MI5 Gestapo Watch: Police State UK… Creeping In…

[fish5133]

Is there anyway one can show ones bum so that the Govt snoop databases get the message!
mass campaign to text a picture of ones bum back to your own phone with keywords like obama, olympics, bomb etc etc.

[TonyGosling]

Now privatisation of police stations and police force front line tasks such as patrols and emergency response.
Now we know where the bailout money has gone, to the bankers' masonic mates at G4S & ACPO.

[TonyGosling]

Unarmed man shot dead by police in English village
By Trevor Johnson - 10 March 2012
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/mar2012/shoo-m10.shtml
In a shopping precinct car park, a man sits in a car. Suddenly, he finds his car blocked in by another vehicle. Rounds of fire from a shotgun disabled the car tyres.
CS gas canisters are set off both outside and inside the car. Then the man is shot and killed by gunmen wearing facemasks—a bullet through his heart fired from a Heckler and Koch MP5 submachine gun.
This is not a description of a mafia hit squad performing a gangland murder, but the scene confronting onlookers in the small Cheshire village of Culcheth near Warrington, when police opened fire on Anthony Grainger at 7:20 pm on March 3. The car park is close to a number of shops, restaurants, bars, and a public house.
The operation was carried out by a police team, dressed in black and wearing gas masks, and driving an unmarked car. It seems likely that the 36-year-old Grainger was unaware that he was the target of a police operation before he was killed by a single shot fired through the windscreen into his chest.
Grainger, a father of two, was unarmed. A detailed search of the stolen red Audi found no weapons, the Independent Police Complaints Commission admitted.
His mother, Marina Schofield-Ahmed, told the press, “I expect to get that the police have murdered my son and if it comes to that conclusion I want the officer charged with murder and I want the other officers charged with conspiracy to murder.
“That’s what I want at the end of the day—if it comes out that this is an unlawful killing, that’s what I hope and pray for.”
Mrs. Schofield-Ahmed was celebrating her 54th birthday when she heard of her son’s death. “I will never ever celebrate my birthday again,” she said. “How could I?”
Police justified the execution by labeling him as part of a group of “highly dangerous men.” They confirmed that it was a “pre-planned operation” based on a tip-off. In view of the dress and behaviour of the squad involved, it would be more accurate to describe it as the work of a paramilitary force tasked with performing a targeted assassination.
Three men—David Totton, 33, Joseph Travers, 27, and Robert Rimmer, 26—have appeared in court charged with conspiracy to commit robbery. All three were remanded to appear at Manchester Crown Court on March 19.
The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) said a forensic examination of the Audi car in which Grainger had been sitting had found no firearms or any other weapons.
Manchester-based solicitor Keith Dyson, who is providing legal representation for the Grainger family, said, “The family are considering taking legal action. They are very angry about what has happened. We had a meeting with the IPCC and they cannot give us any answers why.”
Grainger’s girlfriend Gail Hadfield wrote on Facebook that the police “should never have fired on a man sat in a car in the corner of a car park”.
Eyewitness Jessica Brown, aged 15, who was in a nearby shop with a group of friends, described the scene to reporters as being “like something off a film… A couple ran into the shop and told us to stand back against the wall so we weren’t seen or hurt by anything.”
She saw people in the street running for cover, after which she heard several gunshots.
Her father, Anthony Brown, told Sky News that his daughter had come back home “hysterical … She was crying her eyes out.”
“You don’t want the kids outside when there’s mad men running round with guns shooting”, he said.
It is only a matter of months since Mark Duggan was shot to death by police on August 4, 2011. He too was unarmed. The disinformation spread by police after the shooting, and the lack of any real investigation or charges against those responsible, sparked last summer’s riots in England’s major cities.
During those disturbances, youth from Warrington and Northwich (not far from the site of the recent shooting by police) were handed down sentences of four years each for simply posting comments on Facebook. In contrast, the police officers who carry out executions of unarmed men in public places face not so much as an appearance at a public inquiry, let alone a trial.
While the police shooting of Grainger was widely reported, the media did what it could to present him as a dangerous criminal—using quotes taken from police about body armour they claim to have found at his house and citing his previous conviction for handling stolen cars. They explained the shooting as the result of “an error of judgement” for which the policeman responsible was “remorseful,” while failing to mention any of the similar cases or the lack of any prosecutions of those responsible.
Between 1990 and 2011 police shot dead 53 people. Amongst these police fatalities was the innocent 27-year-old Brazilian worker Jean Charles de Menezes in July 2005. De Menezes had just boarded a train at Stockwell Tube station in London when he was confronted by armed plainclothes officers, two of whom fired 11 shots. Eight of these hit de Menezes, seven in his head.
Shootings in public are only the most high-profile example of the ability of the police to kill with impunity. In January, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) uncovered evidence that official figures claiming to show a fall in the rate of deaths involving police restraint had been manipulated. A number of such deaths had been excluded from the statistics.
The campaign group Inquest found that between 1997 and 2007 there were over 530 deaths involving the police in England and Wales. Inquest stated, “These were as a result of police shootings or following contact with the police, and more than 320 deaths in police vehicle incidents.”

[TonyGosling]

The London Olympics 2012, Big Brother, Police State Britain

Link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5omvagAhL4
This film was originally created for my university course entitled ''Eve of Destruction'', topics addressed herein being surveillance, police brutality and the excessive security measures put in place for the upcoming 2012 Olympic games in London

[TonyGosling]

Surveillance special looking at latest developments in privatisation of CCTV and social networking surveillance with Brummy anti Big Brother No-CCTV campaigner Steve Jolly. Software companies making a fortune as they sell mobile phone and social networking surveillance software to ACPO and Britain’s top cops.

Academic studies prove that CCTV is a waste of money and does not reduce crime
http://www.no-cctv.org.uk/caseagainst/reports.asp

listen again
http://bcfm.org.uk/2012/06/08/17/friday-drivetime-74/18193
http://radio4all.net/index.php/program/60642

http://www.bigbrotherwatch.org.uk/home/2012/03/time-regulate-private-c ctv.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/oct/30/metropolitan-police-mobile-ph one-surveillance
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/may/11/police-software-maps-digital- movements

[TonyGosling]

G4S Gestapo chief predicts mass police privatisation

Private companies will be running large parts of the police service within five years, according to security firm head
Matthew Taylor and Alan Travis - guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 20 June 2012 19.31 BST
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/jun/20/g4s-chief-mass-police-privati sation

Private companies will be running large parts of the UK's police service within five years, according to the world's biggest security firm.

David Taylor-Smith, the head of G4S for the UK and Africa, said he expected police forces across the country to sign up to similar deals to those on the table in the West Midlands and Surrey, which could result in private companies taking responsibility for duties ranging from investigating crimes to transporting suspects and managing intelligence.

The prediction comes as it emerged that 10 more police forces were considering outsourcing deals that would see services, such as running police cells and operating IT, run by private firms.

Taylor-Smith, whose company is in the running for the £1.5bn contract with West Midlands and Surrey police, said he expected forces across the country to have taken similar steps within five years . "For most members of the public what they will see is the same or better policing and they really don't care who is running the fleet, the payroll or the firearms licensing – they don't really care," he said.

G4S, which is providing security for the Olympics, has 657,000 staff operating in more than 125 countries and is one of the world's biggest private employers. It already runs six prisons in the UK and in April started work on a £200m police contract in Lincolnshire, where it will design, build and run a police station. Under the terms of the deal, 575 public sector police staff transferred to the company.

Taylor-Smith said core policing would remain a public-sector preserve but added: "We have been long-term optimistic about the police and short-to-medium-term pessimistic about the police for many years. Our view was, look, we would never try to take away core policing functions from the police but for a number of years it has been absolutely clear as day to us – and to others – that the configuration of the police in the UK is just simply not as effective and as efficient as it could be."

