しかし暴露は地方住民を怒らせた。
Angela Pitman, a mother-of-two from Dartmouth, said: “It’s disgusting that the council prefer to think of the criminals and their human rights rather than ours.
“What about us, the people who live their lives by the law, who are the victims of anti-social behaviour nearly on a day-to-day basis?”
Soaring costs of surveillance technology to combat crime and terrorism has contributed to the eleventh consecutive round of inflation-breaking council tax rises.
A Times/Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy survey of more than 250 authorities shows that the average council tax is expected to rise by 3.9 per cent in April. This masks a mixed picture across the country with 92 councils setting rises above 4 per cent and 12 above 5 per cent.
But police precepts ― the element of tax bills for police services ― have been responsible for boosting many overall council tax rises to more than 5 per per cent, the level at which they can be capped.
Lincolnshire Police Authority decided last night on a whopping 79 per cent increase, boosting household bills by more than £100 a year on its element alone, and 12 other police authorities, almost one in three, have decided on increases of more than 5 per cent.
John Healey, the Local Government Minister, said last night that any authority, including police and fire, proposing increases of more than 5 per cent risked being capped. He made clear that Lincolnshire’s proposal was unacceptable.
The police authority insisted that its increase was necessary to save the jobs of hundreds of staff and plug a £6 million shortfall in finances.
The Assocation of Police Authorities said that new demands on policing including CCTV, setting up automatic number plate registration and processing DNA sampling had led to spiralling costs for police forces. “With new technology and forensics there’s more of it available now, and it’s costing more,” said Bob Jones, chairman of the association. “As the challenge has become more sophisticated, we have a very substantial increase in costs.”
Mr Jones pointed to the updating and expanding of the DNA database and the costs of surveying CCTV evidence. “Look at investigations like the London bombings, or the Suffolk murders. The amount of processing of the CCTV footage costs so much. Ten years ago there would not have been anything to look at,” he said.
The 3.9 per cent increase across the country, the lowest for ten years, includes geographical variations, with the West Country and the South East tending to have higher rises and Greater London the lowest. Although 267 councils out of 380 provided figures for their proposed rises, only 150 had their rises confirmed by last night and have been included in the table. A further 30 London authorities, some of which still have to agree rises, have also been included.
Ken Livingstone has tried to improve his chances of being re-elected as Mayor of London by trying to secure low rises in the capital. The survey shows that in inner London the average increase is only 2 per cent while in outer boroughs it is 3.1 per cent.
Part of the reason is a Greater London Authority precept of just 2 per cent, almost two thirds lower than the previous two years.
But he has also been helped by the increasing number of Tory councils keen to keep taxes as low as possible. For the second year running Hammersmith has come in with a cut of 3 per cent (minus 1.74 per cent once the GLA precept is included) with Westminster, Wandsworth, Kensington & Chelsea and Hounslow also proposing freezes in council tax bills. Hackney, a Labour council, has frozen its bill though there will be a small increase due to the GLA precept.
Leicester City Council has set the highest rise in the country (6.2 per cent) although the council leader blames the police authority for boosting the bill to higher than 5 per cent.
The pattern is mixed across the country but there is some evidence that increasing emphasis on efficiency has kept rises to low single figures.
The survey shows that of the 16 authorities with rises below 1 per cent, eight are Conservative, three are Labour, one is Liberal Democrat and four have no overall control. But of the 92 with rises over 4 per cent, 59 are Conservative, 6 Labour, 6 Liberal Democrat, and 19 NOC and 2 other.
Tim Brain, finance head of the Association of Chief Police Officers, said the Government was increasing demands to fight terrorism and appoint more community officers but was not providing the necessary funds.
This German exibition is showcasing bright infrared LED devices that overwhelm the CCDs in security cameras, allowing you to move through modern society in relative privacy. I used this as a gimmick in my story I, Robot ― now I want to own one!
The URA / FILOART developed device promises to the citizens of a more reliable protection against security measures of the state (and other Überwachenden).In addition to monitoring purposes organised systems interaction between man and machine is still IR.ASC an additional interaction between machines dar. This absurd accumulation of technology is symptomatic, because although the entire expense of the protection measures for the alleged safety of citizens is made, the person slips on the importance scale of the current security plan ever deeper down.
Looking for a way to continually shrink computer chips while still squeezing more transistors onto them, IBM scientists are working on a whole new way to build processors ― using DNA.
