dragonfly or Insect Spy? Scientists at Work on Robobugs.​

Vanessa Alarcon saw them while working at an antiwar rally in Lafayette Square last month.

"I heard someone say, 'Oh my god, look at those,' " the college senior from New York recalled. "I look up and I'm like, 'What the hell is that?' They looked kind of like dragonflies or little helicopters. But I mean, those are not insects."

Out in the crowd, Bernard Crane saw them, too.

"I'd never seen anything like it in my life," the Washington lawyer said. "They were large for dragonflies. I thought, 'Is that mechanical, or is that alive?' "

That is just one of the questions hovering over a handful of similar sightings at political events in Washington and New York. Some suspect the insectlike drones are high-tech surveillance tools, perhaps deployed by the Department of Homeland Security.

Others think they are, well, dragonflies -- an ancient order of insects that even biologists concede look about as robotic as a living creature can look.

No agency admits to having deployed insect-size spy drones. But a number of U.S. government and private entities acknowledge they are trying. Some federally funded teams are even growing live insects with computer chips in them, with the goal of mounting spyware on their bodies and controlling their flight muscles remotely.

The robobugs could follow suspects, guide missiles to targets or navigate the crannies of collapsed buildings to find survivors.

The technical challenges of creating robotic insects are daunting, and most experts doubt that fully working models exist yet.

"If you find something, let me know," said Gary Anderson of the Defense Department's Rapid Reaction Technology Office.

But the CIA secretly developed a simple dragonfly snooper as long ago as the 1970s. And given recent advances, even skeptics say there is always a chance that some agency has quietly managed to make something operational.

"America can be pretty sneaky," said Tom Ehrhard, a retired Air Force colonel and expert in unmanned aerial vehicles who is now at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a nonprofit Washington-based research institute.

Robotic fliers have been used by the military since World War II, but in the past decade their numbers and level of sophistication have increased enormously. Defense Department documents describe nearly 100 different models in use today, some as tiny as birds, and some the size of small planes.

All told, the nation's fleet of flying robots logged more than 160,000 flight hours last year -- a more than fourfold increase since 2003. A recent report by the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College warned that if traffic rules are not clarified soon, the glut of unmanned vehicles "could render military airspace chaotic and potentially dangerous."

But getting from bird size to bug size is not a simple matter of making everything smaller.

"You can't make a conventional robot of metal and ball bearings and just shrink the design down," said Ronald Fearing, a roboticist at the University of California at Berkeley. For one thing, the rules of aerodynamics change at very tiny scales and require wings that flap in precise ways -- a huge engineering challenge.

Only recently have scientists come to understand how insects fly -- a biomechanical feat that, despite the evidence before scientists' eyes, was for decades deemed "theoretically impossible." Just last month, researchers at Cornell University published a physics paper clarifying how dragonflies adjust the relative motions of their front and rear wings to save energy while hovering.

That kind of finding is important to roboticists because flapping fliers tend to be energy hogs, and batteries are heavy.

The CIA was among the earliest to tackle the problem. The "insectothopter," developed by the agency's Office of Research and Development 30 years ago, looked just like a dragonfly and contained a tiny gasoline engine to make the four wings flap. It flew but was ultimately declared a failure because it could not handle crosswinds.

Agency spokesman George Little said he could not talk about what the CIA may have done since then. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Department of Homeland Security and the Secret Service also declined to discuss the topic.

Only the FBI offered a declarative denial. "We don't have anything like that," a spokesman said.

The Defense Department is trying, though.

In one approach, researchers funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) are inserting computer chips into moth pupae -- the intermediate stage between a caterpillar and a flying adult -- and hatching them into healthy "cyborg moths."

The Hybrid Insect Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems project aims to create literal shutterbugs -- camera-toting insects whose nerves have grown into their internal silicon chip so that wranglers can control their activities. DARPA researchers are also raising cyborg beetles with power for various instruments to be generated by their muscles.

"You might recall that Gandalf the friendly wizard in the recent classic 'Lord of the Rings' used a moth to call in air support," DARPA program manager Amit Lal said at a symposium in August. Today, he said, "this science fiction vision is within the realm of reality."

