Britain Has Passed the Most Extreme Surveillance Law Ever Passed in a Democracy'

a reply to: Bedlam

Agreed.
In some ways you might say the new requirement for a judge to authorise surveillance actually puts limitations on the TPTB doing what they already do.

There has always been rumours about "black boxes" dotted thrughout the UK backbone and before that there were people who worked at telephone exchanges who would, how you say, get paid twice per month.

Yes, the Royal Mail also has a database of all mail you sent and received that included a return address.
Yes, the databases of "traffic cameras" that record your license plate can be accessed on demand.

If it takes something like this for people to step back and consider whether you can have true liberty in a surveilled state, so be it.

a reply to: Jukiodone

I'll put it this way, you can't send an email now in the UK without GCHQ gets a copy.

a reply to: Bedlam

well dang. Its like the United Kingdom is now just one big voyeur party for intelligence and Law Enforcement. How ofte do you think they, as well as the NSA in the states, are activating the pc cams of hot unsuspecting people (men or women) ??? Honestly, if I could cover my tracks, I would probably do it too.

Genius, allow radical immigrants in, then when crime/terror is out of control, have people begging to be safe. It's how America brought NSA, & TSA post 911

And people wonder why so many Americans are so passionate about Maintaining the The Second Amendment [the right to bear arms] in the USA.

First Britain disarmed the population - And for public safety, and since your right to protect yourself is by default now belongs to the government - established what is already considered the most thorough surveillance state in the world.

Remember the classic dystopian novel "1984" ? - Cameras were everywhere - every TV set had a built in camera always watching you even in your own home !

Geroge Orwell the writer of "1984" was from Britain - He warned us about the horror of the future - And England is fulfilling
his prophecy.

Congratulations Britain for showing the free world how freedom can be stolen from the people
- And yes, I no longer consider Britain to be part of the free world - It is by definition a totalitarian police state

a reply to: AlienView

Oh God. No! Don't start dragging the fact the UK population are "disarmed" into this. We're quire happy not having a murder rate and overly violent society like you in America, while acknowledging that there's nearly 2 million firearms licenses in the UK. Bet you did not know that the UK was "armed", did you.

Personally, I have read the Bill in question and am comfortable with the checks and balances in place. Over time as legal precedent is set we will see whether the spirit and intent of the Bill is being abused.

As to "cameras everywhere" this is a bit of a myth because they are used for different purposes and are not joined up. There are not football stadiums full of people watching our every move, but there is CCTV in shops and watching traffic congestion, just like everywhere else.

a reply to: AlienView

Congratulations Britain for showing the free world how freedom can be stolen from the people - And yes, I no longer consider Britain to be part of the free world - It is by definition a totalitarian police state

Congratulations to America for providing the apparatus to steal freedom. Salute the NSA and your global surveillance structure!! Yeehaw for your TSA and your ID cards. 'Homeland Security' sounds like something from 1984. God Bless you for COINTELPRO and the most imprisoned population on Earth.

I can hyperbole too.

a reply to: AlienView

And people wonder why so many Americans are so passionate about Maintaining the The Second Amendment [the right to bear arms] in the USA.

What on earth has the US Second Amendment got to do with UK legislation on surveillance laws?

First Britain disarmed the population - And for public safety,......

Which is why UK murder rate and gun related crime is far, far lower than the US - seems UK public safety measures may actually work!

.....and since your right to protect yourself is by default now belongs to the government

How do you work that out?

- established what is already considered the most thorough surveillance state in the world.

Absolute and total bollocks.

Congratulations Britain for showing the free world how freedom can be stolen from the people

How come?
Apart from the 'freedom' to shoot people I'm just as 'free' to do what I want as you are...or have you any actual fact based evidence or first hand experience to suggest anything other?

- And yes, I no longer consider Britain to be part of the free world -

Good job your opinion is completely irrelevant and lacks any credible evidence to support it.

