Viewscreens are coming

Civil Liberties, anonymity, internet, technology, terrorism No Responses »
Mar 292010

This post is going to link to quite a few old articles as every time I’m about to write it something new adds to the pile of stuff that needs to be included. So it’s time I accepted the pace of things happening is just too fast and I should try to tie a few bits together knowing it’s all going to be out of date before I hit publish.

The Government has a love hate relationship with the Internet, it loves the amount of data and control it could give over us but hates the fact that it allows people to talk to each other and exchange ideas. As such they have to pursue a multi-pronged approach to the Internet, make sure that everyone is connected and then make sure they control what we do and see. It sounds fanciful I’ll admit but sadly it does rather add up.

Consider that the Government wants as many people on line as possible which makes sense as they also want us all to have our very own personalised website for dealing with the government (H/T Old Holborn) – perhaps with links to online terrorist reporting or other such important civic tools. If you’ve not got a computer they’ll buy a laptop for you, which will probably have webcams which if activities in the US are anything to go by, which will be used to monitor you for “improper behaviour”. Perhaps as is already happening with CCTV cameras operators monitoring your behaviour will issue a warning. Of course I’d fully expect these personal websites to feed into CRB checks, and for security purposes you’ll no doubt (after a few suitable scares) need an ID card to login.

To make things even more like ” 1984″ housing estates are being built with their own Broadcasting channels and giant TV screens, to go with all those screens being installed in schools and doctors surgeries (along with yet more CCTV cameras), showing government information films.

The other main prong as mentioned is control, well:

Falling back to using old fashioned post to communicate and thus avoiding the internet won’t I’m afraid help.

Meanwhile out in the real world we’re already being made to walk through check points when wandering around our cities during police “lock downs”. To put aside any concerns over exaggeration as to how bad things have got even the Information Commissioners Office are saying “that we are in fact waking up to a surveillance society that is already all around us.”. Just to make that surveillance easier the Government is working on tracking us via our mobile phones, even with out that it’s already very difficult to disappear.

All in all it does rather add up to a quite unpleasant state of affairs

Posted by Giolla at 21:05 Tagged with: , , , , ,

We've taken care of everything - The words you hear, the songs you sing

Civil Liberties 2 Responses »
Mar 172010

Not quite the thought police but step by step we’re getting there. The Portsmouth News (Via The Register) is reporting a musician who was taken off a train to explain a song list he was writing which was read over his shoulder by (presumably actual) transport police.

Though at least this time they didn’t use the terrorism excuse but instead it was because there had “been a ‘number of arrests’ nearby including one man who had killed his wife.“. It’s probably just as well he wasn’t in a folk group, anyone singing traditional ditties staggering home tonight had best be careful.

On the bright side at least he didn’t have a camera with him, then he’d have been in real trouble.

Posted by Giolla at 16:10 Tagged with: , ,

Not a terrorist? - doesn't matter

Civil Liberties, photography, terrorism No Responses »
Feb 222010

Via Old Holborn on Facebook and already picked up on by LegIron and Obnoxio it seems that the plastic plod still haven’t got the message about not harassing photographers. Taking photographs of Christmas festivities in that well known security hotspot of Accrington is “Suspicious” behaviour and if you don’t “volunteer” your details when stopped under Section 44 they’ll just get you arrested for anti-social behaviour instead.

Given how many public statements there have been concerning both the police and the plastics abusing their powers in this way, and despite the repeated reminders that “no laws prevent people from photographing buildings” the message just isn’t getting across. It’s almost enough to make you start to wonder if the public message we hear is actually the same one that is being given to the people in uniforms. Also Section 44 applies in designated areas only – so is a shopping centre in Accrington really a designated area or where they just making things up and is there an on-line list of all the designated areas anywhere?

