Snoopers' Charter amendments withdrawn – FOR NOW ... The House of Lords rejected controversial last-minute amendments to the Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill in a debate on Monday. The amendments – which critics slammed as akin to those previously proposed, and which were rejected in the Communications Data Bill – were stapled onto the bill in a last minute move last Thursday …
UK voters should ask who is voting for this crap and just send them packing at election time. We've already suffered enough from post 9/11 paranoia and excessively bureaucratic security theater. It only produces unwinnable wars, long queues at airports, economic ruin and a general feeling of depression. Unless of course you are a member of the 1 % and fly yourself to an airport. Its value for countering home-grown and foreign extremism is dubious at best.
Turning the world's ISPs into local Stasi bureaux is not going to defeat terrorism. It will have a chilling effect on civil liberties and cripple the economy even further. Kill this moldy thinking before it spreads further. I predict more splinter parties coming into power, even in the UK.
Yet they seem to have more idea about what a western democracy is than the political parties.
Now it's up to the electorate but unfortunately the only party that can probably be trusted on this issue is a minority party (although the Greens won't be as much as a minority as the yellows will be after the elections, which serves 'em right).
Nice one the Lords.
I do agree that there is merit in a second house that is not elected, as it's members will vote on issues without being swayed by the fear of not being re-elected.
However, currently members of the Lords are by and large chosen by the current government, which doesn't exactly make them non-partisan.
We need a way of selecting candidates who are interested in government but not politics. The first thing to do would be to stop anyone who wants to be there, perhaps by banning anyone who has ever stood for the House of Commons?
Unfortunately, in this case, it was unelected peers in the House of Lords, rolling the dice. To be fair, it would have had to go back through the Commons for a debate/vote, but nevertheless, it wasn't elected MPs that bunged this in.
That all said, I have no trust in our elected douchebags to act in the interests of the majority.
Edit: Beaten to it!
"Unfortunately, in this case, it was unelected peers in the House of Lords, rolling the dice."
In many cases the members of the Lords are merely an extension of the political party machines - possibly put there for that very purpose. Occasionally someone is made a Lord but surprisingly finds their own conscience at last. It doesn't seem to happen too often though.
In general the House of Lords does remain sufficiently maverick to act as a brake on some of the excesses of any government. An elected second chamber would tend to be totally under the control of the party business managers.
" I predict more splinter parties coming into power, even in the UK."
Without voting reform like STV PR then small parties are unlikely to be able to concentrate their voters to gain any seats. It suits the big two parties to get most of their MPs from geographically concentrated party voters in areas that don't overlap too much. Then it's largely a case of "follow the party whip or we'll replace you next time with a PPE party hack".
The House of Lords is increasingly becoming controlled by patronage appointees from whoever happens to be leading the Commons at the time. Yes, sometimes they develop some independence once they get in the Lords, but the lickspittle risk is getting pretty high in the meantime.
"Then it's largely a case of "follow the party whip or we'll replace you next time with a PPE party hack".
That's why the Lords still manages to work reasonably well even with party-created lords. Once in, they can't be de-selected so that allows them to grow a conscience. An elected upper house will be a bad thing IMO
Interesting report (link here) about warning from ex-GCHQ boss that with wider use of end-to-end encryption, the spooks will have to start working up close and personal - i.e. physically planting bugs and having surveilance teams watching suspects. You know, like it used to be. And an effective end to universal, warrantless bugging, as it won't work any more.
Maybe it will soon sink in to our 'masters' that monitoring everything is a waste of time and money (as has been shown so often, when trrrrrsts attack, and are found to have been on the spooks radar anyway, but they just didn't do anything about them)
"Maybe it will soon sink in to our 'masters' that monitoring everything is a waste of time and money..."
I think you're naive to hope for that. Once you have tools available, presented (by the interested parties) as far more capable and thorough at doing an old job (never mind their actual effectiveness), they will NEVER go back to the old ways. Unless the current tools are no longer available (WW3 and all that).
I don't blame the House of Lords for this attempt. Representatives of the four main parties (Conservative, Labour, LibDems and the Metropolitan Police) tried to circumvent proper scrutiny in the Commons and slip this crap in assuming the Lords would just acccept it (and the blame of history).
Their Lordships, smelling a rat, declined to agree. Good for them.
I'm sure it'll be back, though.
I remember the Lords used to stop the reactionary government of the day doing some crazy knee jerk reaction to some temporary threat by screwing with the people's civil liberties, even when the public are temporarily in favour of it (e.g. Sarah's law).
Of course Blair was head of the Met and was involved in all kinds of controversies (no IPCC access to the de Menezes shooting, lobbied for holding people for 90 days without charge etc.)
Do not worry, it will not last. The reform of the House of Lords has ensured that.
In the absense of a constitution, absolute rights and in a country where the key governing principle is "the Parliament is Sovereign and shall not be bound" I do not quite see what would be the function of the upper chamber after that. Besides taking money from questions from vested interests. Dunno. Maybe I am missing something.
