Categories: Government & Politics Tags:
European police to spy on Britons: Now ministers hand over Big Brother powers to foreign officers
By James Slack
26th July 2010
New powers: Police officers from European countries could soon be able to spy on and arrest Britons in the UK
Ministers are ready to hand sweeping Big Brother powers to EU states so they can spy on British citizens.
Foreign police will be able to travel to the UK and take part in the arrest of Britons.
They will be able to place them under surveillance, bug telephone conversations, monitor bank accounts and demand fingerprints, DNA or blood samples.
Anyone who refuses to comply with a formal request for co-operation by a foreign-based force is likely to be arrested by UK officers.
The move will spark a damaging row with backbench Tory MPs opposed to giving such draconian powers to Brussels.
The Tories were opposed to the directive in opposition, saying it showed a ‘relish for surveillance and disdain for civil liberties’.
But ministers have made a dramatic U-turn since joining the pro-EU Lib Dems in government, and the wide-ranging powers are due to be approved later this week.
According to the campaign group Fair Trials International, under the new rules it would be possible, for example, for Spanish police investigating a murder in a nightclub to demand the ID of every British citizen who flew to the country in the month the offence took place.
They could also force the UK to search its DNA database – which contains nearly one million innocent people – and send samples belonging to anybody who was in Spain at the time.
This could leave an entirely innocent person facing an agonising battle to establish his or her innocence.
Tory MP Dominic Raab, who has campaigned against the power grab, said: ‘This sweeping directive would put serious operational strains on hard-pressed UK police forces.
‘There are scant safeguards to protect the personal information of law-abiding British citizens. These serious issues should be properly debated in Parliament before the UK decides to opt in.’
Read more at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1297621/Ministers-hand-Big-Brother-powers-EU-police.html#ixzz0yIqbIu7X
Categories: Changing Society, Civil Rights, Government & Politics, Law Enforcement, Social Change, Society and Culture, World Politics Tags: Big Brother in Britain, Fair Trials International, James Slack, Surveillance Society
Patriot Act Stands Over Students
Following is a statement by young people associated with the American Civil Liberties Union of how the Patriot Act and other Post-911 government policies have adversely affected students.
Under the USA PATRIOT Act and Other Post-911 Policies the Government Can Now:
1. Label Students “Terrorists” if We Belong to a Student Activist Group
The USA PATRIOT Act broadly expands the official definition of terrorism, so that student groups that engage in certain types of civil disobedience could very well find themselves labeled as terrorists
(Sections 411, 802). The Sheriff of Hennepin county, Minnesota declared that the student groups “Anti-Racist Action”, “Students Against War”, and “Arise!” were potential terrorist threats.
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2. Seize Our Student Records
The USA PATRIOT Act gives law enforcement access to student educational records without probable cause of crime. (507) The Government refuses to disclose how many times it has done this.
3. Collect information about what books we take out of our school library, what we study, and what we purchase from our school bookstore.
The USA PATRIOT Act gives law enforcement broad access to any types of records – sales, library, financial, medical, etc. – without probable cause of a crime. It also prohibits the holders of this information, like University librarians, from disclosing that they have produced such records, under the
threat of jail time (Section 215, 505). A University of Illinois survey of U.S. public libraries found that at least 545 libraries had been asked for records by law enforcement in the year after September 11, 2001.
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4. Search Our College Dorm Rooms, Apartments or Homes and Not Even Tell Us.
The USA PATRIOT Act allows the law enforcement to conduct secret “sneak and peek” searches of a dorm, apartment or home. Investigators can enter a place of residence, take pictures and seize items without informing the occupant that a warrant was issued for an indefinite period of time. (Section 213)
The government refuses to disclose how many times it has used this power.
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5. Monitor Student E-mail and Internet Activity
The USA PATRIOT Act permits the government to monitor Internet traffic and e-mail communications on any Internet service provider without probable cause of crime by obtaining detailed “routing” information like a web address. While this provision is supposedly aimed at lawbreakers, it sweeps broadly because e-mails and Internet traffic information of innocent students cannot be separated from the activity of targeted individuals (Section 216). The government refuses to disclose how many times it has
used this power.
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6. Spy on Student Political Meetings or Religious Ceremonies
The USA PATRIOT Act permits a vast array of information gathering on student political meetings and religious ceremonies to be collected—often by campus cops on behalf of the FBI—and shared with the CIA (and other non-law enforcement officials) without proper judicial oversight or other safeguards. This law effectively puts the CIA back in the business of spying on students, including US citizens (Sections 203 and 901).
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Please go to http://www.aclu.org/ for more information on civil liberties that the ACLU has a hand in protecting.
Categories: Changing Society, Civil Rights, Community, Education, Government & Politics, Social Change, Society and Culture, Youth Issues Tags: ACLU, Patriot Act, Section 203, Section 215, Section 901, Student Activist Groups, Students, terrorists
Librarians Push Against Patriot Act
By Lauren Barack — School Library Journal, 11/30/2009
When it comes to the Patriot Act, there’s little dissension among librarians.
As of late November, 32 state chapters of the American Library Association (ALA) passed resolutions that call for Congress to allow section 215 of the law to sunset, instead of Capitol Hill reauthorizing it before December 31, 2009.
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| ALA’s Lynne Bradley, director of the American Library Association’s Office of Government Relations. |
Section 215 allows the federal government to demand tangible records from any business, organization, entity, person—and even the public library—and then places a gag order on them about speaking of the demand. Many believe this act violates the right to privacy, broadly alluded to in our nation’s Bill of Rights.
“It’s often called the library provision because the ALA made such a stink about this when no one else would,” says Lynne Bradley, director of the American Library Association’s Office of Government Relations in Washington, DC.