Posted by Giolla at 14:16 Tagged with: , ,

UK Threat level RSS

activism, internet, terrorism No Responses »
Jan 262010

Given the recent change to our required fear level, I was some what surprised to discover that there’s no easy way to be notified as to when we should increase, or even decrease, our level of fear and underlying anxiety. It seems that by some terrible over sight our glorious Government and security forces haven’t made it easy to get notified of when the “current terrorism threat level” changes. As , and I was surprised at this, no one seems to have done so already I put together a little script that monitors the Home Office web site and publishes changes to the “current terrorism threat level” to an RSS feed. Which can then be pulled into all sorts of useful things, such as a blog side bar or anything else for that matter. The feed is deliberately very simple to make it more useful for feeding into other things.

I’ve just discovered the official historical record so I’ll back fill that data, and for future changes I’ll also grab the RSS feed from the BBC news site so we can know at least what was in the headlines at the time.

Anyway for more details either click on the link in the side bar or go here:
http://www.anonymong.org/alert/
or just subscribe to the feed here:
http://www.anonymong.org/alert/alert.rss

Posted by Giolla at 12:02 Tagged with: , ,

Photography in public places the battle continues

Civil Liberties, activism, photography, terrorism No Responses »
Dec 282009

You can tell that the problem with the police harassing photographers for taking pictures in public places is getting serious when 365 establishment photographer write a letter to the Telegraph (hat tip Samizdata). If things get much worse they’ll write to the editor of the Times and use green ink. Now I’m not convinced this will do much good as the disconnect appears to be between the 646 that sit and make laws and those that implement them on the streets as they see fit.

The letter quite reasonably points out that if you were up to no good, you’d probably just use google street view, a camera phone or at most a small compact of some sort and not a hulking great SLR on a tripod. They even make the radical claim that the presensce of such a visible camera might make people thing twice about doing no good in case the very visible human operator took thier photo. Which if you think about it would explain why the police (and news agencies) appeal to the public for any photo’s after major incidents. Though as various commenatators have observed the letter does smell rather of special pleading – that the police shouldn’t pick on “proper” photographers with expensive equipment but feel free to infringe the rights and liberties of those scruffy plebs with the cheap nasty cameras.

Since the anti-terrorism laws have come into force making it allowable to stop and search people, and making it an offence to take photographs “liable to be of use to terrorists”. The police, PCSO and various security gaurds have been using it as an excuse to harrass or beat photographers that have been taking pictures in public of pretty much anything. Just taking photo’s of the outside of iconic landmarks can make you a terror suspect if the local security goons take against you. Of course this has been going on for a while now and has even been debated in parliament back in April 2009 by MP’s who’ve been stopped themselves. There have also been numerous blogs and articles written about it and public demonstrations organised. The home office issued a circular in August 2009 clarifying the situation and restating that it’s not illegal to take photogrpahs in public places, nor is taking photographs on it’s own grounds (if they really think you’re a terrorist they need to use section 43 not section 44). The Met office also updated their guidelines in September also stating that generally people shouldn’t be stopped from taking photographs. Yet despite this ongoing restating of the fact that normal people are in fact allowed to take photographs in public of retty much whatever they like, photographers are still getting routinely stopped. So really I’m expecting this letter to have about as much imapct as the facebook group.

What will probably also have no effect is another demo on 23rd Jan 2010 but still we must keep trying.

Of course on the flip side of this the police are using traffic cameras to harass and limit movement of peaceful protesters as well as building up a photographic data base of people at protests, but they really hate being filmed

Posted by Giolla at 00:56 Tagged with: , , , ,

News for photographers

Civil Liberties, anonymity, laws, photography, terrorism No Responses »
Sep 212009

This just in via FitWatch, the Met have updated their guidelines for stopping and searching terrorists photographers, to clarify that they can only see your photographs if they suspect you of being a terrorist and also that they have no right to delete digital photographs or destroy film. They actually state that twice, with regards to two different sections.

There is also a Home office circular giving clarification. The hesdline of which is:

Important: Section 43 does not prohibit the taking of photographs, film or digital images in a public place and members of the public and the press should not be prevented from doing so in exercise of the powers conferred by section 43.