For the past year and a half, researchers at IBM have been working on creating a new way to make the patterns used to lay out the transistors and wires that go on a chip. Today, semiconductor manufacturers use optical lithography, which uses light to transfer the pattern. The problem, according to Joe Gordon, senior manager for materials for advanced technology at IBM, is that it’s difficult to shrink the pattern using today’s techniques.
And since Gordon said 50% of the improvement in processor performance comes from shrinking the pattern, scientists need to come up with a new way to create the patterns.
That’s where the DNA strands come into play.
“Right now, the industry road map is [that] we’ll get down to 22 nanometer-size features on a chip,” said Gordon. “We’re looking at ways to go down beyond that. It’s very clear it will be difficult to go smaller than that using the optical lithography we know today. Using DNA will help us do that.”
Greg Wallraff, a staff scientist at IBM, explained that the researchers are laying single molecules of DNA onto the chip’s surface and using them as a template for assembling electronic components, like nanotubes and nanowires. The DNA used by the researchers comes from a virus, he added.
Wallraff said the IBM research team is working with California Institute of Technology scientist Paul Rothemund, who has developed a way to assemble single molecules of DNA into complex structures. Building on that research, the IBM scientists are trying to wrangle the DNA into usable templates.
“People say DNA is the blueprint for life,” said Wallraff. “The specific structure of DNA has unique features. It’s basically programmable. You can design DNA into unique shapes, with specific attachment sites. Then we pour this DNA solution onto a silicon substrate, and the DNA assembles itself exactly where we want it to on the chip, and then we assemble the components on top of that.”
The attachment sites on DNA, which is where the nanowires and transistors would attach on the template, can be made much closer together than with traditional pattern manufacturing techniques. With DNA, the attachment sites are 4nm to 6nm apart. Normally, they’re about 45nm apart.
“Think of it as tiling a floor. These DNA pieces are like tiles,” explained Gordon. “Each tile has some array of electronic components. Those tiles are placed on a chip in a larger array so there are thousands or millions on a chip. The second step, which we don’t know how to do yet, would be to wire them all together. We’ve got sizes well below conventional lithography.”
Once the nanotubes and wires are laid onto the template, the DNA would be extracted. Wallraff said millions of the DNA templates would be needed for a single chip.
Gordon noted that the research team is far from figuring out the whole process needed to make the DNA model work. “We don’t have a good picture of exactly how you would do everything,” he said. “How do we make the tiles stick together in the right places? Can we get the nanowires to attach to the tiles in the right places? Can we wire them up?”
Wallraff said the next steps will be connect all the tiles together and check the defect levels during assembly.
Actually using this pattern technique is probably 10 to 20 years away, he noted.
Following the convictions of Steve Wright for the murder of five women in Ipswich and of Mark Dixie for the murder of Sally Anne Bowman it was inevitable that one or two MPs would seek to defy the obscurity of their careers with public calls for a full compulsory DNA collection from every living soul in Britain.
Martin Salter for Labour said a mandatory database was a logical extension of biometric passports, and a Tory foot soldier, Philip Davies, declared that he was not averse to a national database if it would help police clear up crime. With that kind of mental process it is astonishing that this pair can dress themselves in the morning let alone find their way to Parliament.
The point which must be evident to anyone who looks at the Wright and Dixie convictions for more than a few minutes is that both men had form. In Wright’s case, DNA had been collected and retained by police because of a conviction for theft. In the case of Dixie, DNA was removed after his part in a pub brawl and quickly matched with the sample he left on the body of his victim. If his previous sexual offences had been committed during the operation of the database he would have been found more quickly.
But does this support the argument for a mandatory database? Clearly not, because the damage done to the liberty and privacy of 60 million people would be out of proportion to any gain, to say nothing of the administrative nightmare of collecting everyone’s DNA and the flaws already in the system, which are obscured by the police and the Home Office.
The DNA database is not a perfect weapon. Last year 1,500 administrative mistakes were discovered and at least 100 inaccuracies pertaining to individuals. That means there is a real possibility of people being convicted of crimes they did not commit. Given the chaotic state of government databases, it must be obvious even to Salter and Davies that administrative errors would be vastly increased if the database were to be expanded by a factor of about 13, from 4.5m to 60m.