Concern has grown about the involvement of private firms in policing. In May more than 20,000 officers took to the streets to outline their fears about pay, conditions and police privatisation. The Police Federation has warned that the service is being undermined by creeping privatisation.

Unite, the union that represents many police staff, said the potential scale of private-sector involvement in policing was "a frightening prospect". Peter Allenson, national officer, said: "This is not the back office – we are talking about the privatisation of core parts of the police service right across the country, including crime investigation, forensics, 999 call-handling, custody and detention and a wide range of police services."

Taylor-Smith said "budgetary pressure and political will" were driving the private-sector involvement in policing but insisted that the "public sector ethos" had not been lost.

"I have always found it somewhere between patronising and insulting the notion that the public sector has an exclusive franchise on some ethos, spirit, morality – it is just nonsense," he said. "The thought that everyone in the private sector is primarily motivated by profit and that is why they come to work is just simply not accurate … we employ 675,000 people and they are primarily motivated by pretty much the same as would motivate someone in the public sector."

In the £1.5bn deal being discussed by West Midlands and Surrey police, the list of policing activities up for grabs includes investigating crimes, detaining suspects, developing cases, responding to and investigating incidents, supporting victims and witnesses, managing high-risk individuals, managing intelligence, managing engagement with the public, as well as more traditional back-office functions such as managing forensics, providing legal services, managing the vehicle fleet, finance and human resources.

Chris Sims, West Midlands chief constable, has said his force is a good testing ground for fundamental change as he battled to find £126m of savings. He said the armed forces had embraced a greater role for the private sector more fully than the police without sparking uproar.

But a home affairs select committee report said many of the policing contracts being put up for tender amounted to a "fishing expedition". MPs added that they were not convinced the forces understood what they were doing. The committee chair, Keith Vaz, said: "The Home Office must ensure it knows what services local forces wish to contract out before agreeing to allow expenditure of £5m on what is little more than a fishing expedition."

Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire police announced this month that they were considering privatising some services in an attempt to tackle a £73m funding shortfall created by government cuts. Police authority members in the three counties will be asked to consider how services including HR, finance and IT could be outsourced in line with the G4S contract in Lincolnshire as part of a joint recommendation made by the three chief constables.

It has also emerged that Thames Valley, West Mercia, Warwickshire, Staffordshire, Gloucestershire, Wiltshire and Hampshire forces have begun a tendering process to outsource the running of 30 custody suites and 600 cells.

[Whitehall_Bin_Men]

Councils resort to rogue bailiffs to 'terrify' debtors, charities warn Government urged to reform medieval laws as municipal outsourcing prompts complaints
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/councils-resort-to-rogu e-bailiffs-to-terrify-debtors-charities-warn-8219108.html
‘I wanted to pay but they would not negotiate’
By JONATHAN BROWN - Saturday 20 October 2012
Rogue bailiffs collecting unpaid council tax on behalf of local authorities are using brutal tactics against vulnerable people, campaigners say. Charities fear that complaints about heavy-handed and unlawful tactics used by council-contracted bailiffs could soar as the Government cuts £500m from council tax benefits next year. Citizens Advice (CAB) recorded 24,698 problems with bailiffs in 2011/12 of which nearly 22,431 were about the enforcement of council tax arrears. The 28 per cent squeeze on local authority budgets has seen more outsourcing of debt recovery. Private bailiffs are now sent two million times a year to recover money ranging from parking fines to unpaid council tax. This autumn the Government is set to reveal its plans to reform an activity governed by laws dating back to medieval times. Ministers are under pressure to stem the rising toll of complaints in which rogue bailiffs are accused of harassment and intimidation, threatening to seize goods to which they are not entitled and overstating their powers to enter premises. In one instance a pregnant woman had her door kicked in. She claims to have been struck on the leg and hip over an unpaid £58 debt. In April 2011 the Ombudsman also criticised Slough Borough Council over its failure to act when one of its private bailiffs threatened to charge £230 and seize a doormat after being refused entry to premises. Figures from the CAB reveal that one in five of those who complained about the action of bailiffs were disabled, while a quarter were single parents and nearly one in three was surviving on an income of less than £400 a month. The charity's chief executive, Gillian Guy, said proper sanctions must be imposed to end unscrupulous practices before the impact of next year's benefit cuts are felt. The Local Government Association estimates that more than two million people will pay an average £247 more in council tax in 2013-14. "Rogue bailiffs are terrifying people across the country who have got into debt with their council tax," said Ms Guy. "More must be done to protect people from aggressive bailiffs and to support them with their debts rather than intimidate them. There is also mounting concern over the profits made by some of the leading bailiff firms. It is claimed that they are incentivised by the current system of debtor-paid visit fees not to seek a negotiated settlement. Two of the biggest operators in the field are Equita and Ross & Roberts both owned by the outsourcing giant Capita. Equita reported operating profits of £5.69m for 2011 while Ross & Roberts made £1.76m over the same period. Dr Steven Everson, director general of the civil enforcement association Civea, which represents the industry, denied that excessive profits were being made by his members. They recover £700m on behalf of local and national government each year. He called for a simplification of the law but rejected attempts to impose a statutory regulatory body which he said would result in added costs to debtors. Chris Richards of Council Tax Advisers, which helps those in debt, is proposing a new system in which debtors pay a one-off administration fee after negotiating a settlement by telephone. One in five people who had complained about the action of the bailiffs was disabled Case studies: 'I wanted to pay but they would not negotiate' Lola Fayemi, from south London, built up a debt of £2,500 in unpaid council tax when she was pregnant with her son. Me and forms really don't get on and life was really chaotic. I assumed I didn't have to pay anything because I was on working tax credits. I didn't get any letters and forgot about it, so it just built up. I was really shaken when I got to the stage where they said this is what you owe. I wanted to pay it back at a few hundred a month but they would not negotiate. Then I received a bailiff letter which said I had five days to pay. It felt threatening to me. I thought people would come knocking at my door. ‘When I rang up, the bailiffs would be obnoxious’ Chris, aged 55, from Kent owed a total of £1,700 I had lost my mother and was suffering from depression. My wife had been diagnosed with a lifelong condition. The council kept coming up with unreasonable payment plans. In the end the bailiffs came to the door. I just said have a look around and make a list of the stuff you want –take what you will. My wife was really angry. I didn't expect that sort of thing to happen to me. Whenever I rang up the bailiffs I would get someone who was really obnoxious who wouldn't give you any information. They wouldn't tell you a breakdown of the charges. The debt never came down: it just kept going up every month.

[Whitehall_Bin_Men]

Invasion of the foreign supercops: Minister wants to hire U.S. crimebusters to take over British police

Former Army officers will be recruited as police superintendents Changes rip up tradition of only British citizens serving in the police

By SIMON WALTERS

PUBLISHED: 00:05, 20 January 2013 | UPDATED: 00:05, 20 January 2013

Foreign crimebusters such as US supercop Bill Bratton will be given the chance to take over British police forces under radical new plans to be unveiled by Home Secretary Theresa May. And former Army officers will be recruited as police superintendents in an attempt to end the ‘closed shop’ police culture blamed for bungled investigations and corruption. The changes, set to be fiercely opposed by police chiefs, rip up the centuries-old tradition of only British citizens serving in the police. They also abolish the rule that senior policemen have to work their way up from being a bobby on the beat.


http://tinyurl.com/aklyhc2

[TonyGosling]

Stasi 1965 anyone?

Police spies court case suggests sexual relations with activists were routine
Lawsuit for undercover police deception indicates several officers struck up intimate relations with those they spied on
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/jan/17/spies-sexual-relations-activi sts-routine

Paul Lewis and Rob Evans
The Guardian, Thursday 17 January 2013 20.23 GMT

Hundreds of political activists were bedding down in a field near the Drax power station in North Yorkshire. It was August 2006 and eco-activists had erected tents beside the UK's single biggest carbon emitter.

