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Police Track & Record Journeys For 2 Years

Wednesday, April 29th, 2009

The details of thousands of journeys made by motorists every day are being stored for up to two years by police.
Motorists are being watched and tracked by dozens of cameras, which record the vehicles’ number plates as they travel through Portsmouth.

Hampshire Constabulary is building up a vast database of round-the-clock information on the comings and goings of visitors and residents from the data recorded by automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) cameras.

The information is passed on to police by Portsmouth City Council – one of a few local authorities across the country with the ability to manage and read ANPR data on its large network of 15,000 cameras.

The number of CCTV cameras works out at one for every 12 people who live in the city – although a city council source said only 170 cameras are actually placed in public areas like Guildhall Square.

Police argue the ANPR cameras – designed to read car number plates to see whether vehicles are insured, have an MOT certificate or road tax – are essential for catching criminals and terrorists.

However civil liberty campaigners are concerned that all trips, no matter how mundane, are being recorded and stored for two years.

Isabella Sankey, director of policy for civil liberties group Liberty, said: ‘The road to massive scale real-time surveillance is paved with good intentions.

‘We have no problem with ANPR being used to locate vehicles whose owners the police firmly suspect of having committed an offence but it shouldn’t be used as a tool of mass surveillance.’

Hampshire Constabulary, like all police forces, see the cameras as an essential part of their surveillance of more serious criminals.

Spokesman Tim Feltham said: ‘Automatic Number Plate Recognition is an extremely useful police tool which can be used to reduce crime, detect offences and combat terrorist activity.

‘Hampshire Constabulary uses the system in a lawful and proportionate way and in line with national policies on the storage and retention of data.’

Ray Stead, the CCTV manager for Portsmouth City Council, said: ‘ANPR is linked to our cameras but it is a transparent system, which means we do not do anything with the information.

‘It is all sent back to the police. We do not do anything with it and we do not see it.’

HOME SECRETARY’S CLIMBDOWN

Just this week, Home secretary Jacqui Smith climbed down on government plans for giant database tracking all e-mails, phone calls and internet activity, saying a central store of electronic data was an ‘extreme’ solution and would have undermined privacy.

Instead, records of every electronic connection made by Britons will be held by private companies at a cost of around £2bn.

Internet and telephone firms will be asked to collect and store vast amounts of information on who we are speaking to, what websites we are visiting and who we are exchanging e-mails with.

Communications data – which excludes the content of messages and calls – will be held for at least a year so it can be accessed by government agencies such as the police, security services and other bodies.

Michael Powell

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Civil Disobedience at White House

Wednesday, April 29th, 2009

The following news advisory comes from Witness Against Torture.

On April 30th, hundreds of human rights activists will gather near the White House to call on the Obama administration to support a criminal

inquiry into torture under the Bush administration and to fully break with past detention policies.

At a rally at Lafayette Park at 11:15 am, members of Witness Against Torture, Amnesty International, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Torture Abolition Survivors Support Coalition will speak out about the need for accountability and an end to Bush-era policies. At noon, sixty activists from Witness Against Torture — each representing one of the Guantanamo inmates cleared for release but still imprisoned – will risk arrest.

“Despite early, encouraging signs,” says Matthew Daloisio of Witness Against Torture, “the Obama administration has been a disappointment with respect to detainee issues and torture. President Obama has been reluctant to investigate possible, past crimes, and many of the immoral and illegal policies of the Bush administration — from the denial of habeas rights at Bagram Air Base, to the continued detention of innocent men in Guantanamo — remain in place. We need accountability, not immunity, and an end to the abuse of detainees. This president and many members of Congress are in office partly

because of their promise to repudiate Bush’s detention regime. It’s time they live up to that promise.”

