Wie real diese Befürchtungen sind, zeigt sich nun am Beispiel Großbritanniens. Dort ist seit 2004 der sogenannte “Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA)” in Kraft, der zahlreiche Überwachungsmaßnahmen geöffnet legitimiert. Die damit einhergehenden Befugnisse werden dabei nicht nur von höchsten Regierungsbehörden ausgeübt, sondern, wie heise News schreibt, von “Hunderten von Behörden und Kommunen [...] bis hinunter zu kommunalen Behörden oder der Feuerwehr”. Dabei gilt beispielsweise für den Zugriff auf die bei der Vorratsdatenspeicherung angefallenen Verbindungsdaten noch nicht einmal ein Richtervorbehalt.

Dies wird von den Behörden offenbar ausgiebig genutzt- wie nicht anders zu erwarten keineswegs nur im Kampf gegen den Terrorismus. Eingeführt, um schwere Verbrechen und Terrorismus zu bekämpfen, können damit nun etwa auch Personen, die im Verdacht stehen, die öffentliche Ordnung zu stören oder die Absicht zu haben, einen Selbstmord zu begehen, ausgeforscht werden, berichtet heise zu diesem Thema.

Die Sicherheitsbehörden betonen die Notwendigkeit der Vorratsdatenspeicherung für die Bekämpfung schwerer Verbrechen- in Wirklichkeit scheint es darum jedoch in den seltensten Fällen zu gehen. Statt dessen ist in Großbritannien offenbar genau jene inflationäre Nutzung eigentlich für Notfälle vorgesehener Befugnisse zu beobachten, die Kritiker hier bereits seit längerem als Risiko immer weitergehender “Ausnahmeregelungen” anführen. Ausnahmeregelungen haben leider, das hat sich schon oft gezeigt, die fatale Tendenz, mehr und mehr zum Normalfall zu werden, ebenso wie einmal für bestimmte Extremsituationen erteilte Befugnisse dazu neigen, früher oder später auch für weniger extreme Zwecke genutzt zu werden. Genau deswegen ist es so wichtig, bei der Einschränkung bestimmter Rechte und Freiheiten eine klare Grenze zu ziehen- es ist oft nichts als Selbstbetrug oder Beschwichtigungsrhetorik, anzunehmen, dass eine einmal für möglich erklärte Einschränkung dieser Rechte nicht auch vorkommt, und das oft in zunehmendem Ausmaß, je mehr sich alle Beteiligten daran gewöhnen. Eigentlich sollten uns Regelungen wie die britische als abschreckendes Beispiel dienen- leider werden dies unsere Entscheidungsträger wohl kaum so auffassen. Für alle Gegner immer inflationärerer Überwachungsbefugnisse für staatliche Stellen, und hoffentlich auch für bisher neutrale Beobachter, aber illustrieren die dortigen Geschehnisse vor allem, wie wichtig es ist, bestimmte Grundrechtseingriffe gar nicht erst zuzulassen- damit sie auf keinen Fall zur Gewohnheit werden.

This blog/articles are still available at this link, and new articles will continue to written as added.

But this new site, it is hoped, will grow to be even more comprehensive than this current one.

Britain that is?

When local councils (locally elected government) in the UK can utilise legislation to spy on terrorists there is something wrong. What is more wrong is when the Home Secretary (Internal Affairs Minister) agrees with this use, you can actually say that you have passed from being a free nation to a police state.

You don't need a police state to be governed by the uniformed police - far from it. But it is now obvious the British people have capitulated under the hammer of fear used by this so-called Labour government.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said: "The commissioners' reports offer valuable oversight and provide reassurance that these powers are being used appropriately.

"These powers can make a real difference in delivering safer communities and protecting the public - whether enabling us to gain that vital intelligence that will prevent a terrorist attack, working to tackle antisocial behaviour or ensuring that rogue traders do not defraud the public."

When is the next general election again? And where are those who will fight for the British peoples rights? A civil liberty debarcle allowed by the very people these are supposed to represent!

David Cameron laid out a new set of guidelines last week to which all Tory MEPs must now adhere. They fill me with horror and dread because it means we’re soon to be governed by a bunch of people who go to bed at 10, only drink ginger beer, never try to look up their secretaries’ skirts and are quite happy to get paid £4.50 an hour. In short, we’re going to be governed by bores and failures.

We're rushing headlong into a culture where to misbehave is unacceptable, where protection is everything. Everyone's taking offence, even where none is intended, everyone's a risk and being scrutinised by government, even where common sense shows they shouldn't be:

Jane Jones has been told that she can't take her severely epileptic 14 year old son to school without a CRB check. Who's taken leave of their senses here I ask you? Does the council really need to prove whether or not the boy's mother has a criminal record which might make her too much of a 'risk' to be allowed to take him to school when she's already his principal carer ? Merthyr Tydfil council said:

"For the protection of the council and all vulnerable persons in its care it's essential all those endowed with an authority, implicit or explicit, should meet the security requirements within the transport contract provisions."

