The Government has already signalled its intention to bring in a Communications Data Bill in the new parliamentary session. As many will remember one of the most vociferous objections to identity cards was not the cards themselves but the central register that would store huge amounts of personal data. However, the plans to introduce a massive database remain alive.
The somewhat provocative title to this post refers to the fact that in the interactive world we live in – it is more than likely that someone you know will in the past, and however fleetingly, have been in contact with a person who him or herself has been in contact with someone who is perhaps two handshakes away from bin Laden. An example quoted to me by a fellow peer who is an expert on communications is that he once shook hands with someone who taught one of Osama Bin Laden’s children – which made me four (or was it three) handshakes distant from OBL.
This has implications for a central register which may be authorised to keep details of every phone call, e-mail, web browsing session of every UK citizen. Let’s take an (admittedly rather fatuous) example: you decide to purchase an item on E-bay and have a few direct transactions with the seller. In turn that seller may have been in contact on a totally different matter with someone who had in the past been in e-mail contact with a person suspected (not necessarily charged with) of terrorism. It is possible that given the sophisticated computer programming that your name could in future be linked to terrorism – however faintly. Meanwhile you might be subject to even more intrusive personal data collection – for instance all your credit card purchases or library borrowing information could be added to the database. This could result in a wholly false association between you and the victim.
It is said that while the Communications Data Bill would not include this provision, plans by senior civil servants to devise and run an “Interception Modernisation Programme” are well advanced.
Yes, we are sleepwalking into a database state, not just in New Britain, but across Europe (this is a European directive) as a result of the American Patriot Acts, which have hyped up and overblown the terrorist threat in order to strangle freedoms and cripple civil liberties.
Once the Communications Data Bill has been inflicted upon Britain and Europe, the rest of the world will copy it, make it worse, find new ways to make it more oppressive and pool their resources to ensure that people across the world are too scared to even think that they were once free.
You will soon have the jackals, jackasses, jackbooters and jobsworths of the state poring and drooling over every email you send, every text you write, every phone call you make and every website you visit.
Keep screaming from the crowd how wonderful our governments are at protecting us from the perpetual, but forever unseen 1984 wars and keep cheerleading for the two minutes’ hate and maybe you will be safe.
Just make sure you are never the first one to stop applauding.
Alternatively, stand up and be counted and keep rubbing the faces of politicians in this abomination and keep people informed about what they are trying to do to you.
Kill it with a thousand acts of daily sabotage by doing the one thing which governments fear most: talking to and associating with other people.
http://communicationsdatabill.info/blogs/
The keeping of the data isn’t so much the problem, that happens already and I think it’s quite right that for a while your internet logs are kept to aid crime. It’s the scary proposal that the Gov would have carte blanche access to innocent people’s data, right now they have to go the ISP and can only request data with good reason. We know, if it was all on a Gov database, a nosy council worker who didn’t need to ask permission would be far more likely to abuse the system. As the Gov already have access to suspect’s data, you have to wonder if this isn’t about the innocent people then why do they need the database?
Is this what we went through the last war for? We thought it was for freedom. Will a Data Base prevent a plane or planes from flying into Westminster or any other building? No, because other ways will be found to communicate. All Government will succeed in doing is turning more people away from our own MP’s when there will come a time when they want the people behind them.
Has THIS Bill been instigated in the EU as was the ID Card Bill? I have vowed never to carry an ID Card again and I certainly will not give details about myself to anyone else. I have had one ID Card and there are still people about that have their ID Number tattooed upon their skin. Perhaps some will by microchipped? Today’s MP’s simply have no idea what they are doing, perhaps if THEY had been through a real war, they might be more careful in what they plan for OUR future. Now that war was indeed REAL Terrorism, Yes I know what bombs raining down sound like while cowering in shelters. But we ALL fought for our rights, even the children “did their bit” each and every one of them and we will not allow them to be taken away so easily by “our own”.
I’m hoping that one of the newspapers will give away the film ‘The Lives of Others’ with their ‘Sunday Supplement’ instead of the rather more superficial offerings they normally supply.
Now WHO exactly was shaking hands with who today? As seen on Television. My Oh My! Four handshakes away from Osama Bin Laden eh?
One of the problem with large databases is it makes people lazy. If
your not careful you start moving away from careful but hard law
enforcement work to a thinking you can find out everything by
interrogating the uber-database. Not only does that generate problems
with false positives it will completely miss people who live “off the
grid”, a sub-section of which will probably be of more interest to the
authorities. In fact any serious terrorist will already be making
plans for fake identities and electronic trails and how they will
avoid being “pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or
numbered!”.
I can recommend the Baroness read Bruce
Schneier blog for further insight into security. In fact I would
recommend that any committee discussing security and/or counter
terrorism should call him to give evidence!
The former Shadow Home Secretary, David Davis MP, also outlines some of the horrors of the inherent weaknesses of such systems over on The Guardian, here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/nov/03/idcards-civilliberties
It is heartening that Gordon Brown has admitted that any database system is only as strong as the weakest human link involved. (Link in above article).
The fact that we all know these databases will be accessible by, not only the vast legions of petty officials already furnished with access keys, but, by gradual design and mismanagement, by all and sundry therefater, means that we know that it will only take one drug-addled incompetent to open the floodgates of information in which we all drown, but identity thieves, paedophiles, criminals and assorted low-lifes and ne’er-do-wells scramble onto our backs and float serenely on our data.
This is an attempted act of gross indecency by the state against the people.
If anyone has a tale to tell about the dangers of this technological time-bomb or experiences of what it was like to live under a police state operated by professionals, rather than shabby amateurs, to share, please go to:
http://communicationsdatabill.info/blogs/