I don't belive this for one second. I'm sure this goverment is as good, if not better than spying on people these days. We don't need no stinking help from those Johnny Foreigners, the UK Police can do just as good a job on spying on innocent people as any Coomies.

I for one shall be mentioning the word jihad & bomb as many times as possible in a Cab (as well as the odd...Yes Operation "Blow the fucking place Up at 23:00" is go..go....go)

Clunk..Clunk..Clunk...mmm sound like jackboots matching out from the Met.....

"A spokesman for the Met declined to comment, saying the force does not discuss leaked documents"

How convenient...

With the way the UK is going and the police resembling the Stasi more and more by the day, I'm really surprised they don't already have this...........

Unbelievable.

Completely unbelievable.

Learning from a Communist state on how to intimidate and repress your own populace.

Anyone who still thinks they have our best interest at heart are sorely mistaken.

I can see the spooks collecting a tone of dirty blackmail material on all the City's movers and shakers as well as joe public.

Every little indiscretion or drunk word will be captured for posterity and as material for future influence.

What about corporate espionage?

Every foreign businessman knowing the British Gvt are listening on their business plans.

If Gordo wanted to chase out business he is doing a good job

You couldn't make this shit up.

They haven't bugged them already? suprised there is no law requiring taxis to have 200 CCTV cameras that keep the video for 3 years fitted and on at all times.

The Met is learning lessons on internal security from the Chinese government.

The people who brought you Blair Peach, Jean-Charles de Menezes, and Ian Tomlison are going to get lessons from the people who brought you Tianamen Square.

For our 'protection', naturally....

"It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself—anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face… was itself a punishable offense. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime…"

The Alien.... cause I'm hoping they come and save us from ourselves. With important things like Britains Got Talent to watch, who's got the time to revolt?

Broons up to his armpits in sh!t and we suddenly have another threat to our liberties being 'leaked'.

Bit convenient innit?

"individual rights to privacy"

LOL

In today's Britain, there's no room for "individual rights to privacy"!!

Lock and Load.

Time to get serious.

Maybe we can have a speaker system so BB can tell Gordo's make-up artist to pick up his documents.

We need this for buses, trains, and the postal system too, hopefully with Abort and Fail options. "Are you sure you want to mail these 25m family benefit records 2nd class post? Abort, No, Fail."

every time they think of China

...it will only intimidate innocent civilians. The terrorists, if they really exist, will obviously know that these are in a cabs and errr....I dunno, probably use a different form of transport?!

Who thinks up this stupid ideas for discussion papers like this? No Met, you discussing such pointless shite does not fill me with confidence, as I assume it is supposed to do, it simply makes you look like a laughing stock in front of all the other countries! Okay?

@sig: "Avoid London" is definitely my plan.

Here's the problem - the Olympics has basically just painted a bloody big target sign over the UK inviting any terrorist group to come and have a go if it thinks it's hard enough. It's not a question of *if* someone will try a terrorist attack, it's a question of *how many* and *what* they will try to do.

So, we know the bad guys are coming. It would be irresponsible for the security services not to step up measures for the duration of the games. And yes, that's going to be a PITA for people living in London and the South-East. Unfortunately, it is something people are going to have to live with.. temporarily.. if they want to be safe.

What is completely irresponsible is the bid for the Olympics in the first place. Given the UK's unpopular status worldwide, it was basically just asking for trouble. Remember what happened the day after London won the bid? 7/7 is what happened!

No doubt certain people have their own agendas here too. Hopefully by 2012, Gordon Brown will be a distant memory. Not sure that I necessary trust the alternatives though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Avoid_London_(2005-07-07).jpg

It will start in 2012, bugging taxis, then we'll get a news story along the lines of....

2 whole terrorists were captured during the olympic games this year by the bugging of the capitals Taxis, used by over a billion people during this period.

The scheme originally caused outcry amoung readers of popular IT news website "The Register" but has now been realised as a boon to the security services.

UK police commissioner said:

"We can't believe we managed to catch that many, how many could we capture if we bugged the UK's Taxis"

PM said

"With the power that bugging Taxis gave us against terrorists, how can we not press home this advantage and bug Busses, Trains and Planes too. If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear"

The security services plan to run opt-out trials of the bugging in certain areas, but you can only be excluded if you have a packet of 'Phorms chocolate chip cookies' on you at all times, even if you may want a new packet, or binned the old one.