Utterly insane, but now apparently all teenagers are so dangerous and so likely to stab or be stabbed, that legal curfews are needed:

a Sunday Times poll reveals today that nine out of 10 parents would back legal restrictions on their children going out after dark.

A report from a House of Commons committee will say this week that a national curfew on young teenagers could curb anti-social and violent behaviour. Keith Vaz, the Labour chairman of the home affairs select committee, said: “I have sympathy with the view that children should not be out after 9pm.”

This would be the Keith Vaz of questionable financial affairs, not to mention remarkably fluid ethics which got him to vote for 42 days. And he doesn't seek to justify his position with any reason, other than the abiding and implicit desire for control, conformity and 'protection'. That these qualities rob young people of the ability to risk assess for themselves, abilities once naturally assumed to be part of growing up, doesn't even come into the equation.

Clarkson continues:

in recent years I have been criticised for bumping into a horse chestnut tree; I’ve been called a berk, on the front page of a national newspaper, for using an iPod while driving. And only a couple of weeks ago I was “blasted” for enjoying a gin and tonic while at the North Pole.

And he's right. Mistakes now scar you for life, as control becomes everything. People get fired from jobs they love because of 'protection policies' they haven't even breached. Personal judgment, common sense and basic fairness are qualities being driven out from mainstream society. Is this partly because of legislation like the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, which councils have used to spy on voters? Or the push for ID cards and a database which would catalogue us all in a way which Roberto Maroni could only dream of for the Roma? Max Weber would no doubt agree. This is his 'iron cage' of rationality, almost hyper-realised. Behaviour in society is indeed increasingly being dominated by a goal-orientated rationality - perversely the better we get at our mechanisation of society, the more we become victims of our own success, and we get cut off from the values which traditionally bound us together. Bureaucracies, he continued, are indeed also centralising huge amounts of power into the hands of far too few people, and they are not merely unaccountable, but increasingly controlling the quality of our lives. Advocates like Blair of ID cards would argue that the system is supposed to be a technological utopia, which by definition sets us free. Yet as with Iraq he and his followers misread history. Weber theorises that such a bureaucracy instead puts us in an 'iron cage', which limits our freedom and human potential; Clarkson and others can already see this coming into shape. The government is only now worrying there might be 'function creep' with ID cards? It's downright inevitable. 

Clarkson can see that rationalisation, the drive to efficiency and the bureaucratisation of our lives are destroying our freedom. We should look back at Weber again, and remember that although it's very difficult to do, we can still get our freedom back. He warns:

'Specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart; this nullity imagines that it has obtained a level of civilization never before achieved"

And Clarkson, almost in response concludes:

I fear for our future. I worry that bad behaviour is being erased from society, and that unless the trend can be reversed somehow we’ll all have to go through life on the Planet Stepford, a rictus grin masking the boiling turmoil of desperation inside. I yearn sometimes when I encounter a neatly stacked pyramid of tins of beans to push it over. Don’t you? Wouldn’t it break the monotony of having to drive at 30mph and eating a wholefood fair-trade sandwich at your desk.

The professionalisation of 'protection', the zero-sum management of risk, curfews against all young people, the micro-management of society as a whole, CRB checking of parents, the list goes on. This is not the way we naturally relate to one another - our older values which, for all our other failings, did bind us together, are being driven out. Common sense, individual responsibility, second chances, trust in those who have earned it, taking offence where it's meant rather than where it's chosen to be taken - I for one want these old staples back. Join Clarkson in choosing non-conformity to this crap, and every once in awhile be irrational, irresponsible and imperfect, if only because you still can.

The ECHR found that UK surveillance laws lacked the necessary clarity and accountability to prevent abuses of power when used to intercept cross-border communications.

The complaint brought by Liberty stated that:

"Relying on Articles 8 (right to respect for correspondence) and 13 (right to an effective remedy), the applicants complained about the interception of their communications."

The court agreed with Liberty that both the surveillance and the practice of surveillance must be tighter to protect individual privacy rights.

Decision of the Court

Article 8

The Court recalled that it had previously found that the mere existence of legislation which allowed communications to be monitored secretly had entailed a surveillance threat for all those to whom the legislation might be applied. In the applicants’ case, the Court therefore found that there had been an interference with their rights as guaranteed by Article 8.

Section 3(2) of the 1985 Act allowed the British authorities extremely broad discretion to intercept communications between the United Kingdom and an external receiver, namely the interception of “such external communications as described in the warrant”.