As night fell on the inaugural Climate Camp protest the campaigners near the coal-fired station had no idea that their camp had been infiltrated by three undercover police officers.

Mark Kennedy, now the most famous of police spies, and, it now seems, a woman constable known as Lynn Watson, were that night inside tents sleeping with activists.

The third, an officer using the alias Mark Jacobs, would soon be doing the same with two women in Cardiff, where he posed as a truck driver to monitor small group of anarchists.

The controversy over the use of sex in covert policing is too easily caricatured as wayward constables "sleeping with the enemy". But the evidence that has surfaced so far suggests police have been routinely developing close relationships with activists, and not just fleeting sexual encounters but long-term and intimate relationships that have endured several years.

Of the nine undercover police identified by the Guardian over the past two years, eight are believed to have slept with the people they were spying on. In other words, it was the norm.

On Thursday, in the latest chapter of a long-running legal dispute, some of those cases were raised at the high court in London.

In a joint lawsuit, 10 women and one man say they suffered emotional trauma after forming "deeply personal" relationships with people who were later revealed to be spies.

Their claim for damages threatens a deeply embarrassing court battle for the Metropolitan police, which has been trying to keep controversial details of the covert operations secret.

The male activist who said he slept with Watson in a tent at the Climate Camp is not part of the legal action. He told the Guardian he did not want to sue the police because the one-night stand, instigated, he said, by the female officer, was "nothing meaningful".

However, those who are seeking compensation from the police say they are the victims of a highly manipulative and abusive policing operation.

"It is unacceptable that state agents can cultivate intimate and long-lasting relationships with political activists in order to gain so-called intelligence on political movements," said Harriet Wistrich, a lawyer for some of the women involved.

The cases reveal just how intimately police have become involved in the lives of people they have been sent to spy on as part of a surveillance programme that has been in place since 1968.

In two cases, women who were sleeping unknowingly with undercover police officers invited the men to the funerals of relatives. Police spies shared homes with the women they spied upon, met their families, told the activists they loved them and spent weeks and even months travelling with them on holidays abroad.

The male claimant in the lawsuit says that an undercover police officer became his best friend before sleeping with his girlfriend.

The cases go back to the 1980s, and one, which is being treated as a separate legal action, involves a woman who had a child with an undercover police officer.

In all cases, the spies were instructed to vanish from the lives of the activists once their deployments had ended. The women were left perplexed, wondering where their loved ones had gone.

All of the deployments, which cost tens of millions of pounds in taxpayers' money in total, were aimed at garnering intelligence on radical activist groups.

The events have made for an unprecedented civil case.

"No action against the police alleging sexual abuse of the kind in question in these actions has been brought before the courts in the past, so far as I have been made aware," said Mr Justice Tugendhat, the sitting judge.

Lawyers for the Metropolitan police wanted all of the cases in the lawsuit struck out of the high court, arguing that instead they should be heard by a secretive tribunal that usually deals with complaints about MI5.

In his ruling, Tugendhat rejected that request, saying claims for damages under common law, including torts of misfeasance in public office, deceit, assault and negligence, constituted allegations of "the gravest interference" with the fundamental rights and should be heard by the high court.

However, the ruling was a mixed bag. In a blow to the women's legal action, the judge said that additional claims made under the Human Rights Act should first be heard by the Investigatory Powers Tribunal.

The tribunal was set up in 2000 to deal with complaints from the public about unjustified state surveillance within "a necessary ring of secrecy".

Complainants do not see the evidence from the state and have no automatic right to an oral hearing. Neither can they appeal against its decision.

Wistrich described the decision to move parts of the case to the tribunal as an outrage.

It will mean proceedings are delayed, but lawyers said they still expected large parts of the lawsuit to continue in the high court.

"Even though the judge ruled that claims under the Human Rights Act should be heard by the tribunal, the common-law claims, which exist in all of the cases, can and will still be heard in the high court," said Jules Carey, another solicitor representing claimants.

Future proceedings could rest on one main question: are undercover police lawfully authorised to have intimate sexual relationships with the people they are spying on? If so, under what circumstances?

Part of the problem is that sexual activity is not specifically addressed in the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, the law introduced in 2000 to govern covert activities. The act states police are permitted to have "personal or other" relationships when undercover.

In court documents the Met says it interpreted this statement to mean that, in certain circumstances, its officers were authorised to have "intimate and sexual" relationships.

Lawyers for the women have vigorously disputed this point, saying MPs would never have thought they were condoning sexual activities when they legislated to allow covert police to form "personal or other" relationships undercover. On this, Tugendhat appears to have sided against the women. He admitted there was little clarity on the matter, but said he believed that, on balance, parliament would have envisaged "some possible sexual relationships" when introducing the legislation. Bizarrely, that conclusion appears to have rested, partly, on a reference to James Bond, dubbed by the judge "the most famous fictional example of a member of the intelligence services who used relationships with women to obtain information, or access to persons or property".

The judge conceded that Ian Fleming, author of the Bond series, did not dwell on "psychological harm he might have done to the women concerned". But he said Bond and similar fictional examples gave credence to the view that the intelligence and police services had for many years let spies form "personal relationships of an intimate sexual nature" for intelligence purposes.

In other words, he believes that when MPs authorised undercover police to get close to targets they had James Bond in mind.

Tugendhat said "everyone in public life would … have assumed, whether rightly or wrongly, that the intelligence services and the police did from time to time deploy officers … in this way".

If the law is seems confused or contradictory, so too are the responses from the authorities whose job it is to implement it.

When details of Kennedy's undercover exploits were first made public in 2011, Jon Murphy, who speaks on undercover policing for the Association of Chief Police Officers, said sexual relationships were not allowed under any circumstances.

He said: "It is never acceptable for an undercover officer to behave in that way."

By 2012 the position appeared to have shifted when Nick Herbert, then the policing minister, said there was no rule prohibiting police from sleeping with activists. He told parliament that any ban on sexual activities would provide a ready-made test for suspicious newcomers.

More recently the Met commissioner, Bernard Hogan-Howe, struck yet another note, saying that sexual relationships were "almost inevitable". But he added: "It certainly should not be part of the strategy to do that."

[TonyGosling]

A load of Thunderballs: James Bond is fiction, not a police instruction manual
A shocking ruling (let's call it the 007 standard) gives undercover police licence to break hearts. It's the hacking of people's lives
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/18/james-bond-police- licence-break-hearts

Jonathan Freedland
The Guardian, Friday 18 January 2013 21.40 GMT

Behold a new legal threshold: let's call it the 007 standard. Apparently the law now allows secret agents to get up to all manner of mayhem, just so long as it's something James Bond might have done. Threatening to strangle a woman with her own bikini top? Powering a speedboat, both on and besides the Thames, destroying everything in your wake? Forcing a shark-gun pellet into a man's mouth, so he blows up like a balloon. All fully lawful, m'lud: can I refer the court to Diamonds Are Forever, The World Is Not Enough and Live and Let Die?

This new principle of jurisprudence was unveiled at the high court this week by Mr Justice Tugendhat, as he ruled on whether a case brought by 10 women and one man duped into fraudulent relationships by undercover police officers should be heard in open court or in a secret tribunal.

The decision hinged on whether the law governing agents of the state allows them to form sexual relationships with those they spy upon. The good judge believes that when MPs wrote the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa) in 2000, permitting undercover police to form "personal or other" relationships, they must have meant it to include sexual relationships. After all, the legislators were bound to have had one particular secret agent in mind. "James Bond is the most famous fictional example of a member of the intelligence services who used relationships with women," Tugendhat declared, lending "credence to the view that the intelligence and police services have for many years deployed both men and women officers to form personal relationships of an intimate sexual nature".