A DARPA spokeswoman denied a reporter's request to interview Lal or others on the project.

The cyborg insect project has its share of doubters.

"I'll be seriously dead before that program deploys," said vice admiral Joe Dyer, former commander of the Naval Air Systems Command, now at iRobot in Burlington, Mass., which makes household and military robots.

By contrast, fully mechanical micro-fliers are advancing quickly.

Researchers at the California Institute of Technology have made a "microbat ornithopter" that flies freely and fits in the palm of one's hand. A Vanderbilt University team has made a similar device.

With their sail-like wings, neither of those would be mistaken for insects. In July, however, a Harvard University team got a truly fly-like robot airborne, its synthetic wings buzzing at 120 beats per second.

"It showed that we can manufacture the articulated, high-speed structures that you need to re-create the complex wing motions that insects produce," said team leader Robert Wood.

The fly's vanishingly thin materials were machined with lasers, then folded into three-dimensional form "like a micro-origami," he said. Alternating electric fields make the wings flap. The whole thing weighs just 65 milligrams, or a little more than the plastic head of a push pin.

Still, it can fly only while attached to a threadlike tether that supplies power, evidence that significant hurdles remain.

In August, at the International Symposium on Flying Insects and Robots, held in Switzerland, Japanese researchers introduced radio-controlled fliers with four-inch wingspans that resemble hawk moths. Those who watch them fly, its creator wrote in the program, "feel something of 'living souls.' "

Others, taking a tip from the CIA, are making fliers that run on chemical fuels instead of batteries. The "entomopter," in early stages of development at the Georgia Institute of Technology and resembling a toy plane more than a bug, converts liquid fuel into a hot gas, which powers four flapping wings and ancillary equipment.

"You can get more energy out of a drop of gasoline than out of a battery the size of a drop of gasoline," said team leader Robert Michelson.

Even if the technical hurdles are overcome, insect-size fliers will always be risky investments.

"They can get eaten by a bird, they can get caught in a spider web," said Fearing of Berkeley. "No matter how smart you are -- you can put a Pentium in there -- if a bird comes at you at 30 miles per hour there's nothing you can do about it."

Protesters might even nab one with a net -- one of many reasons why Ehrhard, the former Air Force colonel, and other experts said they doubted that the hovering bugs spotted in Washington were spies.

So what was seen by Crane, Alarcon and a handful of others at the D.C. march -- and as far back as 2004, during the Republican National Convention in New York, when one observant but perhaps paranoid peace-march participant described on the Web "a jet-black dragonfly hovering about 10 feet off the ground, precisely in the middle of 7th avenue . . . watching us"?

They probably saw dragonflies, said Jerry Louton, an entomologist at the National Museum of Natural History. Washington is home to some large, spectacularly adorned dragonflies that "can knock your socks off," he said.

At the same time, he added, some details do not make sense. Three people at the D.C. event independently described a row of spheres, the size of small berries, attached along the tails of the big dragonflies -- an accoutrement that Louton could not explain. And all reported seeing at least three maneuvering in unison.

"Dragonflies never fly in a pack," he said.

Mara Verheyden-Hilliard of the Partnership for Civil Justice said her group is investigating witness reports and has filed Freedom of Information Act requests with several federal agencies. If such devices are being used to spy on political activists, she said, "it would be a significant violation of people's civil rights."

For many roboticists still struggling to get off the ground, however, that concern -- and their technology's potential role -- seems superfluous.

"I don't want people to get paranoid, but what can I say?" Fearing said. "Cellphone cameras are already everywhere. It's not that much different."

 

[oneofmany]

1989: Call Boys Take Midnight Tour of the White House

1989: Call Boys Take Midnight Tour of the White House

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2527422130691745603

 

[oneofmany]

Active Denial System

Active Denial System

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=a6b_1192171184

This system fires non-lethal microwaves at human targets. The microwaves gives the target the sensation that their skin is burning.

 

[oneofmany]

EU treaty could spell the end of overtime

EU treaty could spell the end of overtime​

British workers could lose their right to work more than 48 hours a week and have to forfeit lucrative overtime because of the EU Reform Treaty which Gordon Brown is due to sign next week.