What the Wright and Dixie cases do is undermine Liberty’s argument that DNA should only be taken and retained from those who have committed sexual and violent crimes. Admirable though it is, that position is now untenable. Those that see the dangers of the database should withdraw to fight the principle that innocent people, which includes more than 100,000 children, must be allowed to have their DNA removed from the database. This issue is due to come before the European Court of Human Rights and there is real hope that Britain will be ordered to remove some 565,700 individuals on privacy grounds. At this news another Tory nincompoop, Richard Ottaway, piped up on Friday to say that we need a national database.
Maybe he was doing no more than addressing the anger of his constituency, where Dixie’s victim lived, yet his comment is evidence that the first principles of a truly free state are little understood by the run-of-the-mill MPs on both sides of the house.
We have an incorrigible, corrupt and incompetent government which - as with so much of the apparatus of the database state - has never even sought to place the DNA database on statutory basis. The principles of DNA collection have never been debated or put to the vote. How can that be? The answer is that the database state is part of a long-term project devised by the civil service and the high command of New Labour. It is far easier to allow a stealthy expansion of surveillance and data collection than bring the issues to parliament and alert us all to the profound threat to our liberty and privacy. That is why our gravest contempt must be reserved for opposition MPs such as Davies and Ottaway, whose duty must be to publicise and fight the drastic changes being wrought by New Labour on British democracy. Instead, they dance to the tune of the Murdoch press and lift their skirts to the sinister forces in the Home Office. Pathetic.
An absence of two months from these pages has made me step back and see the changes to our society with even greater anxiety. Only yesterday it was revealed in our sister paper, the Guardian, that the British government, alone among 27 members of the EU, wants the system of data collection - including mobile phone numbers and credit card details - affecting travellers in Europe to include sea and rail travel, all domestic flights and those between EU countries. The crucial point is that Britain wants this information not just for fighting terror and organised crime but for general surveillance. The phrase used by our government in the questionnaire circulated to all member states is ‘more general public policy purposes’.
I have always sought to make the distinction between the controlled state being brought about by New Labour and ideas of a police state. But the thought of these ‘general public policy purposes’ causes a shiver to pass up my spine and makes me wonder if I have mistaken the urges that lurk in the dark heart of the political establishment. So let’s be quite clear. This phrase predicates a police state.
In the name of the great democrats who have occupied the benches in the House of Commons down the ages, what right has the government to know my credit card number, my cell phone number, my destination, or even when I take a trip abroad, or catch the plane to Inverness? Has this been debated in Parliament? No. Are there plans to drag ministers and civil servants in front of the select committees to examine and expose them. Not as far as I can discover, and that is what gives me these dreadful intimations of the future. Parliament has never been less vigilant or more feckless in the face of these numerous unsanctioned measures that steadily accumulate to increase state power.
If you want to know how Britain will be in 20 years’ time, the best place to look is the legislation affecting children. An excellent report produced by, among others, Action on Rights for Children, Liberty, the Open Rights Group and No2ID, paints a horrific picture of the intensive surveillance of our children who are being conditioned to tolerate the collection of biometric data (fingerprints for library use) and the endless attention of these faceless monitors.
A new database is planned which will contain the details of every 14-year-old child in England and Wales, his or her exam results, difficulties within and outside the family - literally everything. And by the time they all reach adulthood, the databases will have merged to give the state complete access to their most personal information. No child will be able to escape his past, or the judgment and watchfulness of the bureaucrats who may decide their destiny. Little wonder that in his dim way the Martin Salter concluded that DNA ought to be added to this great pool of information. The state will know everything about us so why not allow it dominion over our biological essence too?
I estimate that we have just one chance to turn the tide on these trends - the next general election. We can rely on the Liberal Democrats but it will be important to know where the Conservatives stand. Let’s hope that real democrats in their number, such as David Davis and Dominic Grieve, will persuade the likes of Ottaway and Philip Davies to think before they speak, or at least shut the hell up.
Passengers travelling between EU countries or taking domestic flights would have to hand over a mass of personal information, including their mobile phone numbers and credit card details, as part of a new package of security measures being demanded by the British government. The data would be stored for 13 years and used to “profile” suspects.
Brussels officials are already considering controversial anti-terror plans that would collect up to 19 pieces of information on every air passenger entering or leaving the EU. Under a controversial agreement reached last summer with the US department of homeland security, the EU already supplies the same information [19 pieces] to Washington for all passengers flying between Europe and the US.