That came as a shock to the women involved in the case, and not only them. The former director of public prosecutions, Ken, now Lord, Macdonald, thought the judge's mention of 007 "ludicrous". Ripa, he told me, is an extremely serious piece of legislation, "one that determines the extent to which our private lives can be intruded upon by the state. It's undermining of parliament's reputation as a serious body to suggest it took into account the mad escapades of a fictional spy".

Talk of Bond only highlights one of the absurdities at the heart of this sad, strange saga that first came to light two years ago, when the Guardian revealed how a police officer named Mark Kennedy had infiltrated the environmental protest movement and become intimate with the activists he was monitoring. The absurdity in question is that of proportionality. At least Bond was confronting mighty adversaries with demonic ambitions to destroy the world: no wonder he had to cut the odd ethical corner. But Kennedy and the other cops were, mostly, targeting domestic groups that posed no such threat. It's true that one undercover policeman caught the Animal Liberation Front activists who had planted incendiary devices in fur-selling department stores (at night, with no one around) – a policeman who has himself been accused in parliament of detonating one of the devices – but the target was usually more Citizen Smith than Dr No. In one case, the police infiltrated an anti-war group called the Clown Army whose existential threat to national security consisted of running around Leeds city centre brandishing feather dusters. Blofeld, it wasn't.

But that the judge thought to mention Bond is perhaps revealing. For even those who would defend Ian Fleming's character from charges of misogyny would concede that he often regards women as disposable. And that is the crux of this case, brought by a group of women who believe their innermost lives were regarded as so valueless they could be used by covert police as mere props, devices to shore up agents' cover stories and prove they were good-faith activists rather than frauds.

Some may question how much the women involved really suffered: they were with a man long ago who was not what he claimed to be – OK, not nice, but move on. Such an attitude was hinted at in the remarks by a male activist who slept with an undercover policewoman in a tent at a "climate camp" and who told the Guardian he did not want to sue the police because the one-night stand was "nothing meaningful".

But for the others these were not one-night stands, they were relationships of long standing – six years in one case, five in another – that were enormously meaningful. Those involved tell of deep and genuine attachments, the men integrated into their lives as partners, living together, travelling together, attending family gatherings, sitting at a parent's bedside, even attending a funeral.

There are at least four children from these relationships, some of whom have only now, decades later, discovered who their father really was – and that they were born of a great act of deception.

The greatest pain seems to have come afterwards. Uncannily, most of the relationships all seem to have ended the same way: a sudden departure, a postcard from abroad, and then silence. Some women spent months or even years trying to work out what had gone wrong, travelling far in search of answers. Others found that their ability to trust had been shattered. If the man they had loved turned out to be an agent of the state, what else should they be suspicious of? Could they trust their colleagues, their friends? And the question that nags above all others: was it all a fake, did he not love me at all? One woman tells friends simply: "Five years of my life was built on a lie."

There was rightly an outcry about the News of the World's hacking of people's voicemail messages. But this was the hacking of people's lives, burrowing into the most intimate spaces of the heart in order to do a job, all authorised by the police. It is state-sanctioned emotional abuse.

The present tense is appropriate because there is no reason to believe this kind of police activity, begun in 1968 when Scotland Yard started to infiltrate groups opposed to the Vietnam war, has stopped. The police have not apologised or vowed to give up the practice. Instead, they simply refuse to confirm or deny that the men involved worked as agents at all. A dozen people are taking legal action in total, but those who have followed the case closest – the Guardian's Paul Lewis and Rob Evans – are convinced there are many more victims, including some who still don't know that a past partner conned them. Almost every undercover cop so far identified found himself a lover in the group under surveillance: it was the norm, a standard part of their tradecraft.

This is a question for the police, whose view of women as so dispensable surely suggests a kind of institutional sexism, but also for the state itself. Either it knew or it didn't know what these men were up to, apparently in the service of the crown: both possibilities are indefensible. There is no licence to kill, and there can be no licence to break human hearts, to inflict lasting psychological trauma. The James Bond stories are thrillers, not an instruction manual for an unaccountable state.

[nrmis]

[TonyGosling]

wow
this film illustrates quite clearly the extent to which the polic have lost the confidence of the public
Toward the end someone who looks like a retired lawyer steps in to defend Sam who is being questioned by the police

Bilderberg 2013: plain clothes and uniformed police while visiting The Grove

Link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNjJe7D090E

[TonyGosling]

Real media for a change -
Water cannons on standby for summer riots - with Martin Summers, traveller Dave Dobbs and Tony Gosling:

Closing Homeless Shelters + Bedroom Tax = Riots + Ziegler Wasserwerfer 9000

Link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7y40xTazIk

[TonyGosling]

LA chief Bill Bratton to run the Met? - YES!

Police jobs opened up to foreign chiefs in end to historic rules
Foreign police chiefs could take over British forces as the Coalition pushes ahead with plans to end historic rules on senior police posts, ministers will announce on Monday
By James Kirkup, Political Editor Telegraph - 4:07PM BST 13 Oct 2013
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/10375913/Police-j obs-opened-up-to-foreign-chiefs-in-end-to-historic-rules.html
Foreign police chiefs could take over British forces and senior police jobs will be opened up to senior Armed Forces officers and executives from the private sector, ministers will announce on Monday.
Graduates could also join the police as inspectors as police recruitment is opened up.
Despite resistance from police groups, the Coalition will go ahead with plans to end historic rules that mean senior police posts are open only to those who joined the service as constables.
Since Robert Peel founded the Metropolitan Police in 1829, the only way to enter the force has been to join as a constable.
Those rules have come under pressure in recent years, with critics saying the police need to open up to a wider pool of talent to ensure forces have specialist skills, especially in management and information technology.
Damian Green, the policing minister, will describe the new rules as ending the “closed shop” for police recruitment.
His changes could open the way for senior foreign officers like Bill Bratton, the former New York police chief, to take over British police forces.
In 2011, David Cameron attempted to hire Mr Bratton to run the Metropolitan Police, but was blocked by Home Office rules saying that only British citizens could apply for the post.
Under the new rules, any foreign citizen who is qualified to command a British force will be allowed to apply for a chief constable’s post.
New recruitment rules will also allow a small number of people from outside the police to join forces in senior roles, as both inspectors and superintendents.
The change was recommended by Tom Winsor, HM Chief Inspector of Constabulary, who advised ministers to open up recruitment to people of “exceptional achievement and ability who have been assessed as having the potential to be senior police officers.”
He also advised that people who “good” degrees should be able to enter the police at the rank of inspector.
The Winsor recommendations are unpopular with police groups. The Police Superintendents' Association has said that allowing “direct entry” recruitment to the senior ranks could put the public at risk because the new staff will lack the ability to cope with life-threatening crises.
Mr Green rejected that argument, saying: “These are clearly skills than can be transferred from other trades and professions”.
The number of direct entries to senior ranks will be capped each year. Around 20 new superintendents and 80 new inspectors will be appointed, Home Office sources said. The new entry rules will be overseen the College of Policing.
Mr Green likened police recruitment rules to those forced on some industries by trade unions, who insisted that employers could only hire members of the union.
"Closed shops brought disrepute to some sections of British industry, with people rejected from their jobs because their face did not fit," Mr Green said.
The Home Affairs Committee of the House of Commons raised doubts about allowing “direct entry” recruitment to senior ranks, suggesting it could jeopardise the trust between senior commanders and their officers.
The committee suggested the college use a "points-based" direct entry system to identify specific skills requirements, “rather than simply throwing open the door to senior ranks.”