Indeed, that discretion was virtually unlimited. Warrants under section 3(2) of the 1985 Act covered very broad classes of communications. In their observations to the Court, the British Government accepted that, in principle, any person who sent or received any form of telecommunication outside the British Islands during the period in question could have had their communication intercepted under a section 3(2) warrant. Furthermore, under the 1985 Act, the authorities had wide discretion to decide which communications, out of the total volume of those physically captured, were listened to or read.

Under section 6 of the 1985 Act, the Secretary of State was obliged to “make such arrangements as he consider[ed] necessary” to ensure a safeguard against abuse of power in the selection process for the examination, dissemination and storage of intercepted material. Although during the relevant period there had been internal regulations, manuals and instructions to provide for procedures to protect against abuse of power, and although the Commissioner appointed under the 1985 Act to oversee its workings had reported each year that the “arrangements” were satisfactory, the nature of those “arrangements” had not been contained in legislation or otherwise made available to the public.

Lastly, the Court noted the British Government’s concern that the publication of information regarding those arrangements during the period in question might have damaged the efficiency of the intelligence-gathering system or given rise to a security risk. However, in the United Kingdom, extensive extracts from the Interception of Communications Code of Practice were now in the public domain, which suggested that it was possible for the State to make public certain details about the operation of a scheme of external surveillance without compromising national security.

In conclusion, the Court considered that the domestic law at the relevant time had not indicated with sufficient clarity, so as to provide adequate protection against abuse of power, the scope or manner of exercise of the very wide discretion conferred on the State to intercept and examine external communications. In particular, it had not set out in a form accessible to the public any indication of the procedure to be followed for examining, sharing, storing and destroying intercepted material.

The interference with the applicants’ rights had not therefore been “in accordance with the law”, in violation of Article 8.

Article 13

The Court did not consider it necessary to examine separately the complaint under Article 13.

This ruling calls into the question that fact the the UK government can monitor any communication at any time, though this is positive ruling for privacy advocates it is unlikely to systems like Echelon.

Press Release by Liberty

Quincy Whitaker, a human rights barrister.

“I am personally shocked by the numbers involved in surveillance by the local authorities. It is important we make sure there is proper accountability and transparency in the way this operates"

Keith Vaz, chairman of the Commons Home Affairs select committee

Local Government Association chairman Sir Simon Milton has written to councils warning overzealous use of the powers could alienate the public.

He stated that:

"Parliament clearly intended that councils should use the new powers, and generally they are being used to respond to residents' complaints about fly tippers, rogue traders and those defrauding the council tax or housing benefit system"

He warned that councils over using their powers could alienate themselves from the public.

Despite the huge media attention given to Milton's letter, did anyone with any knowledge of local authorities really think they were going to take any notice of it at all?

What is needed is a review by central government of which organisations can use RIPA at all.  Until that point, all of the no doubt highly paid heads of legal and community services in the local stasis will continue to find legal and political justification for spying on the people they are meant to serve.

Given that Professor Brown exhibits all the signs of someone incapable of telling a) arse from b) elbow, the chances of such a review are slim to non existent.

"Who?"

"Milton, you know, posh bloke, thinks he's in charge."

"Right, him, yeah.  Whats it say?"

"Reckon he's been on the bottle.  Telling us to stop spying on the inmates."

"Chief..."

"Ah, fuck it, can't get used to this bollocks of pretending to have any respect for them, but if it makes you happy, alright, residents.  Anyway, Milty boy reckons we've gone a bit too far.  Prat.  Doesn't know his arse from his elbow that bloke."

"Wasn't he in on that complete fuck up in Westminster?  You know, when Porter wanted to out all the chavs to expand her top-end market?"

"Same bloke.  Only went and apologised.  Doesn't learn, does he?"

"Nah.  Still live there?"

"What sort of a friggin question is that?  You're supposed to know where everyone lives!"

"Sorry chief.  Got him."

"Good.  I want that bastard RIPAd till the blood streams from his ears.  Get the local boys on it.  Tell them to use Ipswich's new talking cameras.  Whisper in Milty boy's ear as he walks down the road: 'Milton, we know where you live...Milton, we're going to reband your council tax and analyse your rubbish and put a tail on your kids.'  Give him a little taste of fear, a touch of local authority."

"Great chief, great.  Can I monitor his phone calls as well?"

"Give me strength, you prat, we've been monitoring them for years."

"Anything juicy?"

"He's got a 'special' relationship with that blonde bimbo Johnson.  On the bloody phone together all the time."

"Ulrika?"

"Boris, you twat.  Thinks London's his manor now.  He'll learn, just like Kenneth had to.  Shame about the newts.  What these ponces just don't get is we've taken the local out of local government."

"Right chief, they'll understand, sooner or later."

"Anyway, fuck 'em.  Back to the bread and butter.  What happened to that old biddy who dropped dead pushing her wheelie up the hill because the binnies couldn't pull it with one finger?  Did you get the flytipping fine on her before she croaked?"

