Mike's Blog

Shrub would be proud - this silly idea of marality don't matter when you're fightin' terrists

Commentary on the UK Government National Security Strategy

This is scary:

Sir David Omand, the former Whitehall security and intelligence co-ordinator, sets out a blueprint for the way the state will mine data -- including travel information, phone records and emails -- held by public and private bodies and admits: "Finding out other people's secrets is going to involve breaking everyday moral rules."

In short: it's immoral, but we're going to do it anyway.(link Bruce Schneier)

I'd be arrested as a terrorist in the UK

and they'd find lots of "evidence" if they searched my computer and camera.  I often take pictures of sewer grates and manhole covers.

Here's a favorite I took  by the Reichstag in Berlin. (Clicking on the pic goes to a larger size in flickr which has some nice detail.

Manchester man arrested for alleged sewer-grate photography, held as a terrorist

Posted by Cory Doctorow, March 3, 2009 10:00 PM | permalink

Still think that if you're innocent, you have nothing to fear from surveillance and control laws? Have a look at this news-video about Stephen Clarke, a man who was accused to taking pictures of sewer-gratings in Manchester and arrested. Though the police couldn't find any photos of sewer-gratings on his phone (and even though "what a sewer grating looks like" isn't a piece of specialized terrorist intelligence), he was held on suspicion of planning an act of terror, imprisoned for two days while the police searched his home, his phone and his computer. When they couldn't find anything suspicious, they released him, but kept his DNA on file, as the biometric of someone who had been accused of plotting a terrorist act. (link BoingBoing)

Still think that if you're innocent, you have nothing to fear from surveillance and control laws? Have a look at this news-video about Stephen Clarke, a man who was accused to taking pictures of sewer-gratings in Manchester and arrested. Though the police couldn't find any photos of sewer-gratings on his phone (and even though "what a sewer grating looks like" isn't a piece of specialized terrorist intelligence), he was held on suspicion of planning an act of terror, imprisoned for two days while the police searched his home, his phone and his computer. When they couldn't find anything suspicious, they released him, but kept his DNA on file, as the biometric of someone who had been accused of plotting a terrorist act. (link BoingBoing)