But Britain wants the system extended to sea and rail travel, to be applied to domestic flights and those between EU countries. According to a questionnaire circulated to all EU capitals by the European commission, the UK is the only country of 27 EU member states that wants the system used for “more general public policy purposes” besides fighting terrorism and organised crime.
The so-called passenger name record system, proposed by the commission and supported by most EU governments, has been denounced by civil libertarians and data protection officials as draconian and probably ineffective.
The scheme would work through national agencies collecting and processing the passenger data and then sharing it with other EU states. Britain also wants to be able to exchange the information with third parties outside the EU.
Officials in Brussels and in European capitals admit the proposed system represents a massive intrusion into European civil liberties, but insist it is a necessary part of a battery of new electronic surveillance measures being mooted in the interests of European security. These include proposals unveiled in Brussels last week for fingerprinting and collecting biometric information of all non-EU nationals entering or leaving the union.
All airlines would provide government agencies with 19 pieces of information on every passenger, including mobile phone number and credit card details. The system would work by “running the data against a combination of characteristics and behavioural patterns aimed at creating a risk assessment”, according to the draft legislation.
“When a passenger fits within a certain risk assessment, he could be identified as a high-risk passenger.”
A working party of European data protection officials described the proposal as “a further milestone towards a European surveillance society.
“The draft foresees the collection of a vast amount of personal data of all passengers flying into or out of the EU regardless of whether they are under suspicion or innocent travellers. These data will then be stored for a period of 13 years to allow for profiling. The profiling of all passengers envisaged by the current proposal might raise constitutional concerns in some member states.”
The Liberal Democrat MEP Sarah Ludford said: “Where is this going to stop? There’s no mature discussion of risk. As soon as you question something like this, you’re soft on terrorism in the UK and in the EU.”
Britain is pushing for a more comprehensive system based on the experience of a UK pilot scheme that has been running for the past three years. Officials say Operation Semaphore, monitoring flights from Pakistan and the Middle East, has been highly successful and has resulted in hundreds of arrests.
The scheme has seen one in every 2,200 passengers warranting further investigation, with a tenth of those “being of interest”. British officials say rapists, drug smugglers and child traffickers have been arrested and want the EU scheme to cover “all fugitives from crown court justice”.
But Ludford said: “If you ask the UK government how many terrorists have been picked up, I don’t think you get a very straight answer.”
EU officials have asked the Home Office minister Meg Hillier for information about the arrests of suspected terrorists.
The Bush administration said on Saturday U.S. telecommunications companies have agreed to cooperate “for the time being” with spy agencies’ wiretaps, despite an ongoing battle between the White House and Congress over new terrorism surveillance legislation.The Justice Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a joint statement saying wiretaps will resume under the current law “at least for now.”
“Although our private partners are cooperating for the time being, they have expressed understandable misgivings about doing so in light of the ongoing uncertainty and have indicated they may well discontinue cooperation if the uncertainty persists,” the statement said.
On Friday U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey and Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell said telecommunications firms have been reluctant to cooperate with new wiretaps since six-month temporary legislation expired last weekend. As a result, they told Congress, spy agencies have missed intelligence.
Democrats accused the Bush administration of fear-mongering and blamed it for any gaps.
President George W. Bush has said he would not compromise with the Democratic-led Congress on his demand that phone companies be shielded from lawsuits for taking part in his warrantless domestic spying program.
The measure passed by the Senate would provide retroactive lawsuit immunity to firms which cooperated with warrantless wiretaps that Bush authorized after the September 11 attacks. But the House of Representatives has opposed it, and Democratic leaders of both chambers said they would try to find a compromise.
Democratic leaders of congressional intelligence and judiciary committees issued a statement on Friday saying they were committed to passing new legislation and urged Bush to support an extension of the temporary law. Bush has said he would hold out for a permanent overhaul of the 1978 surveillance law.
The future security of every family and child in the country has been compromised by the recent loss of child benefit details.
News of further electronic data losses has only reinforced the threat to our privacy.
But what will the long-term consequences be?
Identity theft is a real and growing problem.
The Government would have us believe that ID cards and biometric identification will solve the problem. In fact, it will make things worse.
You can change your pin number but you can’t change your fingerprints.
Once on the National Database, not just your bank details but everything about you is vulnerable to theft.
All but three of the country’s 69 new ‘interrogation centres’ are now open.