Even councillors have to use Freedom of Information requests to get answers about stasi snooping in Haringey.  Councillor Jonathon Bloch said that it took three attempts to get Haringey officials to respond, and when they did cough up with the barest of information (29 instances of RIPAing the locals, including three cases of communications monitoring) they failed to provide adequate detail.

When asked by Mr Bloch to cough up more information, senior Haringey pen pushers said they would be delighted to, on receipt of a cheque for £495 to cover their expenses.  I am fairly sure that even Erich himself would smiling from ear to ravaged ear at the sheer cheek.

And so we can look on and laugh at the Labour councillor who has had his mobile phone calls monitored by officials at Liverpool City Council.

The councillor involved, Joe Anderson, has reported the Council to the Information Commissioner's Office, which is now investigating.

The reason for the monitoring is neither here nor there, but reports suggest that Mr Anderson is at least in part aggrieved because town hall rules ban officials from looking at councillors' phone records.

Oh dear, poor love, to think that those nasty officials broke the nice, cosy arrangement giving him protection from the very snooping his government has pushed on the rest of us is just too delicious for words.

Welcome to the real world Mr Anderson, though I doubt somehow whether your experience will result in you campaigning on behalf of David Davis in the near future.

Burnham said: "To people who get seduced by Tory talk of how liberal they are, I find something very curious in the man who was, and still is I believe, an exponent of capital punishment having late-night, hand-wringing, heart-melting phone calls with Shami Chakrabarti."

Chakrabarti, and Davis, who are both married to other people, were both said to be furious.

Shami Chakrabarti is the highly effective director of Liberty, who has said if he doesn't apologise, she'll sue him. Burnham of course countered this by saying no slur was meant, but his words were part of a coordinated attempt to decapitate the Davis campaign before its narrative gained a strong foothold with the media and electorate. Just on Sunday on The Politics Show, Burnham completely misrepresented Davis' position by claiming the former Shadow Home Secretary was entirely against CCTV and the DNA database - precisely what Davis just three days earlier had refuted.

Gordon Brown came out of the 42 days vote with the argument that the component elements cited by David Davis as comprising our 'surveillance society' were a good thing. Far from curtailing civil liberties, he maintained CCTV, the DNA database and ID cards protected civil liberties. Except he doesn't understand that these laws and systems are not static concepts, nor are they bereft of context; both in this country are toxic. Taken in isolation ID cards for example have been useful and accepted tools in many Western democracies. In the UK however they would be a function of the National Identity Register:

individual checking and numbering of the population; making personal details into "registrable facts" to be disclosed and constantly updated; collection and checking of biometrics (e.g. fingerprints); the card itself (and other documents made equivalent to an ID card); a widespread scanner and computer terminal network connected to the central database; widespread use of compulsory identity "verification" ; and data-sharing between organisations on an unprecedented scale.

It would be administered by the Identity and Passport Agency, a similarly dysfunctional agency to the thoroughly discredited UK Border Agency, and both run by the Home Office. Peter Tatchell has already many times shown basic systemic problems with the management of Home Office agencies, and coupled with deeper problematic attitudes (demonstrated by Poole Council spying on families whom they believed were trying to cheat the school catchment system) you have a recipe for 'function creep' and authoritarianism. What is more important, marginal (and unproven) protection against ID fraud (which can be prevented by other, more traditional means like a cross-cutting shredder) - Brown's 'security', or freedom from this unnecessary and dangerous tool for control and surveillance? It isn't the government's responsibility to protect identity, indeed this government's determination to be the unique arbiter of our identity would cause a reverse to the fundamental relationship between the individual and state which has driven modern democracies since the industrial revolution. We determine the state, not the other way around.

There's far more than just that wrong however. I attended the Stop the War protest against George W Bush's visit last weekend, which was entirely peaceful, until protesters tried to head down the originally planned route along Whitehall to Downing Street (where Brown and Bush actually were). At that point the police went extremely violent (it's the Metropolitan Police so it's not surprising) and started snatch arresting (after setting FIT teams against other peaceful protesters and journalists).

The SOCPA zone remains untouched, the police abuse it as they see fit, and regularly intimidate professional journalists, protesters and citizen journalists alike. Brown doesn't bring this up. What he did say was:

"Facing these modern challenges, it is our duty to write a new chapter in our country's story - one in which we both protect and promote our security and our liberty, two equally proud traditions."