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS, THURSDAY, APRIL 30

10:15am: Rally at the Capitol Reflecting Pool, followed by detainee procession to Lafayette Park

11:15 am: Rally at Lafayette Park and detainee procession to the White House

Noon: White House Protest

Witness Against Torture formed in 2005 when 25 activists went to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to protest outside the detention camp. The April 30 demonstration concludes Witness Against Torture’s 100 Days Campaign to Close Guantanamo and End Torture. During the campaign, WAT activists have held a daily vigil at the White House, brought protest signs to confirmation and other congressional hearings, lobbied lawmakers to change detention policies, and hosted numerous public events in the Washington area.

Background on the campaign and WAT demands, http://www.100dayscampaign.org/node/475

Details for April 30th, http://www.100dayscampaign.org/a30

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Pastor testifies that he was tortured in the Philippines

Wednesday, April 29th, 2009

Claims made by the Philippines government to a good human rights track record “are utterly false”, the Rev Berlin Guerrero told the United Nations Committee against Torture this week. A victim of torture himself, Guerrero said the government of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo is “remiss in its responsibility to prevent torture”.

A pastor of the United Church of Christ in the Philippines, Guerrero stated that “church people have not been spared from torture”.

“Most of the victims of torture among church people are from member churches of the National Council of Churches in the Philippines, and I am one of those who have been victimized,” he said.

According to the human rights group Karapatan (Alliance for the Advancement of People’s Rights), between 2001 and 2008 there were 1,010 documented victims of torture in the Philippines. Extra judicial killings over the same period amounted to 991.

Guerrero spoke before the 42nd session of the UN Committee against Torture meeting in Geneva, Switzerland this week to review the human rights record of Philippines and other countries. He was sponsored by the World Council of Churches (WCC) Commission of the Churches in International Affairs.

Guerrero was abducted on 27 May 2007 in front of his family, soon after Sunday worship at the local UCCP church in Malaban, Biñan. “No warrant of arrest was shown despite our pleas and protests,” he recalled in his statement to the UN committee.

After “one year, three months and 15 days”, he was released because of the “insufficiency of evidence” against him. “To experience this kind of persecution strengthened and confirmed my faith,” he says. “While in detention I was happy to be able to serve the prison community by starting a Christian ministry to my fellow detainees.”

When he visited the WCC offices in Geneva on 28 April, Guerrero was welcomed by the WCC general secretary, the Rev Dr Samuel Kobia. During a visit to the Philippines in November 2007 at the helm of an international delegation, Kobia had joined the campaign for Guerrero’s liberation, publicly calling for his release.

According to Guerrero, thanks to an international campaign in which churches have played a crucial role, the extra judicial executions in the Philippines have decreased. But “with general elections scheduled for 2010 they are peaking again, with a rate of one person killed every week,” he says.

“The WCC will continue supporting the efforts of human rights defenders in the Philippines,” Kobia told Guerrero, who was accompanied by Karapatan general secretary Marie Hilao-Enriquez, and by Raymond Manalo, another torture victim.

A farmer’s ordeal

Manalo, a 27-year old farmer in San Ildefonso, in the northern province of Bulacan, was abducted together with his brother Reynaldo on 14 February 2006. He was held for 18 months in three different secret detention facilities within military camps.

“The soldiers beat us with pieces of wood on our backs and different parts of our bodies, beat us with chains, burn different parts of our bodies with cigarettes and heated metal tin, kicked us with their combat boots on, hit us with the butts of their rifles, poured gasoline on my waist and legs while threatening to burn me,” Manalo told the UN committee.

He witnessed “soldiers summarily killing civilians whom they accused of being rebels or aiding them” as well as other captives being tortured. After admitting to his captors’ accusations, the torture was eased and he entered a slave work regime.

Manalo escaped with his brother in August 2007. With help from human rights organizations he was able to obtain a writ of amparo - a legal remedy for victims of extrajudicial killings or enforced disappearances - and in September 2008 filed criminal complaints against members of the military he was able to identify amongst his torturers.

“I do not want this ordeal to happen to anybody else. I wish that the extrajudicial killings, disappearances and torture in my country will stop […] I hope that President Gloria Arroyo will end the impunity,” Manalo told the UN committee.

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