How This Old Brit Sees It ...

Plan to monitor all internet use

Communications firms are being asked to record all internet contacts between people as part of a modernisation in UK police surveillance tactics.

The home secretary scrapped plans for a database but wants details to be held and organised for security services.

The new system would track all e-mails, phone calls and internet use, including visits to social network sites.

Ministers say police need new tools to fight crime but opposition MPs and campaigners have raised privacy fears.

(snip)

Bloody brilliant, eh? That'll teach the bad guys, eh? That'll stop 'em, eh? That'll certainly make us all a lot safer, eh?

Since the baddies won't be reading & hearing what everyone else now is, eh? So they won't increasingly simply start switching back to using all sorts of 'good old fashioned' low-tech stuff for their secretive plotting & planning, eh?

Nawh! Never!

Not!

They'd never dream of using internet cafes, public phone boxes, cheap second hand, throw away, unregistered pay as you go mobile phones would they? Nor would they think of writing & posting letters : particularly of the coded kind. Nor would we ever see them returning to the use of micro dots, dead letter drops and so on & so forth.

Eh?

Nawh! Never!

Since all the baddies are simply brain dead dumbos. And the smarter, more serious, slyer and more successful type they are, the god damned dumber they're bound to be, eh?

Jeeze. Many millions of minds must already be bloomin' boggling.

Unless .......... unless ........

...... unless, of course, all this nonsense is actually all some sort of dastardly, damned, whizz bang, underhand, unique double bluff ploy, eh?



You know, something that gives "them" yet another way to get the likes of "us" to timidly toe "their" lines. To keep tabs on "us" ~ for possible "future reference".

Reference you, me and us ~ the genuine good guys & gals, that is. Unbelieving "us". The all too often perceived subversive, rebellious (albeit entirely erroneously) smart arse, revolutionary, rabble rousing, riff-raff eh?

Nawh! Never!

"They"'re not as naughty, nasty and/or damned dictatorial as that, are "they"? After all, "they"'re on "our" side aren't they? You know, the genuinely good guys & gals' side.

Well, aren't they?

(Regard that question as rhetorical and don't answer it btw, at least not until you've seen a solicitor or someone similar.)

So, read the rest of said shockingly sad report.

Then for Pete's sake, swallow it ... fast.

Better quickly choked, than 'cuffed, chained and summarily incarcerated in some stinking cell in a sleazy, secretive clink somewhere - sez we.

What say ye?

Labels: big brother, big brother Britain, Britain, civil liberties, crooks and liars, hi-tech, intelligence, low-tech, Police, politics, UK, UK intelligence, United Kingdom

... under a long-standing agreement, the US and Britain have pledged “not to collect on each other,” former US intelligence officials said.

They always have and always will.

The truth is that neither dare not do.

This header's taken from today's (London) 'Times'.

US intelligence file was held on Tony Blair while he was Prime Minister

Now read the rest.



*(Cross posted across at 'appletree'.)

Labels: Blood Brothers, CIA, crooks and liars, intelligence, MI6, SIS, spying, Tony Blair, United Kingdom, United States, US UK special relationship

US global dominance 'set to wane'

The US will face more competition at the top of a multi-polar global system US economic, military and political dominance is likely to decline over the next two decades, according to a new US intelligence report on global trends.

The National Intelligence Council (NIC) predicts China, India and Russia will increasingly challenge US influence.

It also says the dollar may no longer be the world's major currency, and food and water shortages will fuel conflict.

Is the end in sight?

What say ye?

).



You know where we live.

Right?

But what about how you'd have us live, if you had your way?

Police may get more data powers

[British Home Secretary] Jacqui Smith said intercepting communications was 'vital'

Jacqui Smith has set out plans to give the police and security services more powers to gather phone and e-mail data.

The home secretary said police risked losing the ability to fight crime and terrorism without new laws.

The government is considering creating a giant database to store details of every UK phone call and e-mail sent.

Ms Smith stressed the "content" of conversations would not be stored but she wanted a national debate on what new powers should be introduced.

And she warned that without increasing their capacity to store data, the police and security services would have to consider a "massive expansion of surveillance".

Plans to collect more data on people's phone, e-mail and web-browsing habits are expected to be included in the Communications Data Bill, due to be introduced in the Queen's Speech in November.

'Vital capability'

In a speech to the Institute of Public Policy Research, Ms Smith said:

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Wow!

Who knew?



Well, we knew.

Too true, we knew.

Did you know too?

Labels: health, intelligence, Internet

People who made gifts to others or to charities reported they were happier than folks who didn't share, according to a report in Friday's issue of the journal Science.

While previous studies have shown that having more money can increase happiness, the researchers at the University of British Columbia and Harvard University wondered if the way people spent their money made any difference.

Turns out, it does.