A police officer can only stop and search a person they reasonably suspect to be a terrorist under this power.

Both the circular and the Met guidelines are quite short so do take the time to read them, then save a copy in case it changes/vanishes and then make sure to tell other people.

Update: The people over at “I’m a photographer not a terrorist” are putting together a rather dandy map of “authorised” areas.

Posted by Giolla at 21:23 Tagged with: , , , ,

Data retention starts today

Civil Liberties, anonymity, internet, laws, technology, terrorism No Responses »
Apr 062009

For those of you that may not have been paying attention the EU directive on data retention comes into force today. This means that from today your ISP will be required by law (The Data Retention (EC Directive) Regulations 2009) to retain data regarding your use of “internet access, internet e-mail or internet telephony” for a year and make it available to the government on request. Technically the regulations use the wonderfully imprecise phrase:

(a) in specific cases, and
(b) in circumstances in which disclosure of the data is permitted or required by law.

so I think on request is probably a fair interpretation.

Ignoring the much simpler aspects regarding telephone calls where all telephone companies must record, who you called, when and for how long as well as in the case of mobile providers your location at the time. From the internet side of things they’ll be recording:

  • your IP address
  • Access time and duration of access (This to my mind shows up pre-broadband thinking, the longer your connection is online the less useful this data).
  • Who you’ve sent email to and when
  • Who you called via internet telephony (skype etc.) and how (Unless they snoop all your traffic which isn’t required I suspect this one applies to the internet telephony provider rather than your ISP

Of course this only applies to “public communications provider” run your own servers in conjunction with some friends and then you won’t be logged, use email providers outside of the EU and you won’t be logged (well not under this law at least). If you have a broadband connection log of as little as possible to reduce the utility of the logs and don’t use your ISP for email, as at the very least you can make it harder for them to join the dots. Also of course it’s worth noting that the original directive states
“This Directive relates only to data generated or processed as a consequence of a communication or a communication service”
so if you use services configured not to generate logs then nothing has to be kept.

Before we blame the EU however it’s worth remembering that it was our Government that asked them to create this rule see this Telegraph article for more background. Though the directive doesn’t contrary to that article seem to actually require that they record the websites you visit. The good news is that the ISPs and Telco’s shouldn’t put up their prices because of this, the bad news is that’s because the government our using our taxes to pay them to spy on us.

Further note despite what Anna Raccoon says and the Various comments (Same article posted to two locations), there doesn’t seem to be any requirement for usage of websites to be logged, it does seem to be “only” VOIP, email and connection to the internet that is to be logged. However if you fancy some spook baiting even though it’s probably not needed or useful then the Landed underclass has some good tips. Some Tory Lords at least are concerned about how this came into effect and where it’s going.

Will update this with further commentary as I stumble upon it, and will correct my interpretation of what is to be logged if I find an explanation of why my interpretation is wrong.

Update Further commentary:
A rather poor interpretation and udnerstanding of the directive from Himmelgarten cafe (hat tip: Charlotte Gore

Update 2
In response to the article from Himmelgarten cafe linked to above it occurred to me that it might be of interest to show people what the logs being retained typically show:

2009-04-06 17:46:02 Message-id <= sendinguser@address H=sending-hostname P=esmtp S=3115
2009-04-06 17:46:02 Message-id => <receiving-user@address> R=userforward T=address_file
2009-04-06 17:46:02 Message-id Completed

The interesting bits are the time stamps and the bits in blue, the bit in red is very trivial to forge. Also when he states that “No help is being offered on paying for the additional storage space.” that would appear to be at odds with what is stated in the directive, but for small email providers it isn’t a huge burden if you only consider the disk space and not back up facilities as each message only takes in the region of 0.5 kb to log.

Posted by Giolla at 13:17 Tagged with: , , , ,
© 2010 Anonymong Suffusion WordPress theme by Sayontan Sinha