The UK's new 'Big Brother'

Get a motorbike and become invisible.

I've got one, but that doesn't help me for most journeys! ...and besides, we're talking issues here, not specifics.

Whenever I hear that trite argument trotted out "you've got nothing to fear if you're a law abiding citizen" I just feel like punching the person in the face for being so flipping naive, this has ben building for some while now in a very subversive manner. The UK now has the highest level of surveillance of it's citizens of anywhere in europe and I would hazard a guess at anywhere in the world in truthfulness. They have been slowly moving to linking all the existing databases as well as introducing these new systems for a while now and the move predates the commonly given excuse of anti-terror prevention. We also now apparently are going to see the roll out of the facial recognition systems in places such as the Underground, and they have already successfully tested the system on the street level cctv systems.

In the quiet respectable middle class garden square where I live we have a CCTV camera on the corner of one half of the square , Why?
it is constantly active and you can watch it panning around to follow people and cars all the time. and I have noted it follow me on a number of occasions walking from my car to the front door.
This is invasive and unsettling, why does anyone have the right to question my actions in this way to monitor my activities.
We in the UK have for too long acted in a submissive role towards authority, we have one of the oldest parliamentary democracies in the world; yet we never stand up for our rights or argue the toss.

We will wake up one day to find that we have no more freedom and we will only have ourselves to blame.

This no joke and yet most seem oblivious to what is happening.

Hugo.

I couldn't agree more Hugo. As soon as I saw the first SPECS system many years ago (tested on the M1), I immediately saw where it was all heading. It's not too difficult for someone who builds data-handling systems to realise the potential of such things. When my car was last MOTed it was all done with a linked mainframe noting everything about the test. When you realise that insurers also have to share their databases with 'the law', and the Inland Revenue, and then think about all the other government accessible systems there are, it's very obvious that the Big Brother mentality is alive and kicking in the UK. Today it's our cars - or is it our faces as well; who knows.

But what hope have the likes of you or I to do anything about it? ...bugger all!

Hi

I think it is a sad reflection of the impending totalitarianist state ethos being constructed by politicians with the aid of mass media groups.

We now have police forces who are targeted with banging up as many people as they can, so they are on the look out for easy targets. Witness the huge increase in prison numbers with no discernable effect on so-called crime levels.

A government that has introduce a massive number of new laws to outlaw anything you care to think of.

Nobody seems to consider the disenfranchising effect of all these measures.

The fact is, almost everybody has committed a 'crime' and is therefore a criminal, me most certainly included.

What benefit can society gain from such divisionary tactics? Not a lot. I don't doubt that this will lead to serious civil unrest at some point, but the brain dead politicos who dreamt this all up will be either long since dead (I hope) or retired to safe fenced off estates with police security.

I will give you one example of what I mean. As a teacher, I see pupils every year whose literacy skills are so poor, not as a result of the schools, but simply a reflection of their ability, that when they leave school they have no hope of taking the new driving theory test. So, they can't legally drive. They are reliant on public transport and finding a job with no need of literacy skills.

Why then, should we not be surprised that 90% of 'criminals' have very low literacy skills? We haven't left them with much choice to survive. So, why not simply lock up all school leavers who fail basic literacy tests and be done with it? 60% of all males being sentenced to prison are currently receiving mental health care, and many more require it whilst in prison, simply not having been diagnosed before being sentenced. We closed down asylums in favour of care in the community, which translates into we will bang you up as quickly as we can as soon as we can pin something on you, and then deny you the care you need in the hope you will commit suicide whilst in prison.

We in the IT community can see how these huge databases will be used. They can profile people for those likely to commit a crime (such as driving without a licence) and follow them and nick them.

We will most probably end up with similar numbers in prison as there are in the USA, typically 10 times what we currently have. Do we really want to spend this sort of money?

I rant.

I apologise. But I feel really strongly that this country has gone to the dogs.

Trevor

You and me both Trevor, I am so unutterably despondent with the direction this country is taking and so vehemently angry that this government that promised so much is actively setting about destroying the fabric of society, it has absolutely no regard for social well being or of tackling root causes. Unless it gets a grip on the fundamentals of Education, Health and Crime and that's the causes not endless petty fines for people who by and large are law abiding citizens, then things will very rapidly get worse.

Fourth richest country in the world!! it's a joke as it's people live in a never ending grip of spiraling taxes, where senior citizens feel that to make a point they have to go to jail. That's an utter disgrace. A country that can't run a national health service and look after it's citizens, a country where we have constantly failed to educate our children for the last, what 20 years?, who do they think they run this country on behalf of, and all of the above doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of the problems we are facing in the UK.

Right rant over back to er.. what do we discuss here?

Its at this point that some of our non-UK forum members jump in and remind us how the grass is not always greener elsewhere. But then I don't live elsewhere - like you two, I just hate to see a (relatively) good system ruined by spin and short-termism dished out by people who seem to lack any degree of common sense or ability to stop the bureaucrats with even less common-sense. I used to think that David Icke was a fruit and nut case, but with the impending introduction of finger-printing and retina scanning for ID cards that we all have to have, now I'm not so sure!

It's a history and culture thrown away as if it counts for nothing and fundamentally because these people are not the brightest minds and are aware of their very real limitations, I'm reminded of some of the great politicians of the labour party and this "new" breed just do not stand comparison as they are ruled by spin and a total lack of passion they seek to retain office by ducking problems, avoiding issues, they ultimately are self serving venal hypocrites.

Identity cards is yet another in a long line of restrictions and impositions being imposed on us and is of the worst nature imaginable, yet again we find that it is argued that this will keep us safe, that the authorities will be able to control crime, and immigration far more effectively, this is absolute tosh and there are many people saying this and decrying the fact we stand to loose an absolute fundamental right to anonymity, we have - other than during the WW2 - enjoyed the freedom and right to our privacy; the onus has always been on the authorities to have to prove a persons identity and it has never been a crime to travel without any form of ID. So what is to happen in the future will it be a criminal offence to fail to provide conclusive proof of your identity on demand.

This act is by far and away the most sinister part of the jigsaw being assembled, and I for one want absolutely no part of it, but it looks as though I will not have a choice, either that or I will have to leave the country I love. Of course we can still press the point that the technology is flawed and that this is understood by almost anyone with a decent background in IT, yet this argument has been dismissed, or rather ignored as is the case at the moment when government have decides to press ahead with a policies, case in point being dear Ken livingston and his complete denial that the majority of people do not want congestion charging widened and we can even supply flawless argument to demonstrate the case against it yet he's choosing to ignore the majority voice, when did we become a totalitarian state, and incidently if anyone cares to look up the definition of the word you will find it actually fits the nature of the UK perfectly at the moment.

What happened?