Loss of Privacy

The Home Office is now trialing a new technology that would allow police to stop stolen vehicles with text messages.

Should it be deemed successful, police would have the power to stop cars remotely, providing an alternative to the use of more crude vehicle-capturing techniques such as stingers, and reducing the need for high speed car chases.

This trial forms just part of the Home Office’s effort to reduce the number of civilian and police deaths resulting from high speed pursuits; they have also appealed to a number of independent companies for suggestions as to other ‘vehicle stopping’ technologies that could be implemented on a wide scale basis.

While the motive may be of good intentions, this technology will only work until someone hacks the system and it can be taken over by criminals. There are several problems with this system that the police, and the UK government, haven’t even thought of yet.

First, a terrorist strike would be easy. Stop all the cars on one particular motorway. Blow up the area with a bomb. Since all cars are now stopped, rescue vehicles won’t be able to save the injured.

Second, with the technology hacked, carjackers can stop the car of their choice. If the system has been hacked, it will be easy to turn it one and off, thus allowing carjackers to flee with their shiny, new vehicles.

Third, if you don’t want the police to have this sort of control over you, then you can purchase one of these and one of these for less than $65 total.

Fourth, what happens when the police text the wrong car and cause an accident?

Since car immobilizers already exist and are in use, what is the point of this device other than to create new crimes for the criminals?

New proposals from the UK police aim to make anyone who has bought a rail ticket to have automatically consented to a search of themselves and their belongings.

Senior British Transport police officials told MPs today that they wanted to change the railways’ “conditions of carriage” to close a loophole that means officers using mobile knife-detecting arches at stations have no legal power to search someone who sets them off unless they have a reasonable suspicion that they are breaking the law.

Wait a minute.  You have metal detectors at railway stations and when they are triggered, you don’t have the option of searching the person who set them off?  Low paid airport security have more authority than the British transport police?

They can close the loophole by simply allowing anyone who sets the detector off to be searched.  You don’t have to make a blanket search law.

Assistant Chief Constable Paul Crowther of British Transport police told the Commons home affairs select committee that, as the law stood, it often made more sense to search passengers who deliberately avoided going through the arches.

WTF?  You can search people who avoid the arches, but not those who set them off?  You don’t need an extra law to will focus on everyone.  You need the idiots in charge to be fired and replaced with people who think logically.

From now on, no journalist or ordinary citizen can request Freedom of Information access to an MPs’ expenses.  It appears that, somehow, they are top secret and we can’t see an itemized list anymore.

The decision was announced in a parliamentary order today published at the same time as the government announced controversial decisions on the third runway at Heathrow and compensation for millions of Equitable Life policyholders.

It comes just as MPs were about to be forced, following a victory by campaigners at an information tribunal, to publish 1.2m expenses receipts, covering the period between 2005 and 2008.

I guess the government can’t take its own advice on the “if you’ve got nothing to hide” argument they are always throwing back at British citizens.  Do as I say, not as I do.

Beginning in March, the UK government will begin its flawed plan to keep track of every email, phone call, and text message in the country for a year.

The Home Office insists the data will not contain the email content but data about when and where it was sent. But of course we all known that it is quite possible to work out quite a lot from email headers. This data will be accessible by over 600 public bodies, such as the police and councils, if they make a “valid” request.

Dr Richard Clayton, a security researcher at the University of Cambridge’s computer lab, points out that this will include all the spam out there and would rather see more focused online policing than catch-all initiatives like this. Of course, once the government has this power, they will not draw back from it, and most likely extend it once again, as governments are want to do.

For now, it’s possible to keep your email on a server outside the UK, but for how long?

“…with one hand the government seeks to lock down the British Internet with an iron fist, while at the same time telling us it is boosting innovation and business online. It is quite clearly blind to the fact that one affects the other. Are we also expected to think that the consumers using online services are not going to be put off from engaging in the boom of ‘sharing’ that Web 2.0 created? How would you feel if every Twitter you sent, every video uploaded, was to be stored and held against you in perpetuity? That may not happen, but the mere suggestion that your email is no longer private would serve to kill the UK population’s relish for new media stone dead, and with it large swathes of the developing online economy.”

Sadly, I already assume that, whatever I do online, someone, somewhere is logging the information, waiting for a time when they can throw it back on me and make me look like a jackass.

The British government already have enough lame excuses to snoop on you without justification.  They don’t need anymore.

Make your voices heard.  Get involved with The Open Rights Group.  Sign an online petition.  Participate in Hack the Government.  Write your MPs.  You can also call or write to the Home Office or the Labour Party directly.

Home Office, Direct Communications Unit
2 Marsham Street
London SW1P 4DF
Tel: 020 7035 4848
Email: public.enquiries@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk
The Labour Party
Eldon House
Regent Centre
Newcastle Upon Tyne NE3 3PW
Tel: 08705 900 200

Put pressure on your politicians.  If they realize that they will be out of a job because of it, they will back down.

It’s no secret that there is a huge gap between organ donators and those who need organs.  Many people want to donate their organs, they simple never get around to actually filling out the paperwork do to it, thus the reason the UK is now contemplating a scheme that would assume organ donation unless an individual specifically states they do not wish to do so.

Naturally, in other countries where organ donation is presumed, their donations are higher.

While I normally hate opt-out programs, the fact that most people want to donate but are too lazy to get around to filling out the paperwork, this seems to be a good idea.