In a report on the treaty —which is expected to be agreed by Mr Brown and 26 other European heads of state in Lisbon on Friday — a parliamentary committee says it is "quite possible" that the UK's special deal on working hours could be successfully challenged in the European Court of Justice.

This is likely to infuriate business leaders who believe that Britain's "opt out" from the European Working Time Directive is a key reason for the competitiveness of the UK economy.

It will also increase demands for the British people to be granted a referendum on the Treaty, which The Daily Telegraph has called for. The warning that Britain's exemption from EU employment rules could face legal challenges has been raised by the House of Commons European scrutiny committee, which examines European documents before they become law.

Its view is supported by eminent European lawyers who insist that Mr Brown's so-called "red lines" for protecting UK sovereignty in the treaty are largely worthless.

The MPs says that the problem lies with the Charter of Fundamental Rights – which is part of the treaty – and which says: "Every worker has the right to limitation of maximum working hours, to daily and weekly rest periods and to an annual period of paid leave."

 

[oneofmany]

China rulers 'silencing dissent'

China rulers 'silencing dissent'​

China has intensified efforts to silence dissent in the run-up to a key Communist Party Congress next week, human rights groups say.

The campaigners say the authorities have been arresting, abducting and intimidating activists to prevent them from staging protests.

China has stepped up security ahead of the Beijing meeting.

The congress will determine the direction the country takes for the next five years.

The 17th Communist Party congress is a major event in China.

It will reveal how the power balance between rival factions is changing, who the country's future leaders are likely to be and what the party's policy priorities are for the coming years.

The Chinese authorities do not want this showpiece occasion to be overshadowed by protests.

Paraglider ban

According to campaigners, they have been making sure dissidents will not cause trouble.

One group, China Human Rights Defenders, says two of the country's most prominent democracy activists - Yao Lifa and Lu Banglie - have gone missing.

It says scores of others have been arrested or detained in their homes.

New York-based Human Rights Watch says China has been working for months to restrict the movement of dissidents and tighten controls on the internet and the media, in order to impose a veneer of social harmony.

Tight security is currently being put in place in Beijing in advance of the congress.

Among the latest measures announced, the authorities have banned paragliders and model aeroplanes for the duration of the event, because of security concerns.

 

[Mask]

Re: Gordon Brown New World Order Speech

Gordon Brown New World Order Speech​

mayne boy we have some work to do

 

[oneofmany]

French argue over aerial robot surveillance

French argue over aerial robot surveillance​

Not everyone in the French government wants to use flying robotic surveillance drones next year as part of a plan to triple police surveillance efforts.

ELSA (a French acronym for "light device for aerial surveillance") is a 4-foot aerial robot that would be used to watch people in Paris and towns connected to Paris by the Metro subway system.

The device was demonstrated at Milipol, an exhibition of police security technology, which took place last week in Paris.

ELSA drones are slated to be part of an effort to triple the number of video surveillance devices by 2009, Michèle Alliot-Marie, France's minister of the Interior, told the Le Monde newspaper. Some could be used in conjunction with the Paris Metro subway security system, while the rest could be monitored by individual police stations for general security and to watch over demonstrations.

Mostly made of foam and weighing no more than a water bottle, ELSA poses little physical threat to people in the event of a crash. But equipped with night vision capabilities as well as daytime surveillance cameras, it's seen by some as a threat to personal freedom.

Some French politicians voiced protests after learning that the device had already been tested in several towns without their knowledge, according to Le Monde.

France should not be treated like a hostage-taking or civil war-torn country, Daniel Goldberg, a member of the French National Assembly (France's lower house of Parliament), told Le Monde.

"Faced with the legitimate and pressing expectations of citizens, we might be tempted to pay for additional security with a sacrifice in terms of freedom. This much is clear: this will never be the choice of France--and it will never be mine," he said.

 

[oneofmany]

Americans could face Internet tax

Americans could face Internet tax​

(WASHINGTON) - Congressman Jim Walsh today called on Congress to act immediately to permanently extend the current Internet tax moratorium set to expire on November 1, 2007.