ALA passed the first resolution against the section at its national meeting in July. Vermont followed as the first state chapter in September, tweaking its resolution to include opposition to Section 505, which allows the FBI to use National Security Letters to demand similar information within a gag order as well.
Michigan, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, and Kentucky are the latest four states to pass resolutions, too, and ALA heads expect all 50 state chapters to pass similar acts before the end of the year.
While no one is allowed to speak about whether they’ve been served with a Section 215 order, Bradley says a handful of libraries have received them, and a few have even challenged them in court.
“But before the challenges were heard, the FBI withdrew the orders before the information was made public,” she says.
As to whether Congress will be swayed by the library resolutions, Bradley appears unmoved. She notes that the White House appears supportive of the Department of Justice recommendations, which would prefer to have all sections re-ratified.
Besides Section 215, these include Section 206, which deals with roving wire taps, and Section 6001 of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 called “Lone Wolf,” which isn’t part of the Patriot Act, but lets intelligence groups investigate single suspects—which many groups fear could be used against protesters.
“I’m normally a betting woman, but I’m not betting on this one,” says Bradley. “We are very disappointed that the White House appears to be have accepted the recommendations of the Department of Justice to move forward with very little changes. And that’s more than a disappointment.”
This article originally appeared in SLJ’s Extra Helping “https://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/subscribe.asp?screen=pi8″
Categories: Changing Society, Civil Rights, Education, Government & Politics, Social Change, Society and Culture Tags: american library association, Lauren Barack, Librarians, Patriot Act, Section 206, Section 215, Section 505
Encrypt Your Phone Conversations! Make Them Secure From Big Brother!
http://zfoneproject.com/ This is the url where you can obtain information and a free download of Phil Zimmerman’s new program, zphone, allowing anyone to have phone conversations that can not be overheard by hackers, criminal or political.
Phil Zimmerman is the developer of the program Pretty Good Privacy. PGP is widely used on the internet by companies and individuals to maintain privacy. Big Brother does not like this program because PGP can prevent the government from viewing exchanges between individuals on the internet i.e. internet-tapping. As a result, Zimmerman has a long history of involvement in litigation with the government over legislation and rules preventing the export of PGP to other countries. The L.A. Free Press will provide you with more information about zphone as this story develops.
Categories: Civil Rights, Community, Government & Politics, Law Enforcement, Military, Social Change, Society and Culture, Technology Tags: Cell Phone Encryption, PGP, Phil Zimmerman, Pretty Good Privacy, zphone
Yesterday, it was the Counter Culture. Today… it’s
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
More Here @ 3 pm (PST)
(This article refers directly to today’s issue of the Los Angeles Free Press. If you have not yet seen it, please, before reading further, click HERE.)
Yesterday, it was the Counter Culture. Today it’s…
all about who’s looking into our life and why, and how we, individually and collectively, have come to say no way, no more.
by Steven M. Finger
Thought it was important to let you know, via our first Item, that the invasion of privacy (in this case, pronounced as the British do…priv’acy) is not just an act of our government, but spreading throughout Europe like the latest fashion.
With that point made, we needed to return back to the US to make another one that may surely affect the future of our country. Most of us know of the Patriot Act, and we know it circumvents many civil rights we hold dear. But few of us have considered – may not even have known – of the impact it has on the rights of students. (Click here to review that posted article.)
In our earlier Series on the growing distrust of our government and the consequent rise of movements and third parties, students – educated, motivated and not willing to have their needs lowly prioritized – will be striving to be a larger component of the political process. The Patriot Act may put a brake on that.
On the other hand, an act of outright defiance – by what many consider one of the most meek and mild-mannered professional groups (librarians!!) – virtually ground one of those Patriot Act provisions to halt. While the article here speaks about the Chapters of the American Library Association putting forth resolutions, the word is that many a librarian simply put the regulation aside by refusing to record what books a patron choose to read.
They are lessons well-learned: divided we stand…, and personal courage shapes nations.
Our final Item ties more closely to those to lessons than you might suspect: it enables you to take a personal stand and it leads to a tale of personal fortitude and intrigue – another act of defiance that said, loud and clear that our personal business is our own business, here’s a wall for your peeking eyes.
Here are the keywords to our thinking today: Big Brother in Britain, Fair Trials International, James Slack, Surveillance Society, ACLU, Personal Privacy, Patriot Act, Section 203, Section 215, Section 901, Student Activist Groups, Students, Terrorists, American Library Association, Lauren Barack, Librarians, Patriot Act, Section 206, Section 215, Section 505, Cell Phone Encryption, PGP, Phil Zimmerman, Pretty Good Privacy, zphone, Art Kunkin, L.A. Free Press, Los Angeles Free Press, Changing Society, Self-Improvement, Social Change, Society & Culture
Here are links to today’s items:
[1] European police to spy on Britons: Now ministers hand over Big Brother powers to foreign officers
[2] Patriot Act Stands Over Students
[3] Librarians Push Against Patriot Act
[4] Encrypt Your Phone Conversations! Make Them Secure From Big Brother!
Categories: Changing Society, Civil Rights, Community, Government & Politics, Law Enforcement, Social Change, Society and Culture, Technology, Youth Issues Tags: ACLU, american library association, Art Kunkin, Big Brother, Big Brother in Britain, Cell Phone Encryption, Changing Society, Encryption, Fair Trials International, James Slack, L.A. Free Press, Lauren Barack, Librarians, Los Angeles Free Press, Patriot Act, personal privacy, PGP, Phil Zimmerman, Pretty Good Privacy, Section 203, Section 206, Section 215, Section 505, Section 901, Self-Improvement, Social Change, Society & Culture, Steven M. Finger, Student Activist Groups, Students, Surveillance Society, terrorists, zphone
