Main menu:
Big Brother
BIG BROTHER STATE AGENCIES INTERCEPT OUR EMAILS AND TELEPHONE CALLS OVER 1,000 TIMES A DAY!
For several years now civil libertarians have warned that Britain was becoming a Police State. And after it was revealed the security services and 'other agencies' requested permission to carry out almost 1,000 bugging operations a day, it is clear that Britain is indeed a Police State!
The intelligence services, police forces, local authorities and agencies such as the serious fraud office made 253,500 requests for phone taps, the interception of emails or post mail in the final nine months of 2006 and the figure has grown more rapidly since then.
Those of us being bugged range from 'suspected terrorists' to potential illegal flytippers who are being monitored by councils using increasingly sophisticated surveillance to catch them breaking the law. Not to mention the ever-increasing use of intrusive surveillance to combat legitimate anti-Establishment political parties and civil rights campaigners.
The report, by the Interception of Communications Commissioner Sir Paul Kennedy - a former appeal court judge - found that more than 1,000 bugging operations had been flawed, although the real figure is thought to be much higher. In some instances, innocent people had their phones tapped due to administrative 'errors'.
With Britain already possessing the highest density of CCTV cameras per person anywhere in the world, Labour MP David Winnick, a member of the Commons home affairs committee, said greater legal protection is needed to prevent abuse of surveillance powers. He said: "Most of these operations are needed and done for good reasons, but the numbers do raise concerns about the safeguards we have put in place to protect people from constant intrusion." And yet his own 'government' authorised the creation of the National Identity Register to spy on every registered citizen in Britain at the collosal cost of £40 billion.
If the propaganda is to be believed, communications data has provided crucial evidence which has led to the arrest and conviction of kidnappers, rapists and paedophiles, helped prevent murders and gather intelligence on terrorism at home and abroad, the report stated. And yet 90 per cent of all suspected terrorists arrested during the so-called 'war on terror' have proved to be innocent!
But Sir Paul said telephone taps and other 'intercept' material should not be used in court cases, with any benefits of a change in the law 'heavily outweighed' by the disadvantages. Britain is the only country in Europe to prevent surveillance 'product' from being used in court....
Civil libertarians have argued that permitting intercept evidence in court would help convict more terrorists, as well as other serious criminals. But the security services oppose the move because they fear it could expose their spying techniques and capabilities but no other European country has the same problem.
In the nine months to the end of 2006, 122 councils sought to obtain private communications in more than 1,600 cases. Eric Pickles, the Conservative local government spokesman, said the use of surveillance powers to catch suspected fly-tippers was 'completely over the top'.
Sir Paul, a former Lord Justice of Appeal who took over as the spy watchdog in April 2006, repeated a previous call to allow security services to tap MPs' phones. He moaned that a code introduced by Labour premier Harold Wilson in 1966 which forbids eavesdropping on Parliamentarians was 'totally indefensible'.
The report covers interception of communications operations over a period of 264 days, during which time an average of 960 new applications for interception were made each day. On allowing intercept evidence to be used in court, Sir Paul said: "At present, I am firmly of the opinion that the benefits of any change in the law are heavily outweighed by the disadvantages, and with one exception, everyone to whom I have spoken in the course of my visits seems to be of the same opinion."
But the real question is if the dumbed-down British population will tolerate living in a Police State, emigrate to foreign climes or stand up and be counted to pull down the Big Brother political Establishment?