People applying for their first adult passport are already being called in. Soon those renewing their passports will also have to attend.
Plans to simultaneously issue ID cards have been quietly shelved until after the next General Election.
However, young people (students applying for loans, for example) will be ‘persuaded’ (that is, bribed) to have an ID card in the near future.
Meanwhile, the first GP surgeries have started uploading confidential patient records on to the NHS database (”The Spine”), and increasingly, schools are fingerprinting children as young as four (for registration, lunches, library books), often without parents’ permission or even knowledge.
Children are growing up believing it is normal to be fingerprinted having done nothing wrong. This must stop.
Washington warns that the recently-developed high-tech virtual fence on the US-Mexican border is fully prepared to tackle any form of illegal crossings.
The $20 million ‘Project 28′ features cutting-edge sensor towers and advanced mobile communications on a 45-km stretch of the southern border near Nogales, Arizona.
“I have personally witnessed the value of this system, and I have spoken directly to the Border Patrol agents … who have seen it produce actual results, in terms of identifying and allowing the apprehension of people who were illegally smuggling across the border,” said Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff.
Chertoff anticipated the high-tech surveillance equipments would finally put a stop to the highly charged political issue of immigration.
Rep. Bennie Thompson who heads the House of Representatives Homeland Security committee, however, criticized the plan for relying too much on contractors and barring Border Patrol agents from highlighting the ‘obvious flaws’.
“I would hope that they (Homeland Security officials) have learned from these mistakes,” he said.
It’s been barely a week since the Democratic-controlled Congress allowed a temporary electronic spying law to lapse. But U.S. intelligence agencies are already encountering problems maintaining and expanding vital operations, the Bush administration claims.
In a letter sent late on Friday to House Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes, National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell and Attorney General Michael Mukasey claimed that in the six days since the temporary law expired, some “partners” in intelligence operations have “reduced cooperation.” According to two government officials, who asked for anonymity when discussing sensitive material, the “partners” referred to in the letter are (unnamed) U.S. telecommunications companies, who-with administration backing-have been aggressively lobbying Congress for a controversial clause in new electronic spying legislation. The clause would effectively wipe out a series of private lawsuits seeking damages against the telecoms for their cooperation with what civil libertarians and administration critics claim was an illegal expansion of electronic spying against targets inside the U.S.-an expansion authorized by President Bush in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.
In their letter, McConnell and Mukasey claim that since the so-called Protect America Act lapsed, partners “have delayed or refused compliance with our requests to initiate new surveillances of terrorist and other foreign intelligence targets under existing directives issued pursuant to the Protect America Act.”
The letter continues: “Although most partners intend to cooperate for the time being, they have expressed deep misgivings about doing so in light of the uncertainty and have indicated that they may well cease to cooperate if the uncertainty persists.”
Mukasey and McConnell say that they are currently “working to mitigate these problems and are hopeful that our efforts will be successful.” But they add that unless Congress passes a version of a new electronic surveillance bill, approved by the Senate, which includes the controversial retroactive lawsuit immunity for telecom companies, “the broader uncertainty caused” by the temporary spy law’s expiration “will persist.” The letter adds that: “This uncertainty may well continue to cause us to miss information that we otherwise would be collecting.”
The letter amounts to a stepping-up of pressure on Democrats in Congress–and in the House in particular–to pass a surveillance bill to the liking of the White House and the telecom industry.
A majority in the Senate, with the backing of Democratic Senate Intelligence Committee chair Jay Rockefeller, approved a bill which would extend many provisions of the electronic surveillance law that recently expired. That legislation, which was opposed by a small group of liberal senators, would also give the telecoms the retroactive immunity they are seeking.
The administration and the Senate majority pressured the House to go along with the Senate bill. But the House approved a version which contained additional civil-liberties protections-and omitted any retroactive immunity for the telecoms. That left Congress deadlocked; the White House has indicated President Bush will veto any version of a new surveillance law that does not include the immunity provision.
The letter from Mukasey and McConnell does not spell out precisely what kind of new intelligence operations are being thwarted because of the congressional impasse. And administration critics, including Rep. Reyes, have recently accused the administration and its supporters of exaggerating the threat to current intelligence activities caused by the congressional standoff.
Administration critics note that eavesdropping operations undertaken under the intel law which just lapsed are allowed to continue for 12 months after they were first authorized. However, administration officials claim the telecoms are nervous that the situation leaves them with insufficient protection against new private lawsuits.