Maybe taxis are the only place they *can't* bug effectively; possibly due to the inane chatter from the cabbies.

The plan is to make sure that terrorist's plans are only spoken outside the cabs... :)

/Mine's the tinfoil one.

Remotely disable vehicles? Great, I expect that they'll be politely asking all terrorists bound for London in 2012 to sign up their vehicles to have bugs fitted.

They should create proper surveillance infrastructure not just in taxies, but in every public and sort-of almost public place! With cheap labor in China, it can't be to hard to have some million political officers tracking the suspect elements of society. With the Olympics, there is the One True Chance to do it right -- and a stable peaceful society is guaranteed for the next millenia.

The Met not discussing leaked documents. They same to have been in the habit of making swivel-eyed rants to the press about leaked documents recently, not to mention kicking in a few doors in Parliament.

Is this some attempt at improving their image?

If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear"

but i do have stuff to hide .... lots of it !!!!!!!

... could you hand me that shovel and detonator please

mines the one with the blueprints to parliment

...and not because I'm a terrorist... just because.

amanfromMars in every cab!

Terrorists: If you can't handle the thought of taking anything but a cab to your target, and simply cannot keep your mouth shut, you may be in trouble.

As for the rest of you: Could you lean a little closer to the overhead light and repeat the location of that "leather & lace" party again, please?

Surely, as he is the only man from Mars he qualifies to take part in the Olympics. Being in the top 5% of his Country or whatever the stupid rule is.

There were Chinese police over here a year or so ago, studying how London did CCTV, learning from the masters. We police states gotta stick together, you know.

Surely the chinese were bugging the cabbie not the passenger.

ere, i had that OBL in the back of my cab sold him to the yanks when the cheque clears the Misses and I are retiring.

The more laws you make, the more you can break... I now predict a wave of costly fines against the general taxi-taking public for acts of public drunkeness, vomiting, swearing, littering, molestation etc. mostly taking place in the back of cabs.... f*k that five quid *cover* charge....

Quote taken recently from a hard-working London cabbie when presented with the above plan:

"You b*ds can run but you can't hide...."

Now now.. I've ruffled some feathers :)

Look, the Olympics is in danger of becoming Terrorfest 2012. The UK has so many enemies that it is inevitable that someone will have a go. Given that, it is natural that the security services will increase surveillance.. "temporarily". Will it be temporary? Who knows! Are there those who would like to make them permanent? Of course!

Now I really don't want to be spied on or tracked any more than I currently am. I can't think of anyone who does. But the problem is not so much the increased security needed to prevent terrorist attacks, it's the fact that the UK chose to bid for the damned Olympics in the first place.

Conspiracy theorists may like to theorise that the Olympic bid was made fully in the knowledge that civil liberties would need to be curtailed. Personally I don't think that this government is competent enough to arrange a conspiracy of that nature.

2012 is a little way off. There will be a General Election before that. Use your vote wisely.

>use of technology to support security requirements and individual rights to privacy<

The sound of insane laughter, the lunatics have finally taken over, one hand clapping... You are not an individual, you are a NI number, given you at 16, taken away at death.

Eat the rich, it's the only way to be sure.

Is it? Is it really?

Who are these barbarian hordes poised to destroy civilisation as we know it? They don't exist. I guess 'handful of dangerous, incompetent basket cases more a threat to themselves than to others, business as usual' isn't attention grabbing, vote-winning, budget-expanding, paper-selling stuff though.

Increased surveillance of this type wouldn't help even if we were up to our ears in al quaeda sleeper cells. Colossal data mining exercises to try and find one guy muttering about high test peroxide in a billion call logs are a massive longshot, at best. At worst, it is an enormous diversion of manpower and resources from the sort of actual intelligence work that has a chance of uncovering plots before they can bear fruit. All I can see you'd gain from a warehouse full of audio recordings is a forensic trail so you can find out who dunnit after the fact, much like the customary sequence of CCTV recordings leading up to a murder or bombing or whatever, at which point it is a bit late, given the recent trend in *suicide* bombing.

Audit and oppression will not keep me safe. Heightened security that wasn't transparently stupid is something I might support... this ain't it.