[TonyGosling]

Students outraged as ULU president Michael Chessum arrested in 'attack on the right to protest'

Arrest made after ULU failed to notify police about a demonstration yesterday
Tom Mendelsohn Thursday 14 November 2013 Independent
http://www.independent.co.uk/student/news/students-outraged-as-ulu-pre sident-michael-chessum-arrested-in-attack-on-the-right-to-protest-8940 329.html

A student leader in London has been arrested in a move that has been branded a “clear attack on the right to protest”.

Michael Chessum, president of the University of London Union, was arrested at around lunchtime this afternoon, in connection with a demonstration he had organised the day before in central London, against the planned closure of ULU.

Witnesses claim that Mr Chessum was “intercepted by several police officers” outside the ULU building in Bloomsbury, as he made his way back from a meeting with University of London management. He was taken to Holborn Police Station.

In a statement, ULU said: “This is a clear attack on the right to protest. It is a transparent and shameful attempt to intimidate students from demonstrating against the actions of university management.”

Dan Cooper, the vice-president of ULU, told The Independent that he believes Mr Chessum was arrested “on the grounds that ULU failed to properly notify police of yesterday’s demonstration”.

“We think this is a disgraceful act of intimidation, and call on the University of London to intervene and help get Michael released,” he said.

A spokesperson for the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts said: that "NCAFC utterly condemns this shameful arrest”.

He added: “At this time of police repression and the withering of our democratic rights it is vital that as students we stand firm and defend our right to protest and freedom of association.

"The demonstration Michael helped organise in his role as ULU President was peaceful and part of a proud history of student dissent. The students protest didn't even leave the pavement for goodness sake!"

The Metropolitan Police confirmed that “a 24-year-old man was arrested under Section 11 of the Public Order Act” today.

A group of around 60 or so students had gathered at Holborn Police Station at 4:30 this evening, in protest at the arrest.

[TonyGosling]

Councils to be given powers to ban peaceful protests that might disturb local residents
Anger mounts at ‘shockingly open-ended’ Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill that could also see youngsters banned from skateboarding, forbid teenagers from using local parks and prevent demonstrators from gathering outside council offices
Nigel Morris Friday 15 November 2013
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/councils-to-be-given-pow ers-to-ban-peaceful-protests-that-might-disturb-local-residents-894053 5.html
Peaceful protests could be outlawed on the sole grounds that they might annoy nearby residents under contentious new powers being granted to councils, campaign groups warn.
The “shockingly open-ended” orders could also be used to ban youngsters from skateboarding, forbid teenagers from using local parks and prevent demonstrators from gathering outside council offices, it has been claimed.
The powers are contained within a little-noticed section of the Government’s Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill, which is currently going through Parliament.
The new public spaces protection orders (PSPOs) are intended to give town halls the authority to tackle drinking, aggressive begging, and dog-fouling, in specified areas. The Home Office said it would stop public spaces being turned into “no-go zones”.
But campaigners claim that the legislation is so loosely worded that the new powers could be used to stifle legitimate demonstrations and criminalise youngsters.
They raised the alarm on the 30th anniversary of the women’s peace camp being set up at Greenham Common in Berkshire, which critics claimed was the sort of protest that could be thwarted by the new powers.
Concerns about the illiberal nature of some of the Bill’s provisions centre on plans to establish PSPOs, which are replacing alcohol-control zones, dog-control orders and gating orders as well as local by-laws.
They can be used by councils, following consultation with police, to restrict any activity deemed to have a “detrimental effect on the quality of life of those in the locality”.
The vague wording, and the failure to define the size of the areas to be covered, has led to fears they could be deployed to impose blanket bans on lawful activities.
People falling foul of the new restrictions would then be punished with on-the-spot fines, which could be issued by private security guards working on commission for councils.
The orders, which would last for up to three years, would be directed at “all persons or only to persons in specified categories”, a stipulation that has raised fears that certain groups – such as trade unionists or rough sleepers – could be discriminated against.
They could, for instance, be used to ban young or homeless people from a park.
The scheme appears driven by the Government’s commitment to a “localism” agenda and its determination to reduce the bureaucracy facing town halls.
The Home Office’s risk assessment of the measure acknowledged it could increase pressure on police, courts and prisons, but said the impact could be mitigated by the use of on-the-spot fines.
Peers are planning an attempt next week to amend the plans as they scrutinise the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill.
Josie Appleton, the convener of the civil-liberties group the Manifesto Club, said: “This Bill has shockingly open-ended powers within it that could allow councils to ban everything from protests, to outdoor public meetings, to children’s skateboarding. The list is endless.
“The Home Office say they don’t think councils will use the law in this way, but this is not good enough. They should not be handing councils open-ended powers in the first place.
“While people will have the right to appeal, the processes involved are so expensive and complex that they will be beyond the reach of most protest groups.”
Isabella Sankey, the policy director for Liberty, said: “These next-generation antisocial-behaviour powers are bigger and badder than ever.
“Dangerously broad powers granted to regulate the ‘quality of life’ of the community will allow local authorities effectively to shut down activity in public places. Just like stop-and-search without suspicion, the collateral damage will be peaceful protest and other basic rights and freedoms.”
Janet Davis, the senior policy officer at the Ramblers Association, said she was worried that the orders could be applied to areas traditionally used for leisure and recreation.
“They could be used on wide-open areas, they could be used on commons, any land to which the public has access,” she said.
But Norman Baker, the minister responsible for crime prevention, said: “The Coalition Government is simplifying the complex array of antisocial powers introduced by the last government.
“This power will make it easier to stop the behaviour of those who act antisocially, turning our public spaces into no-go zones.
“It is not aimed at restricting legitimate users, such as walkers, whose activities are in fact better protected by this power than by the restrictive gating orders it replaces.
“Local authorities will consult ahead of putting an order in place and those affected will be able to appeal if they feel the order is not valid.

Protests that might never have been…
* Activists from Occupy London set up camp in October 2011 outside St Paul’s Cathedral to protest against corporate greed in the City and inequalities. Bailiffs moved in to clear the site the following February.
* The late anti-war protester Brian Haw first pitched his tent outside the Houses of Parliament in 2001 as Britain joined military action in Afghanistan. He was rapidly joined by large numbers of sympathisers, who remained for another two years after his death in 2011.
* Climate-change campaigners organised an eight-day-long protest in 2007 against airport expansion outside Heathrow. Similar demonstrations were mounted at Stansted airport, Essex.

[fish5133]

And they are suggesting now that all Police wear body cameras to video there activities

[Whitehall_Bin_Men]

Police State UK: The Rights You Didn’t Know You’d Lost
Scriptonite Daily / March 19, 2013
http://www.scriptonitedaily.com/2013/03/19/police-state-uk-the-rights- you-didnt-know-youd-lost/

Recent decades have seen a dramatic curtailing of hard won civil liberties. These restrictions have been inadvertently cushioned by the expansion of the internet and the ability to exercise some of these rights by proxy on the web. Today we look at the scale of the civil liberties confiscations.

What are Civil Liberties Anyway?

“Civil liberties is another name for the political freedoms that we must have available to us all if it to be true to say of us that we live in a society that adheres to the principle of representative, or democratic, government.” ~ Professor Conor Gearty

These liberties can loosely be described as the right to vote, the right to life, the prohibition of torture, security of the person, the right to personal liberty and due process of law, freedom of expression and freedom of association.

In the UK they were developed through the English Charter of Liberties which extended rights to the nobility and church officials from 1100AD. Between 1213 and 1215AD groups from across England came together to draft the Magna Carta which extended a fuller group of protections and rights out to further groups. The 18th and 19th centuries saw workers movements develop to enshrine labour conditions and the rights to collective bargaining through unions and the right to strike. The first and second world wars motivated a final revolution in civil liberties including rights to healthcare, education, equal opportunities in the workplace and so on. In 1998, New Labour signed the European Convention on Human Rights into British Law with the Human Rights Act. This meant that there was legal underpinning to this bill of rights, which enshrined our civil liberties.

