International Law

Serious Crime Act 2007 used to harass Indymedia server colocation administrator

Posted on February 10, 2009
Our fears about the wretched Serious Crime Act 2007, and its likely use to chill political dissent and free speech appear to have been borne out. See our previous article: Serious Crime Act 2007 - proof of how useless the Opposition is to Labour's repressive legal fantasies The Register reports the chilling news that: Police bail sysadmin in animal rights extremism probe - Colo contract prompts Serious Crime Act arrest By Chris Williams Posted in Law, 10th February 2009 15:01 GMT A Sheffield man has been released on police bail after being questioned in connection with comments posted to the activist news website Indymedia, which included the personal details of a prominent High Court judge...

Mass photography protest - 11 am Monday 16th February 2009, Metropolitan Police HQ, New Scotland Yard

Posted on February 09, 2009
It will be interesting to see if the new Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson reacts to this protest against the stupid and repressive Labour Government's terrorism laws, and the inept way in which some of his officers interpret them: Monday, 9th February 2009 Photographers snap into action over new law Comedian Mark Thomas is to join with NUJ members in an event to highlight the threat of a new UK law that could be used against press photographers taking pictures of the police...

Sunday Telegraph - British Jobs For British Spies ? MI5 overwhelmed, or lobbying for even more resources ?

Posted on February 08, 2009
The Sunday Telegraph has two stories about Foreign Spies in the United Kingdom, which, if true, raises serious Questions about the current performance of MI5 the Security Service., claiming that the traditional espionage threat against the UK is not being dealt with because of the resources diverted to anti-terrorism investigations...

Surveillance: Citizens and the State - HoL Constitution Committee report

Posted on February 07, 2009
House of Lords Constitution Committee 2008-2009 session - Second Report: Surveillance: Citizens and the State This report is important, bur we fear that the usual Labour Government combination of technological fantasist ignorance, together with their "nanny police state knows best" political arrogance and media spin, will try to cherry pick it, and will ignore its most important recommendations...

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Exactly what correspondence or communications between MPs and their Constituents is protected by Parliamentary Privilege ?

Posted on February 05, 2009
The House of Commons, collectively, and, the Speaker of the Commons in particular, is failing to make clear to the public, exactly what correspondence and communications , including electronic communications, between a Member of Parliament and his or her Constituents, or other MPs or whistleblowers, is protected under Parliamentary Privilege...

Lords Constitution Committee report "Surveillance: Citizens and the State" to be published on Friday 6th February 2009

Posted on February 05, 2009
Lord Norton, one of The Lords of the Blog, writes: Surveillance: citizens and the state [...] The Lords Constitution Committee has spent over a year undertaking an inquiry into the impact of government surveillance and data collection and the effect it has on the privacy of individuals and their relationship with the state...

Metropolitan Police seeking MPs Parliamentary privileged emails without a warrant

Posted on February 03, 2009
The Metropolitan Police Service appears to be trying to get hold of email correspondence between Members of Parliament, without first getting a warrant.

London Calling Photographers debate - Know your rights: Facing the police crackdown on public photography

Posted on February 03, 2009
The current illegal bureaucratic "War on Photographers" is being debated tomorrow by the London Calling Photographers group: See their wiki page for this meeting tomorrow Wednesday 4th February 2009: London Calling Photographers' Meeting 4th february 2009 Know your rights: Facing the police crackdown on public photography London Calling Photographers are proud to announce the first debate...

Ralph Bendrath: Privacy in Germany 2008: A new fundamental right, a privacy mass movement, and the usual surveillance suspects

Posted on January 29, 2009
Ralph Bendrath has an excellent summary of the struggle for privacy and data security rights in Germany during 2008: Privacy in Germany 2008: A new fundamental right, a privacy mass movement, and the usual surveillance suspects Those of us in the UK who oppose this inept Labour Government's mania for repressive privacy and security destroying policies, should note that other countries like Germany have similar problems, and that there is hope that we can defeat them...

Do not donate money via the Disasters Emergency Committee DEC website

Posted on January 26, 2009
Those of you contemplating giving money to charity via the much hyped Disasters Emergency Committee DEC, might wish to reconsider. Remember that they pressed criminal charges against Daniel Cuthbert, an IT security consultant, under the Computer Misuse Act 1990, after he had donated £30 on his credit card (obviously leaving his own name and address etc) , but then had become worried that perhaps the inept website was vulnerable to phishng attacks etc...