Yet that doesn't actually mean anything, and he wilfully ignores the flaws in the systems he lists. As Henry Porter quite rightly points out, senior policemen have expressed doubts about the usefulness of CCTV, David Davis himself has identified over one million innocent people on the DNA database, amongst whom are a disproportionate number of black and Asian people. And how is intimidating journalists and protesters promoting our 'security'? The police's forward intelligence teams (FIT), levelled even against entirely peaceful teenage protesters against the 'Church' of Scientology last weekend have become an exercise in pre-criminalisation. If the point of them was to gather intelligence on football hooliganism and political protest, how is it that politically active teenagers and news journalists are being systematically abused by them? Regarding the latter point, the Met claims:

'Metropolitan Police FIT officers do not target legitimate photographers. FIT officers are deployed in an intelligence and evidence gathering capacity at public order events. This may include interaction with photographers, who on the production of a valid form of accreditation will be able to continue with their work.'

Even on cursory inspection this statement is full of lies and doublespeak. I've seen them abuse press photographers with my own eyes, and have been on the receiving end of it myself (although I'm not yet a press photographer). And since when was 'accreditation' needed to take photographs in public? Maybe this spokesman should look at the police's behaviour when it comes to dealing with photographers.

Brown though seems to think that this climate, where even councils spy on local residents can be managed by typical New Labour tinkering with its own draconian laws to make them more 'accountable' and 'fair':

During his speech Mr Brown also announced that he would ask the Information Commissioner to produce a report each year on surveillance in the UK, which would then be debated by MPs.

It's typical of New Labour to tackle the cart after the horse has already bolted, but it simply doesn't work, because it misses the point. Relentless tinkering rather than addressing underlying problems has failed the public services, failed the relative as well as the absolute poor, created an overblown sense of crime, and in the case of ASBOs sent out completely the wrong message. It ignores more deeply rooted problems such as police harassment and intimidation, freedom of the press and the rights to free assembly and protest (when is SOCPA going to be repealed anyway?). He may be too late in stating his case: the public has already started to side with David Davis. Almost on cue Harriet Harman resumes the offensive:

"When it comes to David Davis, he's an unlikely champion of civil liberties and certainly when I was at Liberty, I did not support people who opposed the Human Rights Act and were in favour of the death penalty," Harman told ITV News.

Typically disingenuous behaviour by the New Labour Deputy Leader, attacking Davis and Chakrabarti again by snide misrepresentation, as if their alliance were so impossible that there had to be some disreputable motivation (convenient that neither she nor Burnham have attacked Nick Clegg in the same way, following his identical discussions with Davis). This is disgusting politics. Yes of course Davis' past history on rights issues is bad. He's opposed the repeal of Section 28, and indeed supported the death penalty, but an overall inconsistency doesn't make him wrong here, and the entire reason for such an alliance is Brown's cynical move to the distant political Right in a vain attempt to decapitate Davis' party's traditional strength in law and order. Traditionally a top Tory siding with a human rights NGO would have been unthinkable; not now. But it's not Chakrabarti we should be condemning, it's Brown himself.

"to assume that the laws and practises which have applied in the past are sufficient always to face the future...would be the politics of complacency".

And yet he hasn't tried to put forward a credible case for precriminalisation, and how it and intimidation face the future? Since when have these 'laws and practises' of the past not been sufficient to face the future? For that matter, what has so fundamentally changed that we need to 'protect security and individual liberty'? Remember this means justifying the argument for curbing traditionally understood civil liberties in order to protect us all from terrorism, organised crime and identity theft, because there's no other way. It's down to using 'good' technology to save us from 'bad' technology.

Even looking at the DNA database (thanks UK Liberty), and taking a quick look at the figures shows Brown hasn't got a case. Remember the argument isn't whether to have the database, but whether the changes to it in 2001 to allow records to be retained after acquittals, and in 2003 to allow records to be retained from the point of any arrest 'protect our security and individual liberty'. During that period recorded crime went down, the number of profiles stored rose by 2 million, yet the number of crimes with DNA matches and DNA detections fell significantly. The figures may exclude violent and sexual crime, but consider how detections are gone about for such crimes: the perpetrators of violent crimes are normally known to their victims, and in the case of rape the question of consent is normally greater than that of identity. The likelihood of these figures being significantly distorted is quite small. Even the Home Office itself acknowledges the number of matches made from the database is primarily driven from profiles loaded at crime scenes, not from the added 2 million profiles. So the answer is 'no' - even this civil liberties curb hasn't brought about greater security.

It's not about using 'good' technology to save 'us' from 'bad' technology. It's not about curbing civil liberties to save us from unprecedentedly complex threats. It's about cynical political opportunism, by a bunch of incompetent politicians who have no other idea how to solve Britain's deep rooted problems, so they (as so many of their predecessors have throughout history) choose control (Brown's 'security') over freedom. Just look at the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and see how many have been trampled on by Blair and Brown. The government doesn't have any responsibilities for identity protection, and as far as the human right of 'security' really does go, why not actually police better? The Metropolitan Police abuses political protesters, intimidates journalists, young people and people from ethnic minority backgrounds. The UK Border Agency routinely deports and tries to deport gay asylum seekers back to countries where they are likely to be killed. Local authorities are encouraged by this climate and preponderance of new laws to spy on their own residents, and the tools of CCTV and the DNA database, whilst not unimportant, have been easy targets of 'function creep'. Wait for the same with ID cards, and further after-the-fact justification by Brown, rather than actual reforms which aren't based on dressed up Islamophobia and moral panic about crime (which is falling, remember?) If the cabinet really is rattled by the resonance Davis' stance is gaining with the public, maybe they should pluck up the courage to field a candidate for the by-election Davis triggered and engage in honest debate - a practice of the past, rather than complacent personality-based attack politics, which suggest they don't have a valid case at all?