It is by definition a totalitarian police state

Please show me how exactly UK society meets the definition of 'totalitarian police state' or are you happy just repeating verbatim completely unsubstantiated bollocks and empty rhetoric motivated more by political dogma than actual facts or first hand experience?

a reply to: Kandinsky

didn't the NSA get that technology from the Brits??? I can almost be certain .... wait for it

Documents taken from the National Security Agency by Edward Snowden and obtained by NBC News detail how British cyber spies demonstrated a pilot program to their U.S. partners in 2012 in which they were able to monitor YouTube in real time and collect addresses from the billions of videos watched daily, as well as some user information, for analysis. At the time the documents were printed, they were also able to spy on Facebook and Twitter.

a reply to: Freeborn

By contrast, official police crime statistics in the United Kingdom are unreliable, due to widespread and inconsistent practices of "no criming", with 19% of reported overall crimes not recorded by police, one quarter of sexual crimes, one third of violent crimes, and 37% of rapes.
Senior members of the policing establishment admit to long-term, widespread "fiddling" of figures, such as John Stevens, Baron Stevens of Kirkwhelpington, former head of the Metropolitan Police Service:[6]

Ever since I’ve been in police service there has been a fiddling of figures. I remember being a detective constable where we used to write off crimes.

Evidence has also been submitted to the Public Administration Select Committee by then-constable James Patrick.[7]

You guys suffer as much violent crime as we do, but politics wants to suppress that to justify the gun ban. You guys need more guns, especially rifles back.

But as far as the right to bear arms goes, countries who have them banned frequently take measures to suppress free speech and privacy as well. Australia prosecuted a guy earlier this year for being offensive on the internet. A host of European nations, I think maybe Britain included, will levy charges for having an alternative opinion to exactly how some things went down in WW2.

I firmly believe there is a direct correlation to civilian access to arms, and the civil rights that are kept in check by the threat of an armed population.

a reply to: worldstarcountry

No source given and just one police officer's opinion which has been repudiated by other police officers.
No FACTS given to support his allegation.

I'm under no illusion that the UK can be a very violent place but facts speak for themselves - per head we have far, far less gun related crimes and deaths - we want to keep it that way.

No, we don't need more guns.
You've got your Second Amendment, that's your business.
We, however, do not want any relaxation of our gun control laws - the UK is not a replica of the US.
Yes, we have much in common in our societies but there are also many, many differences.
What's right for you isn't always right for us.

But this isn't a thread about gun rights or the pro's and cons of The Second Amendment etc.

We in the UK are just as 'free' as anyone else in 'the west'.
Just how 'free' any of us really are is obviously open to debate.

But I assure you people here are just as free to express their own personal opinions about the course of events surrounding WWII as people in the US.
Possibly the only difference is that most people's opinions here in the UK aren't dictated by Hollywood's version of events.

The advent of the PC driven snowflake generation where any type of 'insult' is deemed hate driven is common throughout most of what is generally termed 'The West' and is most definitely not unique to the UK.
Is it progress?
In my opinion no it isn't.

As for the correlation between gun rights and civil rights; I don't think so.
The US people have had numerous pieces of punitive legislation imposed on them allegedly against the wishes of the American people, if what lots of posters here on ATS are to be believed, but they have never, ever risen up and used their arms against the government.

Yet here in the UK there are several instances where public opinion and opposition to proposed government legislation has forced the abandonment of those plans or proposals....all without guns!

We are not a beaten, subservient people - far from it.

originally posted by: worldstarcountry
You guys suffer as much violent crime as we do, but politics wants to suppress that to justify the gun ban. You guys need more guns, especially rifles back.

While comparing crime statistics between countries is fraught with dangers and assumptions, we can deal with the cold hard facts here.

The murder rate in the US is very much higher than the UK. Firearm related murders is very low in the UK, but very high in the US.

Guns are not banned in the UK. Only certain types. There are nearly 2 million guns in the UK. You need to do some research.

It's cultural, but the US is a more violent place than the UK on the basis that you are more likely to be murdered in the US than the UK.

originally posted by: AshFan


This is just sad. What are they so afraid of? How did this get passed into law? WAKE UP YOU UKers!!

This new law is horrendous without doubt but what do you expect the people do about it, "wake up UKers", our police don't go around killing us, we do not have people rioting in the streets every time we have an election and then have our mayors telling the media they have no power to stop it so it is a free for all for you wants to riot....! We do not have false flags every month or so, people in glass houses and all that stuff..!

Do you really believe that you Americans are not watched 24/7, everything we do these days is being watched, i don't care what country you live in, the UK are just more open about the snooping.

