UK is safer from al-Qaeda 'bastards', says security minister

Police State UK

Yugoslav People's militiamen (police) were more easygoing than what I can read about British police lately. From shooting Brasilian electricians to arresting photographers... you're nearly there, Cod.

RE: I call bullshit...

What are you talking about?

If you're arrested under certain anti-terror laws then you don't even get the right to a trial until *they* decide. You don't get to speak to your family either. Sound like the Stasi yet?

What about asylum seekers who have their privacy invaded by pre-dawn raids before being carted off to some detention area. Sound like the Stasi yet?

As for no-one gets locked away for thought-crimes. Well, we do have a one-sided extradition arrangement with the US. If *they* can think of some trumped up charges, you'll be over there and in jail before your feet touch the ground. (Look no further than certain Gitmo inmates or hackers for evidence of this!) Sound like the Stasi yet?

I don't think I need to do much more than mention police brutality...

Back at you

"No one in Britain gets locked away for thought crimes"

Oh really?

Let's hope nobody ever frames Tom 15 for kiddy-fiddling.

I see your point...

... and don't entirely agree. You see although we don't haul many people out of their beds in the middle of the night, we have constructed a web of surveilance networks, lawsand police extrapolations thereof that have resulted in perfectly ordinary people having their civil rights impinged upon many times a day for no conceivable benefit.

Got a camera? Be careful where you point it or you'll be jumped by the police. Want to make a speech in public? Be careful where you make it, it might be illegal. Got plans to fly? Then get a password with unneccesary biometrics and walk through this useless new scanner. Driving? I don't know how many automatic numberplate recognition cameras I drive through each week but it its 100 that's 100 too many. Speed cameras - on sections of road it is generally impossible to break the speed limit on under normal conditions (I'm looking at YOU, M25 and YOU, M6). Walking in town? You're being video'd. And, coming soon, the national ID card. All your personal details folded in to one small piece of easily lost plastic. Also coming soon - all your internet traffic logged 'just in case'. DNA database full of people never charged with a crime. Do I have to go on or can I leave the country now?

As individuals we are more closely monitored than ever before, all ostensibly because a tiny minority of a tiny minority might manage to cause some trouble. I'm not belittling the trouble that has been caused in the past by the IRA or other more recent groups of people, but the extreme lengths our government is going to are excessive (depressingly so, when you list them like i have just done).

In information terms we are all living in glass houses, with no curtains, bathing and showering in public and proclaiming our every small private piece of information in ten-foot high flashing neon. Nothing to hide, nothing to fear? Rubbish. Nothing to hide, no reason for every last detail of my life to be on show to the government. You need to wake up and smell your own bullshit.

Oh, really?

So we don't have detention without trial? Yes we do. (See Terrorism acts 2000, 2006)

So we are all innocent until *proven* guilty? No we are not. (Re: retention of DNA profiles of innocent people)

So we can go about our legal and private business without it being subject to Government and/or police scrutiny? No we cannot. (DNA Database, NIR, CCTV, ANPR, etc)

So we don't torture our citizens? Actually we don't, we just turn a blind eye while other countries do it for us.

No, we probably aren't a fully fledged "Police State", but on a scale of 1 to 100, were 1 is a liberal democracy and 100 is a full Police State, I'd place us at about 75 to 80.

And its getting higher every day.

We don't need secret police

The police have been given carte blanche to openly operate outside the law. They can and do break up or impede legal protests. They stop people taking photographs in public. They take DNA samples and store them indefinitely, despite it being illegal to do so. What other group of people can flout a law on the grounds that they are waiting for it to be "clarified" when it is already black and white? And why would they drag people out of their homes when they can keep them under indefinite house arrest, without trial or even an indication of what the alleged crimes might be?

Open your eyes...

You've obviously never been arrested and detained under the terrorism act or subject to a control order. I suggest you do a little bit of simple research before commenting further.

People are treated pretty much EXACTLY as you have described on a regular basis, of course it's OK because currently *most* of the people we treat in this way are either Muslim 'terrorists' or illegal immigrants and their young children...

I have a few articles here which only just begin to scratch the surface of Police State Britain...

http://www.librangelical.co.uk

Pay attention at the back.

"No one in Britain gets locked away for thought crimes, only for things they actually do"

Erm, young lady arrested for writing Jihad poetry not so long ago, young chap arrested for downloading Jihadi like materials from the 'net despite him being an academic studying them for a thesis, etc, etc.

There are also offences of possessing materials likely to aid terrorism, possessing materials which 'glorify' extremism, and so on.