Who the heck ever needed some smart arse scientists to proudly present the populous with such simple sorts of 'self evidence'? We know we definitely didn't.

We doubt that those who gave those little Iraq kids a few small sachets of sweets to savour did either.

Nor those who, no matter how temporarily it may turn out to be, lit up the lovable faces and lightened the lives of this little-tyke-team of serially deprived Roma/Gypsy lads in Macedonia - simply by presenting them with (completely pro bono of course), a few paltry pound's worth of plastic footballs.

Lead researcher Elizabeth W. Dunn, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia, said she wasn't surprised that doing something for others made people happy.

Not surprised, eh? Really? Well surprise, suprise - nor are we.

Scientific findings, eh? Huh.

Pssst. Listen, lady... we've shit some scientific findings.

"People need a humanitarian outlet ... feeling that they make a difference ... that's very motivating," [Wendy] Koslow said.

Yeah, we know, Ms Koslow.

See some more on just one of the many (wacky weird & wonderful) ways that so much precious dosh is simply slopped straight down the drains - on a damned daily basis.

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Labels: academia, America, charity, intelligence, Iraq, Macedonia, United States

Mr Duddy told the BBC: "The notion that big things happened in the Oval Office in Washington or in the Grand Hall of the Kremlin... actually it doesn't happen that way.
"It happens less formally and simply."

(snip)

"Without that ceasefire there would have been no Good Friday Agreement and no peace today.

Appetite whetted yet?

Then see the full story for yourself.



Brendan Duddy.

See also, Belfast Telegraph.

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Labels: Brendan Duddy, Britain, intelligence, Ireland, Peace, peace campaigners, terrorism, UK

~ Britain's second largest police force.



Michael Todd QPM M Phil BA (Hons)

Mr Todd was the man in charge of the 'rendition for torture' investigation into the alleged use of British territory by America's C.I.A.

Labels: America, extraordinary rendition, intelligence, Manchester, Michael Todd, North Wales, Police, politics, Snowdon, torture, UK, US

Anyone belonging to the fast shrinking sections of certain Western citizens who still steadfastly refuse to accept the fact that they're living in Big Brother Land -should stop squandering their (mistakenly imagined), valuable time reading this story - right here.

Since we ourselves long ago faced up to the fact that some simple souls neither can nor ever will, see the ends of their own noses on their own faces.

So stuff 'em. That's their problem. We should worry. Not.

However, all those who enter here with open minds, an IQ of at least double figures, are not yet completely brain dead and a still possess any semblance of a thirst for truths -- study these selected snippets.

Whistle-blower site taken offline

The case was brought by lawyers working for a Swiss bank

A controversial[Wikipedia-like], website that allows whistle-blowers to anonymously post government and corporate documents has been taken offline in the US.

Wikileaks.org, as it is known, was cut off from the internet following a California court ruling, the site says.

(snip)

Wikileaks claimed that the order was "unconstitutional" and said that the site had been "forcibly censored".

(snip)

The court hearing took place last week and Dynadot blocked access from Friday evening.

Wikileaks says it was not represented at the hearing because it was "given only hours notice" via e-mail.

A document signed by Judge Jeffery White, who presided over the case, ordered Dynadot to follow six court orders.

(snip)

The site was founded in 2006 by dissidents, journalists, mathematicians and technologists from the US, Taiwan, Europe, Australia and South Africa.

It so far claims to have published more than 1.2 million documents.

Labels: censorship, CIA, covert /black ops, crooks and liars, freedom, intelligence, Wikileak, Wikipedia

Credit where it's due though, chancellor. You must have thought long and hard before deftly delivering your (hardly hidden) brickbat, so obviously aimed at your soon to be ex boss, Tony (bloody liar) Blair.

Gordon Brown has promised to prevent the "party political" use of intelligence material so that he would never repeat Tony Blair's mistake in taking Britain to war on a flawed prospectus.

On his first visit to Baghdad, the incoming prime minister said he would learn lessons from the run-up to the 2003 Iraq invasion, when Mr Blair based his case for war on intelligence reports about Saddam Hussein's supposed weapons of mass destruction.

Mr Brown said he had already begun discussions with Sir Gus O'Donnell, the Cabinet Secretary, to ensure security and intelligence material was collected "free of the party political process" and was " fully verified" if it was to be made public.

"That is learning the lessons from things that happened in the past, and we should make sure that we can do things better in the future," he said.

His remarks were seen as a barely coded criticism of Mr Blair and an attempt to draw a line under a controversy which left a stain on the [Blair, New Labour] Government.

Well, we shall wait to see what we shall see - before judging Gordon Brown by his actions rather than by 'barely coded criticisms'.

Read the rest of The Independent's relevant report, right here.

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Labels: Baghdad, Gordon Brown, Green Zone, intelligence, Iraq, Tony Blair