In a statement released late Friday, Reyes, Rockefeller and several other Democrats lashed out at the White House’s tactics. “Further politicizing the debate, the administration today announced that they believe there have been gaps in security since the Protect America Act expired. They cannot have it both ways; if it is true that the expiration of the PAA has caused gaps in intelligence, then it was irresponsible for the President and congressional Republicans to openly oppose an extension of the law. Accordingly, they should join Democrats in extending it until we can resolve our differences.”
Normally, I’m all for what Uncle Sam needs to do in order to maintain National Security … so long as it doesn’t go too far. The question is, with this story in Hack N Mod, has Uncle Sam (and Dell Computers) gone a bridge too far in surveilling America?
Big Brother is indeed watching you, my friends … One man found a keylogger connected to the integrated Ethernet board of his Dell PC.
The story goes on to state that Dell gave him a nondescript reply and after consulting local law enforcement, he made a FOIA request regarding it. The reply is interesting, but may not be the entire story. Not everything is black helicopters and wiretaps.
On it’s face, it appears that Dell Computer may be participating in a felony by installing hardware keyloggers in their Dell Laptops. However, there are some real world applications for a hardware keylogger … such as information security on business laptops and backup potential in the event of a catastrophic software or hard drive failure. And one comfort is that according Keyghost, the makers of the keylogger, only an administrator can access the log, which only records up to 128,000 characters. Then there’s the deterrant capability that if employees know that a keylogger is installed on their business computers, they won’t use those computers for unauthorized or nefarious uses.
It could be a mistake of distribution, or deliberate design meant to accommodate their business customers. But if Dell is installing these in all their laptops and not advising their customers with an option to have it removed, then perhaps they are indeed violating a customer’s rights.
More than half the population supports the Government’s controversial identity card scheme, according to a survey for the Home Office.
Sixty-one per cent of people agree strongly or slightly with the £5.75 billion scheme, with 20 per cent disagreeing strongly or slightly. The number of people unhappy with the project because they believe it would infringe their personal freedom has fallen.
More than 2,000 people over 16 were interviewed. The researchers found that the number of people who believe that the scheme will prevent illegal immigration has jumped from 23 per cent to 32 per cent. Just 16 per cent of people believe it will prevent fraud.
The research, the most recent available, was carried out before HM Revenue and Customs lost two CDs containing the personal details of 25 million people.
The scheme is one of three huge projects that will allow the Government to keep a closer check on citizens. The national identity register will contain individuals’ full names, other names by which they have been known, date of birth, place of birth, gender, the address of principal residence in the United Kingdom and the address of every other place in Britain or elsewhere where they have a place of residence and nationality. A separate database will contain fingerprints and a person’s photograph.
Two national databases are also underway: the NHS Care Records Service and the Children’s Database.
Connecting for Health will involve uploading medical records for more than 50 million patients on to an online database, allowing information to be shared among health care professionals. The NHS Care Records Service will contain a limited amount of essential information that can be combined with locally held care information. Patients will mostly be identified by summary care records containing only a few personal details. Their full medical history will only be available to doctors involved in their treatment using chip-and-PIN cards, which require a six-digit code to access some parts of the system.
In September a national children’s database is due to be set up containing the details of every child in England and Wales. Ministers say that details on all families are needed so that children’s services can contact one another. Details held will include names, addresses, schools, GP details, and other services involving each child.
Town hall officials, charity workers and even careers advisers will have access to the database, along with doctors, social workers and teachers.
The decision to set up the database was made after the inquiry into the death of Victoria Climbié in 2000, which uncovered communication problems between schools, social workers and GPs.
Existing databases hold huge amounts of information on citizens. One of the biggest is the Department for Work and Pensions customer information system, which holds about 85 million records, including the personal details of anyone with a national insurance number. It has the full income and personal details of anyone in receipt of benefits, including 11.5 million with state pensions, 2.65 million on incapacity benefits and 4 million who claim either pension credit or income support.
A database at the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency holds the names, addresses, driving licence and vehicle details of 42 million drivers.
The Passport Agency has the records of 80 million passports issued, including the 47 million that are currently valid. It holds names, addresses, date and place of birth of applicants.
