Wednesday - July 22, 2009

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE.  HAPPY 1 9 8 4 … Should oooeld comraaads beeee forgot ……

You will recall that yesterday I posted something that I found very upsetting. Yeah I know. I find lots of things upsetting.
Anyway ... I posted this.

Police given powers to enter homes and tear down anti-Olympics posters during 2012 Games

I thought that was pretty damn bad and I still do. 

One day last week, or heck it could have been only a couple of daze ago (not trying to be cute. DAZE, as in daze is correct at the moment)
an article appeared in the paper saying that some city councils were placing chips in people’s trash bins, called wheelie bins here, (must be due to the wheels) to not only see if they were mixing recycle with unwanted stuff. Oh No.  They were also attempting to learn what sort of things were being thrown away to determine the possible wealth of the thrower.  I’ll bet they haven’t advanced that far in the USA. Yet. 

Well, when I opened the morning paper today I was greeted with this.  The paper date said 2009 but I think that was a typo. Should have read 1984.
Here ya go.  And I’m certain it will not surprise any of you.  This is what our brave new world has come to.

Councils use bugs to spy on public illegally
Councils and other official bodies are using hidden tracking devices to snoop on the public, a report by Sir Christopher Rose has disclosed.

By Christopher Hope Whitehall Editor
Published: 7:00AM BST 22 Jul 2009

THE TELEGRAPH

Officials have continued to use the gadgets, which allow them to follow covertly people, despite a warning that the practice is prohibited.

The scale of the secret operations was set out in a report published on Monday by Sir Christopher, the chief surveillance commissioner. He found that the number of official surveillance operations increased last year, despite a government pledge to reduce them for trivial offenses.

Sir Christopher also criticised the Home Office for trying to make it easier for the police to use legally covert surveillance.

“It should not be acceptable that the use of covert powers is made ‘easy’ for any public authority,” he said. It was important that “covert surveillance is necessary, proportionate and carried out in a way which is compliant with human rights”.

Sir Christopher’s report said that the tracking devices could only be used “for the prevention and detection of ‘serious crime”.

Documents released earlier this year showed how, in 2007, the Environment Agency attached one of the trackers to a vehicle in order to monitor suspected dumping of illegal waste. Sir Christopher’s office reprimanded the agency. The mistake was blamed on erroneous advice from the Home Office stating that “affixing a magnetic device to a vehicle on the public highway” was “not a criminal offense”.

I’m not posting the entire article.  You can read it if interested at the telegraph dot com. I’m simply using that story to lead into this one which is even more scary because it appears so much more a matter of the natural order of things, whereas here at least some will and are complaining.

Kremlin gives itself powers to spy on all Russian mail.
The Russian government has given itself sweeping powers to spy on its own citizens after a new decree gave intelligence services unlimited access to read all mail without a warrant.

By Miriam Elder in Moscow

+
The decree, reminiscent of Soviet-era domestic spying tactics, allows security services – including the FSB, Foreign Intelligence Service and police, as well as customs, drug and prison agencies – to obtain information on senders and addressees from the postal service.

It also foresees FSB agents - the successors to the Soviet-era KGB - setting up monitoring sites at all the country’s post offices.

Kremlin critics denounced the measure as a return to Stalinist tactics of surveillance.

“We are returning to a totalitarian regime,” said Lev Ponomaryov, a leading human rights activist. “It reminds one of Soviet times. And the worst thing is, the people don’t care.”

The communications ministry, which issued the decree, denied it violated the constitutional right to privacy.

“This document carries a technical character,” a ministry spokesman said, denying that security services would see their powers broadened with the decree. “It does not infringe the rights of postal recipients or human rights.”

The spokesman said officials would still need a court warrant to open mail, but there is no mention of that in the decree, published on the ministry’s website.

The decree, which came into force on Tuesday, is ostensibly designed to tackle crime.

It will have a wide reach. Russia is an overwhelmingly poor country outside Moscow and St Petersburg and people rely heavily on postal communications. Email use remains limited.

Freedoms have been severely curtailed under the rule of the Russian prime minister, Vladimir Putin, a former spy who briefly headed the FSB. Foreign intelligence activity, as well as surveillance of Russians, have grown under his watch.

Dissent is not suffered and the government has steadily increased its surveillance of the internet as its use grows in the country.

In the latest case, FSB officers on Tuesday opened a criminal case against Igor Averkiyev, a writer based in the Urals city of Perm, for an online article critical of the Kremlin’s strategy in the republic of Chechnya.

Mr Averkiyev was accused of inciting extremism. He was already investigated early last year for an article comparing Mr Putin to Hitler.

SOURCE FOR THOSE NAUGHTY RUSSKIES

Posted by peiper     on 07/22/2009 at 05:03 AM   
Filed Under: • Commies • Scary Stuff • Tyrants and Dictators •  
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