But before and since 1998, these rights have been eroded at a terrifying pace, particularly compared with the glacial rate at which they developed in the first place.

The ability to express our thoughts in blogs and rally in protest by hashtag may have numbed us to the reality of a bonfire of our liberties. We’ve been tweeting while Rome burned.

Personal Liberty and Due Process before the Law

PS3

Since 1649 and the passing of the Habeas Corpus Act, citizens have been protected from false and arbitrary imprisonment and restriction of their personal liberty by the presumption of innocence until proof of their guilt is established by a jury of their peers in an independent court. Yet successive governments have passed legislation which seriously undermines this principle, and allows the state and its police force to restrict liberty and confine citizens without interference by the courts.

Detention without Charge

Prior to 1984, a person could not be held by police for longer than 24 hours without a criminal charge being made against them. The Thatcher government extended this to four days. New Labour extended this first to seven days, then to 14 days, and finally sought the power to detain citizens without charge for up to 90 days, at the request of the police. Whilst the Blair government was defeated on 90 days, the period was doubled nevertheless to 28 day. The Coalition allowed this legislation to expire in 2011, returning the period to 14 days, only to apply for permission to extend to 28 days in the same year.

Meanwhile, the Anti Terrorism and Security Act 2001 allowed for indefinite detention of non British citizens suspected of committing terrorist acts, where there was not enough evidence to proceed to a court of law.

Unlawful Imprisonment

The Control Orders passed in the Terrorism Act 2006 meant anybody suspected of terrorist related activities by the Home Secretary, but without any kind of trial, can be electronically tagged, monitored, be restricted from making phone calls, using the internet, be banned from certain kinds of work, can be restricted from going certain places, have one’s passport revoked and be under a duty to report to the police.

The current government did not extend the life of Control Orders, but replaced them with TPIMS. This saw two improvements, a two year time limit and approval of a judge required. However, a recent review of TPIMS reported that the burden of proof required to administer such an order was too low and that the extreme restrictions were neither necessary nor working.

Secret Courts

The 700 year old UK tradition of open justice has been withering on the vine with successive legislation since 1997 which allowed ‘Closed Material Proceedings’ or Secret Courts into the Justice system. First introduced in 1997 for immigration trials, they were later used for Control Order and TPIM related charges. Yet, in a stunning move this month, the Coalition government and parliament approved legislation to apply Secret Courts in civil cases. Henceforth, if a citizen takes the British government or its officials to court in cases of torture, rendition, or a whole host of other reasons, the government is able to present evidence to the judge which the claimant, defendant, media and public will never be privy to. It will allow the government to resist due scrutiny for its role in torture, rendition and other crimes. The Rev Nicholas Mercer, a lieutenant colonel who was the army’s most senior lawyer during the last Iraq war, told the Daily Mail:

“The justice and security bill has one principal aim and that is to cover up UK complicity in rendition and torture. The bill is an affront to the open justice on which this country rightly prides itself and, above all, it is an affront to human dignity.”

Freedom of Expression and Assembly

PS4

Perhaps the most readily noticeable restrictions on our liberties to those engaged in campaign and protest, has been in the arena of Freedom of Expression and Assembly. The rise in so called ‘anti-terror’ legislation throughout the period of the New Labour government has had a massive impact on our ability to organise sizable demonstrations, marches and actions without the threat of increasing militarised police force.

Right to Protest

Thatcher’s Public Order Act 1986 sought to prevent the effectiveness of public protest (such as the Miners Strike) by making it law that in order to be lawful, protest organisers had to give police six days advance notice of their action. Since this time, successive governments have used upgrades to the Public Order Act to undermine the right to peaceful protest.

The Serious and Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 granted a number of powers to police and restrictions on protesters.

In response to the protest of Brian Haw who spoke to parliament from Parliament Square for several years as a protest against the crimes of the Iraq War, the Act applied special restrictions on protest within a designated area of 1km of any point of Parliament Square. Basically, it is now almost impossible to protest outside our parliament without being arrested.

The Act created a new offence of trespassing on a designated site. The site can be Crown Land, land that belongs to the monarch or heir to the throne or land a secretary of state believes is appropriate for designation in the interests of national security.

The Act also made all offences arrestable. Previously a police officer had to determine whether he suspected a person of committing a non-arrestable, arrestable or serious arrestable offence. The powers available flowed from that determination.

There has also been a gradual militarisation of the police force which has been armed with ever escalating toolkit of measures and devices to quell dissent in the streets. These methods involve:

Kettling - you can see an example here.

Snatch & Grab Arrests – Groups of police form a moving corridor into the protest, the front officers of which grab protesters at random. These arrests can also be made at police lines outside a kettle, or by plain clothes police in advance of protests (arrest occurs at 25 seconds in).

Agent Provocateurs and Violence – This was witnessed at the 2010 student protests where agent provocateurs were filmed running into the crowds, pushing , pulling and kicking student protesters in order to generate violent conditions. One student, Alfie Meadows ended up in hospital requiring brain surgery after a police officer beat him with a baton. . Instead of the police officer facing the courts, Alfie was charged with violent disorder. He was finally acquitted just this month by a jury who agreed he was defending himself and other protesters.

Martial Law & Emergency Powers

Since the Bill of Rights Act 1689, it has been illegal for the UK government to dispatch the armed forces to British streets during peace time without the consent of parliament. For hundreds of years we have lived under an agreement that citizens dissenting the government faced police, not the armed forces. The Civil Contingencies Act 2004 ended this tradition. The Act means that a range of emergency powers can be applied by approval of The Queen (the Government) which would suspend the Bill of Rights 1689, Habeas Corpus, the Parliament Act 1911 (which restricts a parliament to five year terms) and others for a period of up to 21 days at a time.

The Surveillance State

PS5

The exponential rise in surveillance permitted by law in the UK makes astounding reading. Until 1986 there were severe restrictions on the police and state ability to surveil its citizens; phone tapping and the interception of private communications were inadmissible in courts and heavily penalised. However, since 1986, an altogether different approach has been adopted.

The Thatcher governments Interception of Communications Act 1985 gave permission for phone tapping. These permissions and other communication interception measures were approved in 1994 and 1997. However, the era of New Labour saw a massive roll out in surveillance under the guise of the war on terror.

The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 allowed the government full surveillance powers over all kinds of communications. The acts main provisions allow five new categories of surveillance from bugging of phones to spying and intercepting of communications. It allows the Home Secretary to issue an interception warrant to examine the contents of letters or communications on various grounds including in the interests of the economic well-being of the United Kingdom. It also prevents the existence of interception warrants, and any and all data collected with them from being revealed in court.

It allows the police, intelligence services, HM Revenue and Customs (and several hundred more public bodies, including local authorities and a wide range of regulators) to demand telephone, internet and postal service providers to hand over detailed communications records for individual users. This can include name and address, phone calls made and received, source and destination of emails, internet browsing information and mobile phone positioning data that records user’s location. These powers are self-authorised by the body concerned, with no external or judicial oversight.

These powers have been extensively overused by police, councils and other enforcement agencies. It has rightly been deemed as a ‘snooper’s charter’. The current rate is 30 warrants being issued a week. In the 15 months from July 2005 to October 2006, 2407 warrants were issued. Some of the most egregious cases of misuse include: a council in Dorset putting three children and their parents under surveillance to check they were in the catchment area for the school they had applied to. The council has directly surveilled the family 21 times; other councils have launched undercover operations on dog fouling and fly tipping.

There has also been a rise in CCTV operations, or the filming of people in public spaces. Britain has gone from zero to over 4 million CCTV cameras in recent decades. The country has a higher number of cameras than China despite being a small fraction of the size. Cameras are also increasingly hidden and disguised as light fittings, plant pots and other innocuous items in our urban landscape. But surely if the aim was to prevent crime, the cameras would be clearly visible?