"The Internet is growing in importance as a resource for businesses and consumers today," said Walsh. "In the last twenty years, it has revolutionized the way we communicate, the way our children learn, and the way we conduct business. Taxing Internet access will have a detrimental impact upon our economy and our quality of life, and Congressional leadership should quickly put forward a bill that permanently bans this detrimental tax."

According to a February-March 2007 survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, an initiative of the Pew Research Center, 71% of American adults regularly use the Internet, and usage by adults between the ages of 18 and 29 is as high as 87%.

Further, Internet usage is widespread across race, ethnicity, geography, household income, and educational attainment. Urban (73%), suburban (73%) and rural (60%) Americans all rely on Internet service.

If Congress allows the tax moratorium to expire on November 1st, Americans could face taxes of up to 20% for simply accessing the Internet. On Wednesday, the House Judiciary Committee passed a temporary short-term extension of the moratorium, refusing to consider legislation with bipartisan support that would enact a permanent ban.

Walsh is a co-sponsor of H.R. 743, the Permanent Internet Tax Freedom Act, which amends the Internet Tax Freedom Act to make permanent the ban on State taxation of Internet access and on multiple or discriminatory taxes on electronic commerce. The measure has 237 co-sponsors, suggesting the bill would have little trouble passing the full House if called for a vote.

"We rely upon the Internet today to find a job, a new place to live, or the best treatment for a loved one's illness," added Walsh. "Congress should not begin taxing this resource that improves our lives and contributes to our economy."

 

[dredhed0]

i'm not suprised by any of this information.

 

[oneofmany]

Security measures threaten privacy, Canadians fear

Security measures threaten privacy, Canadians fear​

OTTAWA -- A growing number of Canadians fear their personal information is at risk due to increasingly pervasive technology and data exchanges with foreign countries in the name of national security, charges new research released Wednesday by the federal privacy commissioner.

The federal government is responsible for eroding many of the rights Canadians have to privacy as a result of increased surveillance combined with insufficient oversight, Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart said in her annual report to Parliament on the Privacy Act.

"In today's surveillance society, people expect strong privacy laws and want their federal government to take their responsibility extremely seriously," Stoddart said in her report. "We need an overarching framework on how the government collects, uses, discloses and protects personal information."

She is urging the federal government to overhaul the Privacy Act, which controls how the public sector handles personal information, in order to limit the government's ability to collect and share vast amounts of personal information without justification or proper oversight.

For instance, while the private sector is limited in the information it can collect and must tell individuals how and why their data is used, government departments don't have to adhere to the same requirement.

Stoddart highlighted several key areas where government-handled information is at risk in today's society and must be addressed:

-- Personal information of Canadians is being shared with foreign countries on an increasing basis and creates growing streams of data that could have serious consequences for the privacy of Canadians in the event of a data breach.

-- Travel-related security programs mean that an increasing amount of personal information is being shared with a growing number of agencies, which could undermine the privacy of individuals.

-- Identity theft and related fraud are extremely costly and devastating to victims. The federal government must develop a significant measures to ensure Canadians remain in control of how their personal information is used and collected.

-- Stoddart singled out the recently-established no-fly list, officially known as the Passenger Protect program, as one of the more worrisome measures that could prove to be more of a privacy risk than a national security benefit.

"The process for putting an individual's name on the list is not transparent and individuals won't have the right to know they are on the list until they try to board an airplane," says the report. "There are serious risks arising from the possible sharing of the list with other governments by Transport Canada. There is also a risk air carriers would share the list with other countries."

Although the government is distinct from private companies that operate in their own interests, experts have argued the public sector must be held to account to ensure it doesn't abuse personal information.

"It's critical that we have a data protection regime in place that protects Canadians from inappropriate data sharing, data matching, and data uses by our governments," said Philippa Lawson, executive director of the Canadian Internet Policy & Public Interest Clinic.

Stoddart said politicians who have approved new surveillance measures may not have understood the broad and far-reaching implications of those actions in today's technological world.