"Al-Qa'ida plays on this concept of us not having strong values. If you attack democracy and human rights in the search for security from terrorism, you send the signal that they don't mean very much." - Shami Chakrabarti

In December 2001, the Parliament approved the Anti-terrorism Crime and Security Act 2001. This law allows the Home Secretary to issue a code of practice for the voluntary "retention of communications data by communications providers" for the purpose of protecting national security or preventing or detecting crime that relates to national security. It only applies to data that is already being held by the Communication Service Providers (e.g ISP/telecomms) for business purposes. The Code of Practice was approved in December 2003. The goverment has since proposed modifying the ATCS and RIPA to make data retention mandatory and expanding its use to include serious crimes, not just terrorism offenses. A leaked submission by the police and intelligence services to the Home Office in 2000 proposed a seven-year data retention policy, however this has not been followed up and the current voluntary times remain.

Despite the goverment pushing data retention in the to stop the ever present threat of terrorsim, the reality is that the data will almost certanily be used for reasons other than prevention and detection of terrorism. An opinion commissioned by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) found that the access to information retained under the act for non-national security purposes would violate human rights and would be unlawful. Despite this the goverment fully intended to allow a whole host of government agencies to access the data, from local police to the  local council.

In June 2002, the Home Office stated that the list of government agencies allowed under RIPA to access communications data was being extended to over 1,000 different government departments including local authorities, health, environmental, trade departments and many other public authorities. The ICO stated that "I clearly cannot carry out meaningful oversight of so many bodies without assistance", following this and the pubic outcry of so many people accessing so much information the then Home Secretary (David Blunkett) withdrew the order.

The code provides for the following retention time periods:

• SMS, EMS and MMS: Data retention period 6 months.
• Email: Data retention period 6 months
• ISP Logs: Data retention period 6 months
• Web Activity Logs: Data Retention period 4 day

More detailed information on these retention times is available here.

Interception of Communications

Before the ATCS 2001 Act was created the government created RIPA, Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, which covers a variety of aspects including encryption and interception of communications. Section 12 of RIPA makes it an obligation of CSP (Communication Service Providers) to maintain an ability to intercept traffic" and "content" of communications, which then allows the govermenment to monitor communications as and when needed, or the in the case of Echelon, all of the time.

An explanation of the terms "traffic" and "content" in relation to RIPA are available on other posts on this site.

RIPA is often in the news for its repeated misuse by councils, from covertly following families, to ensure they go to the right school, to setting up cameras and covert surveillance to monitor dog fouling.

On Sunday they featured a hilarious chap called Rob Evans arguing that local councils' use of RIPA was nothing to get het up about.  All they are doing, according to Rob, is using RIPA to catch petty criminals.  Sure, they make the odd mistake and victimise some innocent people but that is a price worth paying in the fight against fraudulent school admissions and the like.

Ho hum.  Admitedly, I am no fan of either the Guardian nor the types who read it, but has it not occured to Mr Evans that come the day of power for all those nasty right wingers that his readers so love to scare themselves to the point of orgasm about, RIPA might then be used to identify who knits their own bicycles or who has a Shining Path pin-up-boy poster hanging crookedly over their brown and cracked toilet seat?

• Medway Council confirmed there had been 121 authorised surveillance operations over the last three years but in its reponse to our request refused to provide details, saying it would take too long to collate all the information.
It used the Ripa powers 36 times in 2007-2008; 54 times in 2006-07 and 58 times in 2005-06.

• Maidstone Borough Council carried out a three-week long surveillance on an employee it suspected might be working somewhere else while on sick leave as one of seven authorised operations last year. The claim proved to be unfounded.
It also took photos and video footage while investigating five incidents of fly-tipping throughout the year.

• Dartford Borough Council conducted 21 surveillance operations in 2007-08 for alleged offences that included a drugs operation; off-road bikes causing a nuisance as part of efforts to crack down on graffitti.
It also used the legislation to investigate a complaint of racial criminal damage, in a joint initiative with Kent Police. However, 11 investigations led to no further action being taken.

• Four surveillance operations by Tunbridge Wells Borough Council involved checks on unlicensed drivers and monitoring of a pub that was alleged to be causing a public nuisance to nearby residents.
In one case, it took secret aerial photos during an investigation into an alleged planning breach.