Every country has its own problems but i laugh every time an outsider tells others to wake up, we have woke up, we just cannot do anything about it just like you guys across the pond.

We have been living in 1984 for many years, you me and the rest of the globe.

I have to chuckle when I see nonsensical statements like the one below in the article:

A new investigatory powers commissioner will also oversee the use of the powers.

After all, they were previously found to have been using illegal surveillance and interception, without warrant for, what was it now..... 17 years?
That too was supposed to have been overseen by parliament and special commissioners, but either they were asleep at the wheel, ignored what was in front of them, or knew and chose to ignore it as it was in fact policy!

a reply to: worldstarcountry

didn't the NSA get that technology from the Brits??? I can almost be certain .... wait for it

Come on friend, we both know all this didn't start in 2012. I was objecting to the poster saying Britain was a Totalitarian state and using hyperbole to nail a point.

Good to see you regardless

a reply to: Britguy

I think the idea is to tie up all the loose ends. Previous legislation was based on analogue phones before the internet came along, and all that. The world is a bit more complicated nowadays.

Truth is, they've been hoarding internet usage history of everyone for years. What the legislation of these laws does is to make the hoarding legal and capable of being used.

When they first began hoarding everyone's internet usage history they could not use the data because no law existed that said they could. In fact, it contravened data protection acts. So, now that it is all in the open and in the public's eye, legislation has now made it legal for them to use whatever they find against you. Hell, if they want to silence you, they can manipulate the data. They can do anything with it, even create bogus data against you.

On a different but related note. Has anyone noticed if their internet has slowed down, or just stutters along, especially if they are using windows 7?

a reply to: Bedlam

Yeah but all traffic goes through infrastructure owned by just a few companies (around 8).

Most, if not all have military contracts with the US.

Technology trumps the law.

Wherever you are, anywhere in the world where there is computers and/or smart phones, data is being collected and you are
being monitored - Private interests could care less about the law - they will collect data on you an use it for their own advantage - Let your phone number get out - and expect spam phone calls - some of them claiming to be from government agencies such as the IRS.

So is surveillance by government necessarily bad? - I don't think so - But there should be legally mandated limits on how it can be used - say for personal gain or by government to curtail legally protected rights.

But civil liberties groups have long criticized the bill, with some arguing that the law will let the UK government "document everything we do online". It's no wonder, because it basically does.

GUESS WHAT? - They wiere doing it anyway - not just in Britain but everywhere in the world and the technocrats that
operate these companies have long lived in their own world of data collection - No law can really control them in the
digital age of data - Private and government interests will collect this data regardless of any law.

Where it will make a real difference as to its legality is like the laws about 'search warrants' - If the date is collected legally it could be used against you in a court of law - Illegal searches [at least in the US] would cause a court to throw out the evidence - same might apply to data collected without legal authority.

The real significance of this law is for criminals engaged in illegal activity - They may want to avoid using the internet.

a reply to: Kandinsky

I think its fair to stand up and say "Hang on a sec, this is not a ball game we play alone", but to make out that the UK government is anything other than a totalitarian organisation whose current purpose is total erosion of our freedom and privacy is also fallacious.

Let me be clear. This country, the moment this legislative adjustment passed, was the moment that we stopped being a free society, instead of a watched one. We know these mass surveillance systems do not stop terrorism, they never have in all the time they have existed. We know that therefore, the national security argument for their existence is meaningless, null and void. So for what reason could we possibly accept these things? I say we must not, I say we must stand against them, and I say that if the government refuse to retract this abortion, this slap in the face of freedom from without our law, and cease complying with their previous role in the Five Eyes network which forms the nodal points of the mass surveillance system, then the people must rise up and FORCE them to stop.

We did not vote for this, and thusly we should not be getting it. If we do, then this country has become every bit a totalitarian police state, and I will have to consider myself at war with my own government.

a reply to: TrueBrit

There has been a budget cutback for the old ECHELON system?

US SIS

However, the budget crises of post war cutbacks combined with the passage of a law in 1927 making radio communications intercept illegal in America, brought the code and cipher effort nearly to a halt. To save the effort from extinction, in April 1929, the Secretary of War directed "That the Signal Corps be charged with the duties pertaining to the solution of enemy codes and ciphers and the detection of secret inks in War