If those aren't thought crimes, I don't know what is. Besides, being able to arrest anyone, anywhere, for 'suspicion' without ANY evidence whatsoever makes it perfectly possible to arrest people for what amounts to thought crimes.

Then there's FTAC, speak up vociferously enough against a politician, exercise your democratic right to write them hate mail, and soon enough the Fixated Threat Assessment Centre will send some goons around to section you.

Do keep up.

Re : I call bullshit

That's a record number of down votes I think and deservedly so.

Your rose-tinted view may be exactly how you see it but that's not the reality of how others experience things.

Dictatorships, tyrannies and police states work best with the willing cooperation of the people they oppress, who foolishly cheer it on and are blissfully or stupidly oblivious to what it truly is. It may only be Police State Lite so far and not as bad as the worst examples. Give it time.

Yep that post was bullshit

Nobody locked away for thought crimes?

Really? Which rock have you been hiding under for the last decade?

Take a look at the "counter terrorism" legislation which allows people to be convicted for posession of material likely to be of use for a terrorist act. We have gone straight past thought crimes and you can now be convicted of a crime you have not even thought of yet because some jack-booted twat from the Police decides that your holiday or photography course photos are of "likely targets" and you are therefore a terrorist.

Muppet.

Oh, and as for "some very nasty bastards" that'll be Cressida Dick and her Met Police Death Squads will it? When you absolutely, definitely need to execute every last plumber in the city accept no substitute.

No thought crime, really are you quite sure.

Disclaimer: INAL

Some Examples:

Football disorder act 2000

Restriction on travel for people on the basis of wearing the wrong footy shirt and as such being likely to commit an offence.

http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2000/ukpga_20000025_en_1

Confiscation of asserts without proof said asserts were dishonestly obtained.

http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2002/ukpga_20020029_en_1

permits removal of British Citizenship, even for people who have been born in the UK, "for the public good", by Order of the Home Secretary

http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2006/ukpga_20060013_en_1

Computer Misuse Act 1990 Section 1 unauthorized access.

In summary, despite never attempting access, the intent is suffficent to convict you.

So having a list of ip addresses and a perl script to generate passwords is sufficent to satisfy the offence.

Unauthorised access to computer material

(1) A person is guilty of an offence if—

(a) he causes a computer to perform any function with intent to secure access to any program or data held in any computer;

(b) the access he intends to secure is unauthorised; and

(c) he knows at the time when he causes the computer to perform the function that that is the case.

(2) The intent a person has to have to commit an offence under this section need not be directed at—

(a) any particular program or data;

(b) a program or data of any particular kind; or

(c) a program or data held in any particular computer.

(3) A person guilty of an offence under this section shall be liable on summary conviction to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months or to a fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale or to both.

Do you get it yet ?

In this country, which I was always so proud to be born in, you can be locked up for offenses beyond your capacity to commit, you freedom of movement restricted and your citizenship revoked.

You can be pinned down on a packed tube train, shot in the head for the crime of being a bit foreign looking (the officer in charge cressdia dick, got promoted :( )

We are not heading to a police state, we live in one, only the general incompetence of the gov'muppets protecting us.

Pull your head out of your backside and take a look around, I don't know how old you are, but the idea of ID cards, being required to register prior to peaceful assembly, DPI on comms traffic, detention without trial, removal of double jeopardy(basically one bite at the cherry, either your guilty or not and thats the end, not keep retrying utill you get the *right verdict*) and removal of citizenship are things that growing up here were unimaginable to me.

My parents moved here in the 70's to escape all that shit, now it's right here and it stinks.

Don't take my word for it, read the legislation in all its Orwellian finery

http://p10.hostingprod.com/@spyblog.org.uk/blog/UK_Legislation_Links.htm

In summary, educate yourself or shut the fuck up.

Troll, because either you really are that stupid or a magnificent troll, for your sake I hope you`re a troll.

Bullshit!

"...only for things they actually do."

Yeah! Like taking terr'ist photographs! Or, regular photographs. Oh! And for being too tall! The bastards!

And don't get me started about those damn protesters! Who the hell do they think they are? Who could possibly object to the Ministry of Love's glorious program? Terr'ist sympathizers, that's who! I hope they come and arrest the lot of you!

There is definitely the implication there...

...that he thinks we should not worry about this country becoming a police state whilst we're only 80% of the way there. We should wait until we're 100% there, THEN complain. Then we can be quietly 'disappeared' in the middle of the night.

I second that

1984 was a warning. We may not live in a police state yet (perhaps), but if we see it coming and ignore it, we will.

Really?

"Giving up our civil liberties is a small price to pay for such protection."

"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." Benjamin Franklin