• Swale Borough Council authorised covert operations to investigate one case of dog fouling.
Five other investigations, in which council tenants were suspected of housing and benefit fraud, were also authorised.

• Dover District Council carried out eight surveillance operations into claims of benefit fraud and two into allegations of anti-social behaviour last year.

• Ashford Borough Council carried out just four surveillance operations last year, Tonbridge and Malling Borough Council just two.

Although local authorities are not yet allowed to monitor telephone conversations they can, and do, check logs of who and when you called, who you emailed and which websites you visit.

It's already been revealed that local councils now employ over 850 “covert human intelligence sources” to keep tabs on serious threats to local social stability such as dog foulers and fly tippers, but no-one realised the vigilant voyeurs also had access to electronic communication logs until today.

Over the top?  Not a bit of it.  Amongst the truly startling crimes against society our boys in beige are grappling with are:

- storage of petrol without a licence

- infringement of quarantine rules by pet owners

- bogus faith healing.

When Parliament passed the RIPA legislation, surely these were exactly the type of offenses they believed it would be used to stamp out.  It simply cannot be overstated what a radical threat to Western civilisation is posed by a bogus faith healer sitting on top of a can of unlicensed petrol with a foreign dog on a string.

Some people, of course, just don't get it.  Simon Davis, of Privacy International for example, who said: 'Surveillance has become a free-for-all among local government. It's a game anyone can play and they do."  And, as can be expected, Liberty had to gob off at the first possible opportunity: "'The law must be reformed to require sign-off by judges not self authorisation by overzealous bureaucrats."

Yes, thank you, all very interesting.  But back to the good news.  121 out of 152 councils have admitted to giving their local residents a good RIPAing over the last year.  What, we demand to know, have the other 31 been doing?  In the interests of local security, these councils should be named and shamed to encourage everyone who has the right to RIPA to get off their polyester clad arses and stick their noses well and truly into other peoples' business.

Helt klart en givande vecka, tycker jag. Har haft möte med mycket vilt samt fått beskåda tre årstider samma vecka. En hel del bilder har det blivit och det känns ju alltid tillfredställande.

När vi kom upp förra lördagen är det i princip vårvinter där. Inte ens Björken har slagit ut, varken Vitsippor eller Tussilago heller. Nu är vi uppe på fjället, alltså. Inte kalfjället men i fjällskogsregionen. Efterhand som veckan går kommer först våren med allt varmare dagar men fortfarande kalla nätter under nollan. I slutet på veckan kom till slut sommaren även däruppe med riktigt varmt väder, myggen kläcker som besatta och allting tar plötsligt en himla fart. Musöronen på Björken kommer fram vilka blir till blad innan vi åker hem, snödrivorna utanför stugan, som var så stora när vi kom, är i det närmsta borta när vi åker hem.

Många tidiga morgnar, eller egentligen nätter då det knappast blir mörkt däruppe nu. Otroligt ljusa nätter. Plåtade en älg en natt kl 02:58. ISO 1600, 1s men ändå. Hade knappast funkat här.

Har sett mer älg än tidigare i livet inräknat djurparksbesök. 2-3 gånger om dagen såg jag älg. Helt fantastiskt även om alla mötena inte bjöd på fototillfällen.

En av många Älgar, här i björksly!

Tjäder, Ripa, Orrspel samt en hel del andra fåglar har vi mött under veckan. Vissa fastnade på bild, andra inte. En kall natt i gömsle gav ingenting. Sveriges högsta vattenfall fick ett besök med.

Anneli plåtade friskt med mitt reservhus samt 100-400:an. Hon la ut en "matning" utanför stugfönstret som resulterade i bl a Bofink, Hackspett, Nötskrika, Skogsödla, Skogsmus o en del annat smått o gott. Vilket bevisar att man behöver egentligen inte göra sig så jättemycket besvär för att locka till sig div. djur. Så nu lär jag inte få ha utrustningen ifred längre?

Större hackspett, (hane), just utanför fönstret!

Summa summarium måste jag vara mycket nöjd med veckan, rent bildmässigt, trots att vi varken fick se Björn eller Lo. 1000-1500 bilder ca, så nu är det en del att plöja igenom medans jag kliar mina myggbett. Kommer att återvända dit i September med förhoppningen att fånga höstfärgade fjäll, fler älgar och fortsatt sökande efter Björnen bl a. Ser redan fram emot det.

Bilder kommer på hemsidan som vanligt. Två är redan publicerade och fler kommer.

Nu tar jag det lugnt i helgen men nästa veckoslut kommer att ägnas Rådjursfotografering.

Önskar er alla en fortsatt skön sommarhelg

//Micke

Edinburgh has coughed up (after some freedom of informationing) to using RIPA to spy on more than 1200 local residents over the last five years.