Despite all this surveillance, there is less than one arrest per day as a result of CCTV footage. This corroborates the arguments of the arguments of those who suggest these cameras have more to do with state surveillance than public safety.

Knowledge is Power

PS6

As a result of these infringements, more and more people are being arrested and put through the court process for simply exercising their dissent. Recent notable cases include the convictions of Critical Mass for cycling on the evening of the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics, and Bethan Tichbourne who was arrested, convicted, receiving both a criminal record and a fine under Public Order laws for shouting ‘Cameron has blood on his hands’ while the Prime Minister turned on the Christmas lights in her town. It is time to realise that internet freedom is not enough and is itself in peril. We ignore the continued erosion of our rights at our peril. With the Conservative Party promising to abolish the Human Rights Act if it wins the next election, we are looking at the revocation of the legal underpinning of our civil liberties entirely. It is time to pay attention.

[Whitehall_Bin_Men]

Wow! Manchester Chief Constable agrees!

The battle against extremism could lead to a “drift towards a police state” in which officers are turned into “thought police”, one of Britain’s most senior chief constables has warned.

Sir Peter Fahy, chief constable of Greater Manchester, said police were being left to decide what is acceptable free speech as the efforts against radicalisation and a severe threat of terrorist attack intensify.

It is politicians, academics and others in civil society who have to define what counts as extremist ideas, he says.

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/dec/05/peter-fahy-police-state -warning

[outsider]

[outsider]

Why are London’s Police Travelling to Israel? American and British Police Trained in Israel:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/why-are-londons-police-travelling-to-isra el-american-and-british-police-trained-in-israel/5418432

'In the six month period from 1st March 2014 to 31st August 2014, Eighty of London’s Metropolitan Police staff travelled to Israel. This period coincides with Operation Protective Edge, the recent bombardment and massacre of of over 2000 Palestinians in Gaza.

Recently it was revealed that the Israeli army is systematically training US police forced in tactics and strategy developed as an occupying army. Has the same or similar service been provided to European police forces?

The Metropolitan Police will not reveal the purpose of the trips to Israel or the rank of the staff that travelled. A reason given for withholding the information is that it would “have the effect of compromising law enforcement tactics and strategies ”. However, If the Metropolitan Police are learning inappropriate tactics and strategy to use on London civilians then, it is for that very reason, that this information should be released into the public domain.

If it’s the reverse and the police are teaching tactics and strategy to Israel in the context of its illegal occupation then it shows a level of involvement in the occupation that was hitherto hidden and may imply criminal behaviour according to international law.


“when your police come back, you become their enemy”.....'

[Whitehall_Bin_Men]

Rather than arresting Tory elite establishment paedophiles & murderers
Theresa May is abusing power to turn us all into 'terrorists' http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/home-secretary-faces-tor y-backlash-on-counterterrorism-9955989.html

[outsider]

[TonyGosling]

City of London police get power to tap into CCTV
http://www.channel4.com/news/cctv-police-city-of-london-technology-xtr alis

GEOFF WHITE - Technology producer
City of London police are to trial a new technology that allows officers to receive CCTV film in real time - an innovation used ahead of French police storming the besieged kosher store in Paris.

Police in London are being given the power to tap into CCTV, as well as receiving live footage from officers on patrol, as part of a unique trial of new technology.

City of London police will be able to take CCTV footage from consenting shops and businesses and send it in real time to an officer.

Similar tactics were used last week in the lead-up to the raid by French police on a Jewish supermarket. Five people died, including the hostage-taker, but the ability to see inside the shop was seen as a vital piece of intelligence in preparation for breaking the siege.

Xtralis, based in Hemel Hempstead, has developed technology that can send CCTV footage from willing participants to City of London police officers' phones or tablet computers. Many businesses have cameras which can move and zoom in, effectively allowing police to follow a target on their screen as they try to locate it.

Body-mounted cameras
The trial, which will last around a month, will also see dozens of the force's officers issued with body-mounted cameras that will feed back video and sound live to a central control room. Other forces have rolled out cameras on uniforms, but the City force will be the first to get a live feed from the devices.

Those backing the technology believe it will avoid situations like that in Ferguson in the US, where conflicting accounts of the shooting of a young black man resulted in months of violent protest.

"I think the public are looking for complete transparency from police stations," said Imran Aziz of Xtralis. "A lot of firearms teams are under a lot of scrutiny in terms of making sure the information is transparent and readily available very quickly.

"This technology allows the police force to get the live information from the situation occurring, make a decision with the best information available and be able to tell the public very openly, that we saw this information, we were able to see that incident taking place and we made this informed decision."

'Privacy intrusion'
But the prospect of turning officers into walking CCTV cameras has sparked concern among privacy campaigners. And guidance from the privacy watchdog, the Information Commissioner's Office, states that audio recording "adds to privacy intrusion".

Emma Carr, director of Big Brother Watch, said: "If someone's actively watching a camera, especially if it's on constantly and it's recording people's conversations, then that adds additional privacy concerns to people who might just want to talk to a police officer to raise general concerns or might be walking past having normal conversation."

City of London Police say officers will tell people when they're recording, the camera will show a red light and be clearly labelled.

[outsider]

We are on the way, but still a good way behind the 'United Satan'!

Police Murders Of Civilians Continue -- 4 Murders Captured On Video:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/1/Police-Murders-Of-Civilian-by-Garla nd-Favorito-2014_Accountability_Credibility_Crime-150205-322.html

[TonyGosling]

ladies and gentlemen
its here

INSURGE INTELLIGENCE, a new crowd-funded investigative journalism project, explores the dystopian implications of Britain’s new Counter Terrorism and Security Bill, and the efforts to rush it through without public scrutiny.
https://medium.com/@NafeezAhmed/preventing-dissent-27efd26191a9

Counter-terrorism experts who have worked on the frontlines of the UK’s battle against extremism reveal exclusively to INSURGE how the proposed new powers, far from making Britain safer, will criminalise legitimate political dissent and fail to prevent the next terrorist attack — despite generating stupendous profits for a parastical security industry.



In the UK, an insidious secret network of violent extremists is plotting to subvert democracy. The members of this network detest our way of life, and hate our freedoms. Walking amongst us, this dangerous fifth column is exploiting the very laws we hold dear to campaign for the establishment of an extremist, totalitarian state that would police every aspect of our lives based on a fanatical ideology that is devoid of reason.

No, the ‘Islamic State’ is not about to conquer Great Britain. But the neocons in government and industry who profit from fear might well be.

In the name of fighting terror, the UK government, hand-in-hand with the US, is leading the way to turn freedom of speech and dissent into mere formalities that, in practice, have no place in societies that will function, effectively, as full-fledged police-states.

Today, the British government’s controversial Counter Terrorism and Security (CTS) Bill received Royal Assent, after having been passed by the House of Commons on 10th February with minor amendments.

“This important legislation will disrupt the ability of people to travel abroad to fight and then return, enhance our ability to monitor and control the actions of those who pose a threat, and combat the underlying ideology that feeds, supports and sanctions terrorism,” said UK Home Secretary Theresa May.

The powers of the new legislation are unprecedented. The government will be able to unilaterally confiscate passports of British citizens suspected of involvement in terrorism, although the threshold for what exactly constitutes a reasonable suspicion is ambiguous.

Terror suspects, deemed as such not on the basis of a fair trial, but purely through secret ‘hearings’ based on secret evidence provided by security service ‘assessments,’ can already be subjected to constant monitoring, electronic tagging, travel bans, limited house arrest, and curfews under Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures. The CST bill will now add forced relocation to that mix.

Police and security services will have enhanced powers of surveillance, including the ability to identify the devices that send communications over the internet.

