Britain is 'surveillance society'

Britain is "waking up to a surveillance society that is already all around us," the government's Information Commissioner has said.

I have to admit that I find this quite something coming as it is from the government itself! This government (and the preceding Conservative one) has resided over the eroding of personal privacy, an in some cases, gleefully added fuel to the fire, reducing our right to privacy.
Meanwhile, people who have been watching this with a massive sense of despair must feel driven to say "I told you so".
I do...

Blair refuses to 'undermine troops' with Iraq inquiry

Tania Branigan, political correspondent Tuesday October 31, 2006 The Guardian

The prime minister has refused to give in to demands for an inquiry into the war in Iraq because it would undermine British troops on active service, his official spokesman insisted before today's Commons vote on the issue.

Undermine who? The troops in Iraq are already undermined by the Labour government due to being improperly supplied.
No the real worry for Tony Blair isn't the undermining of UK troops, but the undermining of his government, and more specifically himself. That puts the fear in him more than any possible outcome in Iraq.

Failure to pay attention main road crash cause

Drivers' failure to pay attention, rather than speed, is now the main cause of road accidents, according to government figures published yesterday.
Motoring groups campaigning against speed cameras urged the government to shift the emphasis of safety campaigns from speed to drivers' concentration and avoidance of distractions such as phones, music and satellite navigation systems.

And speed cameras?
I personally find that my attention is, on occasion, distracted from the road, by suddenly having to check that I am not driving at 3mph over the limit. At lease one set of figures show that road accidents have increased in areas where speedcams have been installed. Personally, I feel that reducing the speed limit in sensitive areas (outside schools, hospitals etc.) would be a far more effective way of reducing accidents.

Apple sues more pods

Apple is taking action against more companies it believes are using the word "pod" unfairly.

The company behind two services - Podcastready and Mypodder - has received cease and desist letters ordering it to stop using the phrases which, lawyers claim, consumers could confuse with Apple products.


Wow, talk about arrogance! When they eventualy get round to suing Santa pod, should we remind them that it has been in existance much longer then the iPod, and perhaps the owners should instead be suing Apple?

Spike Milligan

Are you going to come quietly, or do I have to use earplugs?

Campaign in Iraq has increased terrorism threat, says American intelligence report

· Views of 16 government agencies pooled
· Study contradicting Bush was not made public

An authoritative US intelligence report pooling the views of 16 government agencies concludes America's campaign in Iraq has increased the threat of terrorism.

I have trouble beliving that anyone who hasn't benifited financially from the war in Iraq could contend that it hasn't increased the likelyhood of terrorist attacks. The rise of islamic fundamentalism in the UK is the most obvious and immidiate result, as young islamists see what they feel is the repression of their religion.

EU denies Vista vendetta

Red tape vs Redmond...the never ending story

The European Commission has hit back at suggestions it has got it in for Microsoft over security features built into the heavily-delayed Windows Vista.
In a letter to the Financial Times, competition commissioner Neelie Kroes protested: "I have seen it suggested that the Commission may seek to prevent Microsoft from improving the security of its operating system. This is categorically not the case.

And after saying something sensible, the EU comes up with something ridiculous. Of course they have it in for Microsoft, it is pretty obvious from recent events that they have. The important thing is that they regulate the likes of Microsoft, not legislate against them purely because they are the dominant force in OS manufacture. I feel that recently, the EU has slipped towards the latter rather than the former.

Terrorism no excuse for privacy breaches, says EU regulator

No need to change laws
Terrorism and organised crime should not be used as excuses for passing laws which undermine people's privacy and data protection rights, according to the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS). Existing laws do not need changed, he said.
In an update on data protection in Europe, EDPS Peter Hustinx said that security concerns were not an adequate reason to undermine data protection principles.

Wow, common sense coming from the EU, who would have thought?
Of course, it is unikely that Tony Blair will take any notice of this, as it gets in the way of his plans to TAKE OVER THE WORLD!!!!! Ahem, er no, get in the way of his plan to snoop into every private conversation held by E-mail.