"Stronger state surveillance powers with little or no oversight, the expansion of integrated data banks, and information sharing across agencies and jurisdictions have all taken their toll on privacy rights," she said in the report.

The report also contained results of an audit that shows that numerous government departments aren't meeting their obligations to ensure that risks to personal information are identified and minimized, such as keeping tabs on where personal information is sent after it is collected.

The commission received a total of 839 complaints about government agencies in the 2007 fiscal year on a range of issues such as access to personal information to timely responses to requests.

In addition to the annual report, the commission also released results of a survey which show 70% of Canadians feel their personal information is more vulnerable today than it was a decade ago.

Less than 20% said government and businesses take the protection of personal information seriously enough.

A total of 2,001 Canadians were questioned in the survey, which was conducted by Ekos Research Associates earlier this year. The poll is considered accurate to within plus or minus 2.2 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

 

[oneofmany]

The CCTV sham

The CCTV sham: 8 out of 10 cameras don't help police fight crime - and trap motorists instead​

Closed-circuit TV cameras supposed to catch violent thugs have been trained on roads instead - to trap and fine motorists who stray into bus lanes.
A Home Office study of Britain's 4.2million CCTV cameras also revealed they are not proving much help to the police in collaring criminals.

More than eight out of ten of the cameras - the UK has the largest number in the world - do not provide satisfactory images for officers to use.

In many cases, a suspect can be recognised only if police already know who they are. Also, very few cameras are positioned in a place that would tackle terrorism, or spot reconnaissance missions by fanatics.

But, despite the lack of success, officials are still considering the case for even more cameras. Councils, which run CCTV control rooms, can choose where they target their cameras - even though, when they were paid for, the intention was to cut street crime.

Home Office officials found they are being used to monitor bus lanes for motorists passing inside the thick white lines painted on the road.

Those caught can be served with a fine of up to £100, sent to the home of the person registered as the car's keeper by the DVLA.

The report, compiled by the Home Office and Association of Chief Constables, reveals: "In some cases the cameras' initial purpose has been changed or they are required to perform a number of additional and conflicting tasks.

"Some existing cameras originally installed for detecting crime are now being positioned to monitor a bus lane and record vehicle number plates.

"While the cameras are being used in this way, it seems unlikely that they will be used proactively to patrol the area and detect crime. Current installed cameras cannot perform these two functions at the same time."

Shadow Home Secretary David Davis said: "In yet another extraordinary admission of incompetence we see that this Government has managed to give people all the disadvantages of CCTV in terms of undermining civil liberties but only provide minimal advantage in terms of public safety and crime detection.

"The countless victims of crime in this country will be stunned to hear that, not only can they not get a police officer on the streets, but also most of the CCTV footage that should help them get justice is less than useless."

Paul Smith, founder of drivers' pressure group SafeSpeed, said: "Drivers will be infuriated. We are seeing local authorities with stretched budgets profiting from these cameras by fining drivers.

"They are often very minor offences with little to do with safety. This is about raising revenues and nothing to do with combating crime."

Phil Booth, of the NO2ID civil liberties campaign, said: "This is both a farce and a national scandal. The cameras are delivering no meaningful results for the safety of the average citizen. It seems more like a snooper's charter to spy on the motorist, while the criminal gets away with it."

Other damning findings of the report, the National CCTV Strategy, include the fact that many cameras in public places such as shopping centres and transport hubs are designed to "monitor crowds, slips, trips and falls" rather than detect crime.

Some police forces have failed to keep pace with technological developments, leading to evidence being lost, and some cameras are poorly maintained and "not fit for purpose".

The report added that CCTV played a crucial role in the investigation into the July 7 suicide bombings, but went on: "The majority of cameras have not been placed in positions which may be required for the prevention and detection of serious and organised crime and counter-terrorism."

The authorities should consider placing cameras to cover high-risk targets - such as major pieces of the national infrastructure - rather than to combat low-level crime and disorder, the document said.

Camera operators should also be trained to spot "hostile reconnaissance" by terrorists.


A Home Office spokesman said: 'CCTV has proven its effectiveness time and again in tackling crime and disorder.

