Big Brother is coming

[sandyc]

This is being reported on Yahoo's UK site...
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Ministers are preparing a major expansion of the Government's powers to monitor the email exchanges and website visits of every person in the UK, it has been reported.
Under legislation expected in next month's Queen's Speech, internet companies will be instructed to install hardware enabling GCHQ - the Government's electronic "listening" agency - to examine "on demand" any phone call made, text message and email sent, and website accessed in "real time", The Sunday Times reported.
A previous attempt to introduce a similar law was abandoned by the former Labour government in 2006 in the face of fierce opposition.
However ministers believe it is essential that the police and security services have access to such communications data in order to tackle terrorism and protect the public.
Although GCHQ would not be able to access the content of such communications without a warrant, the legislation would enable it to trace people individuals or groups are in contact with, and how often and for how long they are in communication.
The Home Office confirmed that ministers were intending to legislate "as soon as parliamentary time allows".
"Communications data includes time, duration and dialling numbers of a phone call, or an email address. It does not include the content of any phone call or email and it is not the intention of Government to make changes to the existing legal basis for the interception of communications," s spokesman said.
Nick Pickles, director of the Big Brother Watch campaign group, said: "This is an unprecedented step that will see Britain adopt the same kind of surveillance seen in China and Iran. This is an absolute attack on privacy online and it is far from clear this will actually improve public safety, while adding significant costs to internet businesses."
Shami Chakrabarti, director of the civil rights group Liberty, said Conservatives and Liberal Democrats had resisted the plan in opposition. "It is a pretty drastic step in a democracy. It was resisted under the last government. The coalition bound itself together in the language of civil liberties. Do they still mean it?" she said.
Conservative backbencher Margot James said ministers would come under pressure to water down the proposals as the legislation passed through Parliament.

[1938 Observer]

Re: Big Brother is coming

Hi Sandy------------- or maybe as per George Orwell I should call you "Unperson" :tongue:

From latest [and past] happenings all that seems to be required is to use the skills acquiired/used by "that newspaper corporation" :wink:

************************************

The New???? Scenario.

Nineteen Eighty-Four is a classic dystopian novel by English author George Orwell. Published in 1949, it is set in the eponymous year and focuses on a repressive, totalitarian regime. The story follows the life of one seemingly insignificant man, Winston Smith, a civil servant assigned the task of falsifying records and political literature, thus effectively perpetuating propaganda, who grows disillusioned with his meagre existence and so begins a rebellion against the system. The novel has become famous for its portrayal of surveillance and society's increasing encroachment on the rights of the individual. Since its publication the terms Big Brother and Orwellian have entered the popular vernacular. Orwell, who had "encapsulated the thesis at the heart of his novel" in 1944, wrote most of Nineteen Eighty-Four on the island of Jura, Scotland, during 19471948 while critically ill with tuberculosis. He sent the final typescript to his friends Secker and Warburg on 4 December 1948 and the book was published on 8 June 1949. Nineteen Eighty-Four has been translated into more than 50 languages. The novel's title, its terms, its language (Newspeak), and its author's surname are bywords for personal privacy lost to national state security. The adjective "Orwellian" denotes many things. It can refer to totalitarian action or organization, as well as governmental attempts to control or misuse information for the purposes of controlling, pacifying or even subjugating the population. "Orwellian" can also refer generally to twisted language which says the opposite of what it truly means, or specifically governmental propagandizing by the misnaming of things; hence the "Ministry of Peace" in the novel actually deals with war and the "Ministry of Love" actually tortures people. Since the novel's publication "Orwellian" has in fact become somewhat of a catch-all for any kind of governmental overreach or dishonesty and therefore has multiple meanings and applications. The phrase Big Brother is Watching You specifically connotes pervasive, invasive surveillance. Although the novel has been banned or challenged in some countries, it is, along with Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, Kallocain by Karin Boye and Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, among the most famous literary representations of dystopia. In 2005, Time magazine listed it among the hundred best English-language novels published since 1923. The book has often been misinterpreted as an attack on socialism, and Orwell himself had occasion to refute such claims, both privately and in public. In a letter to Francis A. Henson of the United Automobile Workers, dated 16 June 1949 (seven months before he died), excerpts from which were reproduced in Life (25 July 1949) and the New York Times Book Review (31 July 1949), Orwell stated the following: "My recent novel [1984] is NOT intended as an attack on Socialism or on the British Labour Party (of which I am a supporter) but as a show-up of the perversions ... which have already been partly realized in Communism and Fascism. ...The scene of the book is laid in Britain in order to emphasize that the English-speaking races are not innately better than anyone else and that totalitarianism, if not fought against, could triumph anywhere." In his 1946 essay, "Why I Write", Orwell described himself as a Democratic Socialist. Nineteen Eighty-Four is set in Oceania, one of three intercontinental totalitarian super-states. The story occurs in London, the "chief city of Airstrip One", itself a province of Oceania that "had once been called England or Britain". Posters of the ruling Party's leader, "Big Brother", bearing the caption BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, dominate the city landscapes, while two-way television (the telescreen) dominates the private and public spaces of the populace. Oceania's people are in three classes — the Inner Party, the Outer Party, and the Proles