Once the cradle of the Scottish Englightenment, Edinburgh now has more in common with two less noble elements of its glorious history; Burke and Hare.  It's not difficult to imagine Edinburgh Council's 'covert human intelligence sources' slithering along dark streets, shuffling over wet paving stones and hiding in ancient alleys to nail the viscious perpetrators of dog fouling and fly tipping outrages.  Not difficult at all.

What's more difficult to imagine is what on earth got into the head of Edinburgh's Conservative community safety spokesman Jason Rust, who said: "There are obvious concerns about these surveillance powers potentially being misused but in the grand scheme of things, if they are being used to catch out benefit cheats and the like, then I think they will be welcomed."

No they won't Mr Rust, and as a Conservative you really ought to know better (or at least pretend you do).  Take a leaf out of Brian Binley's book (see 22nd May) then come back and try again.  For the hard of understanding (and obviously that includes some members of our supposedly less authoritarian major political party), laws already exist to deal with benefit cheats "and the like".  They need to be applied correctly not pushed aside in favour of sexy, Bondesque anti-terrorism legislation.

David Hume and John Witherspoon (sigificant contributors in different ways to the concept and reality of freedom) both graduated from Edinburgh.  Unfortunately so did Emporer Hirohito and Gordon Brown.

Deputy Information Commissioner David Smith said: ""The ICO has some concerns about the surveillance that has taken place in Poole.

"It seems that in at least some cases the surveillance has involved the covert collection of personal information about those individuals under scrutiny.

"We will be contacting Poole Borough Council to ensure that the way in which personal information about those under surveillance has been collected and subsequently processed meets the requirements of the Data Protection Act."

A jobsworth speaking on behalf of Poole's senior pen pushers bleated in a somewhat less confident manner than normal: "The council has not yet received a formal request from the ICO and cannot comment further at this stage.

"However, the council will cooperate fully with any request it receives from the Information Commissioner's Office on this matter."

Personally, I think Poole have been grassed up by Bideford after their extraordinary ploy of banning politics in their council chamber failed to get them top spot (see 13th May).  Bideford will now obviously do anything to get their hands on this year's saught-after Honecker.

(iii) any information not falling within paragraph (i) or (ii) that is held or obtained, in
relation to persons to whom he provides the service, by a person providing a
telecommunications service.

Now those sort of numbers, I can tell you, gave Erich Honecker the glint in his steely eye.  When a chap is confident of the size of his security apparatus, he knows he can bestride the world stage with a certain swagger.

So think, for a moment, of the plight of our own home-grown stasis who have to get by with no more than 850 boys and girls on their books.  A shabby little number you might think, but before you reach for the phone to make a donation to the Town Clerk's Surveillance Appeal consider how quickly it has grown.  For those 850 little darlings weren't there only two years ago.

Just 24 months to build a network of "covert human intelligence sources" of this size is extraodinarily good work and shows that the old country isn't dead and buried yet.  And what is even better is that there is no acknowedgement from anyone that they've stopped recruiting.  So give it another couple of years and we might have more local council "covert human intelligence sources" than streetcleaners or dinner ladies.

Of course, there are always going to be people who want to rubbish any claim to greatness in this country so it was with no surprise that arch killjoy David Davis, the Shadow Home Secretary, said: "Most people would be surprised that at least one arm of the surveillance society has come under the control of local councils," a sentiment swiftly and predictably backed up by various civil liberties groups and assorted MPs.

Does Davis and the rest of the fluffy bunny brigade not realise what level of manpower is required by local councils to wield RIPA in our fight against terrorism?  With the average person in the UK likely to be photographed by cctv more than 300 times per day, it's obvious that thousands more municipal eyeballs are required just to sort, sift and file our pictures away.  And that's before we get onto the really serious business of dog fouling and fly tipping.

Thinendofthewedge says, more power to your elbows local councils, we'll certainly sleep safer in our beds tonight knowing you're on the case.  And remember, East Germany wasn't built in a day.

RIPA which was bought in at the beginning of the decade, was designed to help combat terrorsim. Burnely council were very supportive of the legislation relating to terrorism and stated:

"Burnley Borough Council welcomes this opportunity and fully supports effective moves to
strengthen legislation and policing approaches to counter the threat of terrorism. We
feel that there is an important, separate, complementary role for local councils in cooperating
with the Police and the community on action to prevent violent extremism
through a range of activities and community leadership. The Council is committed to
seeking ways to improve this through its work as a Preventing Violent Extremism
Pathfinder authority."

Their response to the terrorism laws can be seen in full here, the letter they wrote to the home office is available here - burnley-council.

Was the council keen for anti -terror powers to stop crime, or to get more information about their resident?

Nick Aves, Burnley Council's resources director, said it was "quite rare" for the powers to be used in this way