I see 2 ways to have a second chamber. 1. Elected senate. 2. Appointed chamber of small number of real people, independent of party whip, and experts in their field (lawyers, scientists, medical folks, retired military, couple of arty / sporty types), to properly scrutinise what the elected rabble are doing, and having the power to send legislation back to them when they are behaving like twats. Current system of clapped out ministers, old local council leaders, and of course, party donors is the worst of both worlds. If done properly, I actually quite like option 2.
On a related note, CCTV cameras are out of control now in the UK. There is some chap whose job it is to "monitor" CCTV, and he wrote in one of the papers a few days ago, saying people from other European countries are shocked at the number of cameras in the UK.
In my own sleepy village a big pole recently appeared outside the Coop with 3 or 4 large cams. All the pubs have cams, some of the roads leading to the village have cams, the shops have cams of course. And there are random cams in the street apparently for no reason - they are not obvious, just small round domes on walls about 8 feet up. I walked up a quiet alley way to avoid the cams, only to see a cam pointing straight at me from the far end. No car park, nook, crannie, pathway, garden. hedgerow is free of them, like an infestation of insects. I blame 18 years of socialist government. Torch all cams I say.
Blue and Red, Green and Purple.
Still sounds like more surveillance overkill. But at least you don't need someone highly trained to monitor the video feeds. It might even occasionally stop or hinder petty crime. I would think twice about shaking a locked door if I knew there was CCTV in the area.
Reading everyone's Facebook and email on the other hand....
"I would think twice about shaking a locked door if I knew there was CCTV in the area."
It is pitch black even in towns these days for several hours a night. A friend's house has been subject to intermittent vandalism for several years. The results are often quite expensive to repair. On the advice of the police they installed CCTV. The latest incident was caught on the DVR. It was in the middle of the night. The infra-red image shows the likely culprit as well as the bricks being thrown that caused extensive damage. However nothing about the person is identifiable except it was probably a man of indeterminate age.
Nobody monitors the live feeds. Everything is held in loops. Only if there is a shooting do they spend the incredible amount of money it takes to trace back the culprit to a well-lit zone. Looks like they need to invest in street lights as well as the camera. :) Back to the topic, Internet snooping takes a huge percentage of the GDP. As well, every little town and country wants to go back to balkanization and local toll roads. Strike off another hunk.
When your closest police response is 30 minutes away the camera is a good deterrent for that Coop and Pub not getting knocked off.
Why I sleep at night is that these devices are not all hooked up, the Coop and the Pubs are independent, the police usually cannot get a lot of detail and still rely on knowing the local villains or getting help from the populous.
Its when we have a concentration of power is when we are in the crapper, if they start saying about ID cards or centralising the CCTV I'll be ordering my V mask.
"Why I sleep at night is that these devices are not all hooked up, the Coop and the Pubs are independent"
Yet. In time, more and more CCTV systems that can be bought will be Internet of Idiotic Things devices, that send their feed to some central hub before relaying it back to the local network. Then it'll soon be that we're being 'protected' by the police, GCHQ, etc - including small government or local council departments who really don't need it - having unfettered access to it as and when they please.
"local council departments who really don't need it - having unfettered access to it as and when they please."
...like the multi-million pound CCTV system in a certain nearby town centre "to protect the public" whose biggest selling point was the loud speakers attached to the cameras so they could shout at people who drop litter. The Council blokie and the TV news reporter thought it was all great fun and would help to "keep people safe" and the are clan and tidy. Me? I get worried over stuff like this. Freedom comes with responsibly and a price. We are losing our freedoms, having responsibility taken away and it's coming at a much, much higher price.
When your closest police response is 30 minutes away the camera is a good deterrent for that Coop and Pub not getting knocked off.
Ever heard of hoodies? Modern crims routinely cover their faces, making CCTV completely useless.
And I didn't say the cam was operated by the Coop, I just said it was outside the Coop. Cams aren't labelled, they are completely anonymous and keep you guessing - a important element of oppression.
"Teenage pregnancy! We're getting there!"
Apparently the figures for England have improved significantly in recent years. Still worse than many of our neighbours in Europe - but probably a lot better than parts of the USA.
England made an incomprehensible decision about 15 years ago when it took "best practice" from the "just say no" USA with its poor figures - rather than our apparently more permissive neighbours who had a good track record.
Obesity is becoming a worldwide problem. The USA is probably still in the lead but China is starting to catch up. Britain is a sad case though judging by the sights on my daily walk..
Oh not to mention the allotments by the church - an allotment for Pete's sake - has a large cam on a big pole, covering you should have the cheek to walk by the river.
I read 1984 at the age of 14 or so. Winston Smith is afraid to walk in the country and talk to his girlfriend because the hedgerows contain microphones (he knows this being a Party member IIRC). At the time I thought this was far fetched - where would the mics get power, how could they have enough people listening and so on...
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