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thepeel
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
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 Posted: Tue Jan 29, 2008 12:37 am Post subject: Phones tapped at the rate of 1,000 a day |
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Britain is in danger of becoming a "surveillance state" as authorities including councils launch bugging operations against 1,000 people a day.
Councils, police and intelligence services are tapping and intercepting the phone calls, emails and letters of hundreds of thousands of people every year, an official report said.
Phone and email communications tapped at the rate of 1,000 a day
A total of 653 state bodies are able to intercept personal calls and emails
Those being bugged include people suspected of illegal fly-tipping as councils use little known powers to carry out increasingly sophisticated surveillance to catch offenders.
The report, by Sir Paul Kennedy, the Interception of Communications Commissioner, has fuelled fears that Britain is becoming a state where private communications are routinely monitored.
It also found that more than 1,000 of the bugging operations were flawed. In some cases, the phones of innocent people were tapped simply because of administrative errors.
David Winnick, a Labour member of the Commons home affairs committee, said greater legal protection was needed to prevent abuse of surveillance powers. Britain already has more CCTV cameras per person than any other country in the world.
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He said: "Most of these operations are needed and done for good reasons, but the numbers do raise concerns about the safeguards we have put in place to protect people from constant intrusion."
Referring to George Orwell's vision of a surveillance state, Mr Winnick added: "To walk blindfolded into 1984 is not anything that anybody in their right mind would want."
Michael Parker of NO2ID, which campaigns against ID cards, said the figures showed the state's desire to gather more information about people. "We are living in a surveillance state." |
http://www.telegraph.co.uk
The cameras, the PC police, the controlling of "anti-social behaviour" and now 1000 taps a day. What would Orwell say? |
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igotthisguitar
Joined: 08 Apr 2003
Location: South Korea (Permanent Vacation)
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| Posted: Tue Jan 29, 2008 5:38 am Post subject: Re: Phones tapped at the rate of 1,000 a day |
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| thepeel wrote: |
The cameras, the PC police, the controlling of "anti-social behaviour" and now 1000 taps a day.
What would Orwell say? |
Who's Orwell? |
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stillnotking
Joined: 18 Dec 2007
Location: Oregon, USA
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| Posted: Tue Jan 29, 2008 8:24 am Post subject: Re: Phones tapped at the rate of 1,000 a day |
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| thepeel wrote: |
| The cameras, the PC police, the controlling of "anti-social behaviour" and now 1000 taps a day. What would Orwell say? |
Don't worry about it. I'm sure they're just looking for Moslem terrorists, so it's perfectly all right. |
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thepeel
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
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| Posted: Tue Jan 29, 2008 8:26 am Post subject: |
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| No, it isn't. The state is out of control in the UK, USA, Canada. Most states. This 'terrorism' thing is an excuse to expand power over individuals. |
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stillnotking
Joined: 18 Dec 2007
Location: Oregon, USA
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| Posted: Tue Jan 29, 2008 8:31 am Post subject: |
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| thepeel wrote: |
| No, it isn't. The state is out of control in the UK, USA, Canada. Most states. This 'terrorism' thing is an excuse to expand power over individuals. |
I think your sarcasm detector might need some retuning. I agree with you.
I'm just trying to point out, again, that states using terrorism as a justification to erode civil liberties is a far scarier thing than terrorism itself. |
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ontheway
Joined: 24 Aug 2005
Location: Somewhere under the rainbow...
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| Posted: Tue Jan 29, 2008 8:34 am Post subject: Re: Phones tapped at the rate of 1,000 a day |
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| igotthisguitar wrote: |
| thepeel wrote: |
The cameras, the PC police, the controlling of "anti-social behaviour" and now 1000 taps a day.
What would Orwell say? |
Who's Orwell? |
http://www.online-literature.com/orwell/1984/ |
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thepeel
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
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| Posted: Tue Jan 29, 2008 8:35 am Post subject: |
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| I haven't been sarcastic in this thread. I'm a libertarian (the thumping you hear is yata running to his computer) and as such am primarily concerned with the relationship of the individual and state. Civil liberties are a blip in human history and we have to constantly fight to keep them (and secularism, markets, democracy...). I think many have forgotten how liberty is only maintained with a contestant struggle against power, or don't know enough about history to know where this is all headed and how bad that will be. |
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thepeel
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
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| Posted: Tue Jan 29, 2008 8:37 am Post subject: |
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| stillnotking wrote: |
| I'm just trying to point out, again, that states using terrorism as a justification to erode civil liberties is a far scarier thing than terrorism itself. |
I totally agree.
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." - Mencken |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Tue Jan 29, 2008 2:43 pm Post subject: |
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| I think your sarcasm detector might need some retuning. |
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| I haven't been sarcastic in this thread. |
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| I'm a libertarian (the thumping you hear is yata running to his computer) |
PS: I still think you are an AWOG. |
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igotthisguitar
Joined: 08 Apr 2003
Location: South Korea (Permanent Vacation)
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| Posted: Tue Jan 29, 2008 6:00 pm Post subject: |
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| stillnotking wrote: |
| thepeel wrote: |
| No, it isn't. The state is out of control in the UK, USA, Canada. Most states. This 'terrorism' thing is an excuse to expand power over individuals. |
I think your sarcasm detector might need some retuning. I agree with you.
I'm just trying to point out, again, that states using terrorism as a justification to erode civil liberties is a far scarier thing than terrorism itself. |
Exploiting fear to promote dark political agendas has long been a standard state tactic for "herding" the populace.
Bread & circuses. |
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thepeel
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
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| Posted: Tue Jan 29, 2008 6:55 pm Post subject: |
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| Ya-ta Boy wrote: |
| ...blah blah blah....I'm an elderly douchebag... |
How many threads do you think you ruin? Aren't you around 60 years old? Shouldn't you be past this?
What happened to you in your life to make you this nakedly unhappy with your life? |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Tue Jan 29, 2008 8:19 pm Post subject: |
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| Ya-ta Boy wrote: |
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| I think your sarcasm detector might need some retuning. |
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| I haven't been sarcastic in this thread. |
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 I was also trying to digest that! |
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thepeel
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
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| Posted: Tue Jan 29, 2008 8:22 pm Post subject: |
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Yes, yes. I misread. Oh well.
Hey bigbird, what do you think of your country putting thousands of camera's up to watch your every move and then tapping 1000 phones a day and criminalizing an increasingly large amount of speech and moving towards the criminalization of "anti-social" behavior (also known as deviance/individuality). Is this not an issue? |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Tue Jan 29, 2008 8:26 pm Post subject: |
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| thepeel wrote: |
Yes, yes. I misread. Oh well.
Hey bigbird, what do you think of your country putting thousands of camera's up to watch your every move and then tapping 1000 phones a day and criminalizing an increasingly large amount of speech and moving towards the criminalization of "anti-social" behavior (also known as deviance/individuality). Is this not an issue? |
I find it alarming. Well, I did find it alarming some years ago. Now I just despair at a society that has passively allowed this to occur. Like stillnotking says, terrorism has been a wonderful excuse for all sorts of nonsense, including the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. |
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thepeel
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
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| Posted: Tue Jan 29, 2008 8:30 pm Post subject: |
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Well, we agree on something. I posted this quote (my favorite quote) on another thread but here goes again:
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." - Mencken
Unfortunately, what the UK does Canada follows shortly thereafter. |
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