But perhaps the most outrageous element of the CTS bill is the ‘prevent duty,’ the establishment of a statutory duty on all public sector workers — teachers, lecturers, nurses, GPs and other professionals — to prevent extremism in their institutions. They will have to do that by monitoring nursery children, school children, students, patients, and so on for signs of being at risk to radicalisation.

The ‘prevent duty’ puts the Home Office’s Channel Programme, a scheme coordinated by the Metropolitan Police in certain parts of the UK, on a national legal footing. Under the programme, individuals identified as extreme, or being ‘at risk’ of extremism, must be referred to Channel, which will make an assessment to determine whether the referred individual requires an intervention to deradicalise them, and the kind of intervention they will make.

In 2013, I revealed that the Channel Programme was a covert intelligence gathering exercise. Officially, the government and police claim that people who are referred to Channel are not kept on a database. However, I was told by a former Channel coordinator at a local authority that the Programme did in fact maintain a secret logging system to store all names and profiles of those referred, contrary to public claims.

The government’s new ‘prevent duty’ guidance shows that under the new bill, the government is hoping to retroactively legitimise the secret logging programme in law:

“We expect local authorities to use the existing counter-terrorism local profiles (CTLPs), produced for every region by the police, to begin to assess the risk of individuals being drawn into terrorism. This includes not just violent extremism but also non-violent extremism.”
Risk assessments must be “informed by engagement with Prevent coordinators, schools, universities, colleges, local prisons, probation services, health, immigration enforcement and others.” The guidance also demands the same from university institutions in “assessing where and how students might be at risk” from violent and non-violent extremism.

Whereas previously, Channel Programme officers have gone to pains to deny the storage of such information about people suspected of being “at-risk,” the government’s new guidance repeatedly does the opposite, setting out the need for robust procedures for “internal and external information sharing” between agencies “about vulnerable individuals.” The upshot is that the new bill is designed to slip through by stealth the legalisation of ongoing storage of risk assessment profiles of referred individuals.



Thought police

In 2011, the coalition government changed its ‘Preventing Violent Extremism’ (Prevent) strategy to focus not just on terrorism, but “also non-violent extremism, which can create an atmosphere conducive to terrorism and can popularise views which terrorists exploit.”

The new definition of “extremism,” though, is so broad, it could include a range of views held widely across British society, categorised as ideas that “terrorists exploit” (especially scepticism toward British foreign policy):

“Extremism is vocal or active opposition to fundamental British values, including democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs.”
This definition, though, which was criticised last year by Greater Manchester Police chief, Sir Peter Fahy, as being so vague it had turned police into “thought police,” opens the door wide to casting suspicion on anyone raising ideas critical of British policy.

Apathy with democracy has become widespread, especially among young people, as illustrated by the popularity of celebrity comedian Russell Brand’s opposition to voting as a viable means of effecting change. Numerous civil society and human rights groups regularly criticise the British government’s interpretation and execution of both domestic and international law, including encroachment on civil liberties as well as foreign policies justified in the name of ‘British values.’

Charles Shoebridge, a former British counter-terrorism intelligence officer, expressed scepticism of the new powers:

“The lack of any clear definition of ‘extremism’, and an understandable desire not to fall foul of legal obligations, are likely to mean workers erring on the side of caution and submitting reports on any adult or child expressing views not only that the worker himself considers ‘extreme’, but also that he considers anyone else might consider ‘extreme’ too. This could therefore conceivably include almost any expression of opinion not considered mainstream — and not only in relation to Islam, but to discussion of almost any aspect of political or religious discourse.”
In its submission to the British government’s Prevent guidance consultation process last month, the London-based Campaign Against Criminalising Communities (CAMPACC) noted that anti-terror legislation had already been abused by the government to support “oppressive regimes allied with the UK” and to persecute opponents of those regimes inside Britain.

The CAMPACC briefing highlighted the examples of “Turkey’s oppression of Kurdish separatists, Sri Lanka’s oppression of Tamil minorities, Israel’s attacks on the democratically elected Hamas government of Gaza, etc. More recently, these powers have been used against UK Kurds suspected of joining the anti-ISIS resistance in Syria.”

[outsider]

One very nasty angle of the 'Police State': cops assisting Council steal kids from loving home, harass mother into leaving the country (actually, they wanted to arrest her, but she escaped, as did her 'McKenzie Friend', also harassed by the Brit Gestapo:

WARNING: keep handkerchiefs handy:

The children’s Grandparents give their side of the story:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pF1ewVyHMVw

RCJ, 17 Feb 2015, Day 1 of a ‘Fact-finding’ hearing of a case of Satanic Ritual Abuse:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-u1VzxWQoo

For more info:
http://www.theknightfoundation.org.uk/home/

[TonyGosling]

Command and control contract for Britain's armed nuclear police outsourced to Capita

Capita will provide support for firearms commanders
JON STONE Author Biography Monday 18 May 2015
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/command-and-control-cont ract-for-britains-armed-nuclear-police-outsourced-to-capita-10258611.h tml

A contract for the command and control centre of Britain's heavily armed nuclear police is being outsourced to the private company Capita.

The outsourcing giant is to play a support role at the command centre of the Civil Nuclear Constabulary, a heavily-armed special police service that protects nuclear power plants, waste dumps, and nuclear material in transit.

The takeover will see Capita provide specialist support staff for the command centre’s systems and provide "enhanced support" to firearms commanders.

Most of the CNC’s officers are trained in the use of firearms and its officers are routinely equipped with assault rifles in their regular line of duty.

The force is not involved in Britain’s Trident nuclear weapons system, which comes under the jurisdiction of the armed forces.

Last year it was reported that a Capita-run army recruitment project beset by IT disasters and missed targets had made the firm over £100m of public money in a two-year period.

In February of this year the Independent also revealed that Whitehall officials were looking into concerns regarding a contract taken by Capita and the outsourcing giant’s effect on smaller suppliers.

A spokesperson for the Civil Nuclear Constabulary said: “After the usual procurement procedures, the CNC has awarded the contract to supply a replacement command and control system to Capita.

“The new system will provide enhanced support to our firearms commanders, all of whom are trained and accredited to the national standards as required by our College of Policing license”.

The command centre project is expected to be completed in 2016/17. The force’s command staff will remain in-house with Capita’s acting in a support role.

Separately today the Royal Navy is investigating claims by a whistle-blower that there is a “complete lack of concern for security” at Britain’s military nuclear bases – which are not covered by the civil nuclear police.

The Independent reported in March that there had been over 400 “widespread” nuclear safety events relating to a “poor safety culture” at the military compound.

In 12 of these cases the problems involved an “actual or high” risk of unplanned exposure to radiation or contained release of radiation within a building or submarine, according to information released by ministers at the time.

A spokesperson for Capita did not provide a comment on the command and control contract but said they were not aware of any Cabinet Office investigation into previous government contracts.

[outsider]

With Cameron's promised crackdown on Human Rights and dissent (dressed up as akin to 'Terrorism'), 'a 'Radical Labour Party' is probably the best we can hope for: I suggest we support John McDonnell's initiative:

'Dear Colleague,

Radical Labour

Let's transform this leadership election into a real debate about the future of socialism, our party and our country

Yesterday’s launch of Radical Labour has been met with a wealth of progressive policy suggestions and a genuine desire to engage in meaningful debate around the future of our country.

Today we have submitted an impassioned plea from Vince Mills, the chair of the Scottish Labour Campaign for Socialism, for Scottish Labour to now re-discover its purpose. The article is published under the analysis section of website and comments can be made when accessing the piece via the drop-down menu.


To help stimulate a more progressive, frank debate around the future of our movement within this leadership debate please share the website as widely as possible on social media.

Feel free to email me your comments on radical-labour@hotmail.com.

Yours,

John McDonnell MP

www.radical-labour.co.uk

[outsider]