Revenue & Customs holds the names and addresses of six million people who make tax credit claims, the names, addresses and national insurance and salary details of the 30.5 million people who pay income tax and the details of 25 million people who receive child benefit.
Losing streak
September 2007 GMRC lost a CD with national insurance and pension details of 15,000 people October Laptop containing data on 2,000 ISA-holders stolen November Two CDs with details of 25 million people lost in post December Four CDs with court case details missing; laptop with data of 60,000 people stolen from Citizens Advice Bureau; details of three million learner-drivers lost; data on 6,500 pension-holders lost January 2008 Laptop containing details of 600,000 people stolen; details of 1,500 students lost
After more than a year of heated political wrangling, the Senate handed the White House a major victory Tuesday by voting to broaden the government’s spy powers after giving legal protection to phone companies that cooperated in President Bush’s warrantless eavesdropping program.
The Senate rejected a series of amendments that would have restricted the government’s surveillance powers and eliminated immunity for the phone carriers, and it voted in convincing fashion ― 69 to 29 ― to end debate and bring the issue to a final vote. That vote on the overall billwas an almost identical 68 to 29.
The House has already rejected the idea of immunity for the phone companies, and Democratic leaders reacted angrily to the Senate vote. But Congressional officials said it appeared that the House would ultimately be forced to accept some sort of legal protection for the phone carriers in negotiations between the two chambers this week.
The Senate debate amounted to a proxy vote not only on the president’s warrantless wiretapping program, but also on a range of other issues that tested the president’s wartime authority, from secret detentions to wiretapping issues. The discussion in effect presaged the debate over national security that will play out this year in the presidential and congressional elections.
Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, who spoke on the Senate floor for more than 20 hours in an unsuccessful effort to stall the wiretapping bill, said the vote would be remembered by future generations as a test of whether the country heeds “the rule of law or the rule of men.”
But with Democrats defecting to the White House plan, he acknowledged that the national security issue had won the day in the Senate, even among many of his Democratic colleagues. “Unfortunately, those who are advocating this notion that you have to give up liberties to be more secure are apparently prevailing,” Mr. Dodd said. “They’re convincing people that we’re at risk either politically, or at risk as a nation.”
With resistance led by Mr. Dodd and Senators Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, critics of the administration’s plan argued that it effectively rewarded phone companies by providing them with legal insulation for actions that violated longstanding law and their own fiduciary responsibilities to their customers. Immunity would protect the phone companies from some 40 lawsuits now pending that charge the firms broke the law by taking part in the program.
But supporters of the plan said the phone carriers acted out of patriotism after the Sept. 11 attacks in complying with what they believed in good faith was a legally binding order from the president. Republicans were able to garner the support of 19 Democrats and Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut. Democratic leaders charged that the tactics the Republicans used smacked of fear-mongering.
“This, I believe, is the right way to go for the security of the nation,” said Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, the West Virginia Democrat who leads the intelligence committee and who was a pivotal supporter of the White House-backed plan approved Tuesday.
Beyond the immunity provision, the Senate measure would also widen the executive branch’s surveillance powers by allowing the National Security Agency and intelligence agencies to use broad orders ― without getting court orders in advance ― to eavesdrop on groups of overseas targets, rather than using individualized warrants.
In a judgment made public late Friday, a Federal Court judge denied a request from Canada’s spy agency to conduct electronic intercepts on 10 suspects outside Canada.The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) was permitted to investigate the suspects - nine of whom are Canadian citizens, permanent residents or refugees - inside Canada but the Federal Court judgment denied its request to pursue the suspects through electronic surveillance when they left Canadian shores.
“I find that the court is without the jurisdiction to issue the warrant sought. Accordingly, the application will be dismissed,” Justice Edmond Blanchard wrote in the judgment.
The ruling stated that the Federal Court was not able to authorize the warrants sought for investigative activities to be conducted by agents for CSIS in a country other than Canada.
“I am not persuaded that in the national security context, the practice of intelligence gathering operations in foreign states is recognized as a customary practice in international law,” wrote Justice Blanchard.
The URA / FILOART developed device promises to the citizens of a more reliable protection against security measures of the state (and other Überwachenden).In addition to monitoring purposes organised systems interaction between man and machine is still IR.ASC an additional interaction between machines dar. This absurd accumulation of technology is symptomatic, because although the entire expense of the protection measures for the alleged safety of citizens is made, the person slips on the importance scale of the current security plan ever deeper down. 
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