Coroners and Justice Bill - Information Sharing Orders and other controversies

Posted on January 26, 2009
There is still time to make use of WriteToThem.com, or other means of lobbying your Member of Parliament to get them to firstly actually debate, and then, hopefully reject, the sneaky Information Orders powers in the Coroners and Justice Bill, which gets its second reading today n the Commons, and will, presumably also get debate limited via a programming / guillotine motion...

How sneakily are Blue Sky Digital tracking NGO political campaign emails ?

Posted on January 26, 2009
The UK Government are not the only people who want to track your emails, and to try to determine who your other emails contacts are. Email tracking is one of the snooping technologies which we try to keep an eye on, whether it is at the Communications Traffic Data logfile level, or through the use of tricks like web bug images in HTML emails, or URLS hidden in word documents or ...

How sneakily are Blue State Digital tracking NGO political campaign emails ?

Posted on January 26, 2009
The UK Government are not the only people who want to track your emails, and to try to determine who your other emails contacts are. Email tracking is one of the snooping technologies which we try to keep an eye on, whether it is at the Communications Traffic Data logfile level, or through the use of tricks like web bug images in HTML emails, or URLS hidden in word documents or ...

Counter Terrorism Act 2008 - "attempting to elicit information" and secret DNA sampling and data sharing etc. come into force on February 16th 2009

Posted on January 22, 2009
The awful and unnecessary Counter-Terrorism Act 2008 is creeping into force, having been partially commenced by the rubber stamping of this Order: 2009 No.58 (C.6) - Prevention And Suppression Of Terrorism - The Counter-Terrorism Act 2008 (Commencement No...

Conservative MP Daniel Kawczynski - parliamentary office searched and constituency correspondence handed over to the Police, without a warrant

Posted on January 21, 2009
The promises made by the Speaker of the House of Commons and the Home Secretary, about new procedures and protocols to supposedly protect the correspondence of between Members of Parliament and their constituents, following the still ongoing Damian Green scandal, appear to be utterly worthless: [full Hansard link tomorrow] between 7...

A plague on The Sun ?

Posted on January 20, 2009
Yesterday we noticed a typical "Climate of Fear" story published "exclusively" in the tabloid newspaper The Sun, but parroted by other newspapers like the Daily Mail (without attribution) and the Daily Telegraph, and by other media around the world, without any of them bothering to do any actual investigative journalism of their own: Deadliest weapon so far...

Lobby your MP to vote against the Freedom of Information (Parliament) Order 2009 this Thursday

Posted on January 19, 2009
Please lobby your Members of Parliament to prevent them from exempting the details of their expenses from Freedom of Information Act requests, Specifically ask them to vote against the draft Freedom of Information (Parliament) Order 2009 (.pdf), this Thursday...

Rest in Peace: Patrick McGoohan and Sir John Mortimer QC

Posted on January 17, 2009
This week saw the deaths of two men who have had a lot of influence in the seemingly never ending fight for our human rights and freedoms, namely the tv and film actor and director Patrick McGoohan and the lawyer and author Sir John Mortimer QC. Patrick McGoohan, despite a successful Hollywood career as an actor and director, is most famous in the UK, for the stylish tv series, The Prisoner , in which he starred, and also wrote and directed many of its 17 episodes back in 1968...

ICO Guidance on FOIA requests name and address for correspondence - another attack on Anonymity

Posted on January 13, 2009
The Information Commissioner's Office has published some new Guidelines for Organisations, regarding the use of Anonymous or Pseudonymous Names by people who submit Freedom of Information Act requests: Guidance on Valid request - name and address for correspondence (...

Communications Data snooping - MI5 Jonathan Evans, BBC, DPP Kier Starmer

Posted on January 10, 2009
This Tuesday 6th January 2009, there were some vague comments from Johnathan Evans, the Director General of MI5 the Security Service, regarding Communications Traffic Data snooping - embarrassingly, the mainstream media who were invited to the MI5 press briefing did not bother to ask any searching or detailed questions: "Opening up, but not lifting the lid" (The Guardian, 7 January 2009) "'We've got the terror gangs in check', says casually-dressed MI5 head in first-ever interview" (Daily Mail, 7 January 2009) "Terror trials 'reduce threat to UK'" (Daily Mirror, 7 January 2009) "We're foiling terrorists - but threat remains" (The Sun, 7 January 2009) "MI5 chief warns of threat from global recession" (Daily Telegraph, 7 January 2009) "MI5's spymaster Jonathan Evans comes out of the shadows" (The Times, 7 January 2009) N...