The Party government controls the people via the Ministry of Truth (Minitrue), the workplace of protagonist Winston Smith, an Outer Party member. As in the Nazi and Stalinist regimes, propaganda is pervasive; Smith's job is rewriting historical documents to match the contemporaneous party line, the orthodoxy of which changes daily. It therefore includes destroying evidence, amending newspaper articles, deleting the existence of people identified as "unpersons".

[1938 Observer]

Re: Big Brother is coming

Nothing is really new; covert and overt surveillance has been going on for years.


Uploaded by puzzled40 on Aug 29, 2010



The Home Office has quietly adopted a new plan to allow police across Britain routinely to hack into peoples personal computers without a warrant.

The move, which follows a decision by the European Unions council of ministers in Brussels, has angered civil liberties groups and opposition MPs. They described it as a sinister extension of the surveillance state which drives a coach and horses through privacy laws.

The hacking is known as remote searching. It allows police or MI5 officers who may be hundreds of miles away to examine covertly the hard drive of someones PC at his home, office or hotel room.

Material gathered in this way includes the content of all e-mails, web-browsing habits and instant messaging.

Under the Brussels edict, police across the EU have been given the green light to expand the implementation of a rarely used power involving warrantless intrusive surveillance of private property. The strategy will allow French, German and other EU forces to ask British officers to hack into someones UK computer and pass over any material gleaned.

However, opposition MPs and civil liberties groups say that the broadening of such intrusive surveillance powers should be regulated by a new act of parliament and court warrants.

They point out that in contrast to the legal safeguards for searching a suspects home, police undertaking a remote search do not need to apply to a magistrates court for a warrant.

Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, the human rights group, said she would challenge the legal basis of the move. These are very intrusive powers as intrusive as someone busting down your door and coming into your home, she said.

The public will want this to be controlled by new legislation and judicial authorisation. Without those safeguards its a devastating blow to any notion of personal privacy.

She said the move had parallels with the warrantless police search of the House of Commons office of Damian Green, the Tory MP: Its like giving police the power to do a Damian Green every day but to do it without anyone even knowing you were doing it.


Richard Clayton, a researcher at Cambridge Universitys computer laboratory, said that remote searches had been possible since 1994, although they were very rare. An amendment to the Computer Misuse Act 1990 made hacking legal if it was authorised and carried out by the state.

Now everybody behave--------- :smile: I'm Watching You :angelic::tongue:

[Ranald]

Re: Big Brother is coming

Here is a link with some useful information, (I hope it works for ALL)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17586605

dlanaR ( just in case ;-( )

[Lizzie]

Re: Big Brother is coming

New York Times: Police Are Using Phone Tracking as a Routine Tool

Law enforcement tracking of cellphones, once the province mainly of federal agents, has become a powerful and widely used surveillance tool for local police officials, with hundreds of departments, large and small, often using it aggressively with little or no court oversight, documents show.

The practice has become big business for cellphone companies, too, with a handful of carriers marketing a catalog of “surveillance fees” to police departments to determine a suspect’s location, trace phone calls and texts or provide other services. Some departments log dozens of traces a month for both emergencies and routine investigations.

[sandyc]

Re: Big Brother is coming

In 1998 I was at a User Conference in Seattle with a big software company (no not that one).
One of the attendees was from the US Security services.
Each of us gave a presentation on how we were using the particular software and his presentation, without going into any detail, quite clearly demonstrated that even back then Cell calls etc were being monitored...