It also plays a vital role in the fight against terrorism and helps communities feel safer.

"The strategy recognises that for CCTV to continue to be effective it must have both the support of the public and take account of rapidly changing technology."

 

[oneofmany]

Iraq whistleblower Dr Kelly WAS murdered to silence him, says MP

Iraq whistleblower Dr Kelly WAS murdered to silence him, says MP​

Weapons expert Dr David Kelly was assassinated, an MP claims today.

Campaigning politician Norman Baker believes Dr Kelly, who exposed the Government's "sexed-up" Iraq dossier, was killed to stop him making further revelations about the lies that took Britain to war.

He says the murderers may have been anti-Saddam Iraqis, and suggests the crime was covered up by elements within the British establishment to prevent a diplomatic crisis.

The LibDem MP, who gave up his front bench post to carry out his year-long investigation, makes his claims in a book serialised exclusively in the Daily Mail today and next week.

The official Hutton Inquiry into the death of Dr Kelly ruled in 2004 that he slashed one of his wrists with a garden knife and took an overdose after being "outed" as the mole who revealed the flawed argument for invading Iraq.

But Norman Baker is convinced the scientist was murdered.

He says he was told by a secret informant that British police knew about the plot but failed to act in time and that the death was later made to look like a suicide to prevent political and diplomatic turmoil.

The highly-respected MP's personal quest to uncover the truth about Dr Kelly's death was prompted by deep concerns over the circumstances surrounding the apparent suicide.

He - and a group of eminent doctors - were greatly troubled by the evidence presented to Lord Hutton.

They claimed medical evidence proved that the alleged method of suicide - the cutting of the ulnar artery in the wrist and an overdose of co-proxamol painkillers - could not have caused the scientist's death.

Mr Baker said: "The more I examined [Lord Hutton's verdict], the more it became clear to me that Hutton's judgment was faulty and suspect in virtually all important respects."

His findings are today revealed in the first extract from his book The Strange Death of David Kelly. In it, he claims:

• No fingerprints were found on the gardening knife allegedly used by the scientist to cut one of his wrists;

• Only one other person in the whole of the British Isles committed suicide in the same way as the scientist allegedly did in 2003;

• There was an astonishing lack of blood at the scene despite death being officially recorded as due to a severed artery;

• The level of painkillers found in Dr Kelly's stomach was "less than a third" of a normal fatal overdose.

The Lewes MP also suggests that the knife and packs of painkillers found beside Dr Kelly's body were taken from his home in Southmoor, Oxfordshire, during a police search after his death and later planted at the scene.

He tells in his book how he was contacted by "informants" during his "journey into the unknown".

One is alleged to have told him Dr Kelly's death had been "a wet operation, a wet disposal".

Mr Baker explains: "Essentially, it seems to refer to an assassination, perhaps carried out in a hurry."

Another secret contact told him that a group of UK-based Iraqis had "named people who claimed involvement in Dr Kelly's death".

The informant was later the victim of "an horrific attack by an unknown assailant".

The MP, who has repeatedly called for the police to re-open the case, alleges that the scientist had "powerful enemies" because of his work on biological weapons. A colleague of Dr Kelly, Dick Spertzel, America's most senior biological weapons inspector, confirmed to Mr Baker that the scientist was "on an Iraqi hit list".

Mr Baker alleges that opponents of Saddam Hussein feared Dr Kelly would "discredit" them by revealing "misinformation" they had deliberately planted to bolster the case for Britain and America's intervention in Iraq.

The MP claims Kelly's integrity might have "signed his own death warrant".

The book also alleges that British police "had got wind of a possible plan to assassinate Dr Kelly but were too late to prevent his murder taking place".

The MP suggests that the police may have tried to make the killing appear to be a suicide "in the interests of Queen and country" and to prevent any destabilisation of the sensitive relationship between the Allies and Iraq.

Mr Baker adds: "It is all too easy to dismiss so-called conspiracy theories. But history shows us that conspiracies do happen - and that suicide can be staged to cover murderers' tracks.

"All the evidence leads me to believe that this is what happened in the case of Dr Kelly."