Remote Searching of Computer Hard Disks - remember that RIPA etc. do not protect business premises from arbitrary intrusive surveillance, property inteference etc.

Posted on January 05, 2009
As some people have emailed pointing to this story in the Sunday Times, Police set to step up hacking of home PCs we feel duty bound to comment on what seems to be another of bit of anonymous Whitehall briefing and spin via the well connected journalist David Leppard...

Google.co.uk - politically insensitive and inaccurate Metropolitan Police Service "Extremist" Sponsored Links and AdWords campaign

Posted on January 04, 2009
The dangers of Deep Packet Inspection coupled with sponsored advertising keywords, e.g. the notorious Phorm, or just the dangers of sponsored search engine keywords coupled with the exisiting and future Communications Traffic Data retention and snooping databases, is illustrated by the inept Metropolitan Police Service Google AdWord / sponsored link campaign, currently afflicting www...

Tom Watson and the US Air Force Blog Response Flowchart

Posted on January 02, 2009
We have a grudging respect for Tom Watson the Labour MP for West Bromwich East, now a junior Government Minister, a Parliamentary Secretary at the Cabinet Office, as he was one of the earliest Members of Parliament to dare to publish his own blog. "As the minister in the UK government responsible for digital engagement", he appears to be impressed by a US Air Force Blog Response flowchart: and seems to think that British Civil Servants could benefit from it...

Sir Ken Macdonald, former Director of Public Prosecutions: "This database would be an unimaginable hell-house of personal private information"

Posted on December 31, 2008
The Guardian reports: Private firm may track all email and calls, quoting Sir Ken Macdonald, the recently retired Director of Public Prosecutions: Private firm may track all email and calls 'Hellhouse' of personal data will be created, warns former DPP Alan Travis and Richard Norton-Taylor The Guardian, Wednesday 31 December 2008 The private sector will be asked to manage and run a communications database that will keep track of everyone's calls, emails, texts and internet use under a key option contained in a consultation paper to be published next month by Jacqui Smith, the home secretary...

Press Association: Police 'secretly taped Damian Green arrest'

Posted on December 24, 2008
The Press Association, via The Guardian reports:

For how much longer will the UK media and bloggers be able to freely investigate stories like the Bob Quick anti-terrorist policeman / family wedding cars business story ?

Posted on December 21, 2008
The Mail on Sunday has been delving a little into the business dealings of the controversial Assistant Commissioner Bob Quick, now in charge of the Metropolitan Police Service Counter Terrorism Command, formerly the Chief Constable of Surrey. Given the new "thought crime" provisions brought in by the Labour government, through the recent Counter-Terrorism Act 2008, will such investigative journalism, or any further analysis by bloggers etc...

Deja vu yet again - where are the Annual (calendar year) Reports of the RIPA Commissioners ?

Posted on December 18, 2008
It is late December, the House of Commons is about to take an extended break until January 12th, for no good reason, except to further reduce the amount of detailed scrutiny of the Government which they are supposed to do As in previous years, we have been awaiting the publication of the Annual Reports of the supposedly Independent Commissioners, all former High Court Judges, who are meant to oversee and audit the operation of the the Government's snooping and interception powers under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000...

Jacqui Smiths speech to Intellect - do we have - safeguards, openness, proportionality and common sense - or a surveillance society ?

Posted on December 16, 2008
What is your definition of a "surveillance society" ? It is probably not the same as Home Secretary Jacqui Smith's still secret definition. Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, like her Labour party fellow travellers, seems to be spewing Orwellian doublethink and newspeak, where normal sounding English words, have their meanings utterly reversed, without displaying any sense of shame, or pang of conscience, at their perversion...

UK Big Brother Awards - boos for NuLabour, hurrahs for Sarah Ludford, Phil Booth, Helen Wallace, Gareth Crossman, Becky Hogge and David Davis

Posted on December 11, 2008
After a 4 year hiatus, the ever bust Simon Davies, of Privacy International, has re-instituted the UK Big Brother Awards, to recognise some of the people who have been trying to keep the monsters of state and corporate mass surveillance , snooping and control at bay...

BBC Politics Show - Police payments to mobile phone companies for Communications Data

Posted on December 10, 2008
The BBC's Politics Show broadcast last Sunday, has collated some Freedom of Information Act disclosures on the financial payments made by Police Forces to mobile phone companies, to reimburse them for the cost of providing Mobile Phone Communications Traffic Data...

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