Teachers break silence on fingerprinting children

The National Union of Teachers has said that schools should not fingerprint children without the consent of parents.
But UK teaching unions are being slow to formulate firmer policies on the issue because, it appears, teachers have not complained to their unions about the fingerprinting schemes that, according to parents' campaign group leavethemkidsalone.com. has already fingerprinted 700,000 primary school children in 3,500 schools without seeking parental consent.

I am still amazed that this has been allowed to continue unchecked. If I had children of school age and was told that they would be fingerprinted without my permission, I would withdraw them from the school, and relocate them at a school with a "no fingerprinting" policy. Actually, I can see that as a USP that schools should promote, along with good grades etc. "We promise not to criminalise your children" might be a good slogan.

Simon Cameron

An honest politician is one who, when he is bought, will stay bought.

Schools can fingerprint children without parental consent

Parents cannot prevent schools from taking their children's fingerprints, according to the Department for Education and Skills and the Information Commissioner.
But parents who have campaigned against school fingerprinting might still be able to bring individual complaints against schools under the Data Protection Act (DPA).

DfES admitted to The Register that schools can fingerprint children without parents' permission.

Frankly I am stunned. I feel that a society that can sit by and let this happen is not a society in which I wish to live.

I took the "how evil are you" test today, the results below confirm what many have thought....


How evil are you?

Microsoft Research Builds 'BrowserShield'

"Researchers at Microsoft have completed work on a prototype framework called BrowserShield that promises to intercept and remove, on the fly, malicious code hidden on Web pages, instead showing users safe equivalents of those pages. The BrowserShield project, an outgrowth of the company's 'Shield' initiative, could one day even become Microsoft's answer to zero-day browser exploits such as the WMF (Windows Metafile) attack that spread like wildfire in December 2005."

Of course, this has to be a good idea.. Until they get a flood of complaints from webmasters as it incorrectly fingers their websites as containing malicious code. I will stick with Opera as a web browser thanks.

Lester B. Pearson

Politics is the skilled use
of blunt objects.

Blair to tackle 'menace' children

Tomorrow's potential troublemakers can be identified even before they are born, says Tony Blair.

No one could have told how much trouble he would eventually cause, after all he came from a good solid middle/working class background, but he grew up to be one of the worlds most disliked men. Declaring war on other countries, then standing by while innocents were killed in the name of his so-called "war on terror", Tony Blair would certainly have slipped through the net that he proposes to spread in a misguided attempt to solve social problems that are (largely) of his own government's making.

Oz 'pseudo-ID card' database racked by identity fraud claims

19 sacked, 92 resigned

Australia's citizen database was routinely searched for personal reasons by
government agency employees, some of whom have been sacked. Police are now
investigating allegations of identity fraud resulting from the security
breaches...

And remember, "you only have something to fear if you have something to hide"
Further proof if needed, that you simply can't trust those who watch over us with our personal information, for who watches over them?

Men removed from jet for 'speaking Arabic'

Passengers act swiftly to tackle terror threat pair

Two men removed from a Monarch Airlines flight from Malaga to Manchester last Wednesday were targeted because of passenger concerns over their behaviour and the fact that they may have been speaking Arabic, the BBC reports.

Perhaps I can get myself kicked off a plane for speaking a different language...

George Bernard Shaw

"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other
countries because you were born in it."

An internet service that allows users to trade files and use the internet
anonymously launches in Sweden

An interesting alternative given the amount of cracking down there has been
recently on filesharers. Wonder if this idea will take off...

The UK's foreign policy is not to blame for people becoming "indiscriminate terrorist killers", a minister says.

Then perhaps the good minister would enlighten us as to what is the cause of the sudden increase of terrorist attacks in the uk? As opposed to the ones in the US, which has until recently had a more belligerent approach to the middle east. Until recently, when the UK joined the US in what seem from a laymans point of view to be blatantly anti-Muslim polices. So enlighten us minister Browne, what is the real reason?