Secret pact allows the US to spy on UK motorists
THE UK Home Secretary secretively signed a "special certificate" last year that gives foreign security agencies real-time access to traffic camera images and related data monitoring British motorists on highways throughout the UK.
Opposition politicians and civil liberties advocates yesterday accused Gordon Brown's government of attempting to hide from Parliament its covert plans to facilitate international surveillance of UK citizens in violation of privacy laws.
Under the authorisation signed last July 4 by Jacqui Smith, video feeds and still images captured from roadside TV cameras, along with personal data derived from them, can be transmitted out of the UK to countries such as the US, that are outside the European Economic Area.
Home Secretary Smith failed to mention the exception in a statement she made to Parliament less than two weeks later on July 17, 2007 outlining Metropolitan Police exemptions to the 1998 Data Protection Act.
The dispensation gives British police "anti-terrorism" officers the permission to transmit images and information overseas, based upon any representation that the materials are relevant to a "terrorism" threat either in the UK or elsewhere.
Liberal Democratic leader Nick Clegg said last night, "This confirms that this Government is happy to hand over potentially huge amounts of information on British citizens under the catch-all pretext of 'national security'."
UK civil liberties groups are appalled that the UK government is monitoring the daily movements of British citizens on a wholesale basis, even more so that it's willing to provide surveillance images and data to foreign intelligence agencies.
Opponents of what they view as a nascent surveillance state fear the imposition of a "data mining" programme to filter and correlate billions of pieces of data to profile individuals, activities and relationships in ways that might be abused, such as to target minorities and political groups and suppress peaceful dissent.
A Home Office spokesman defended powers granted by the "special certificate" on the grounds of "counter terrorism" and national security, as they always do, of course. Speaking anonymously, he said "We would like to reassure the public that robust controls have been put in place to control and safeguard access to, and use of, the information."
In other words, "Trust us." ยต
L'Inq
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you cant escape they've renovated a walkway near the beach where i live, the work isn't complete. I noticed apart from lamp posts there is a giant pole which i can only guess a security camera will sit on top. Plus on my way to work there are LOTS of cameras, they even shout at you apparently.
expect to see. Terrorists riding in a bus with "hezbollah" in big bright yellow letters. And so on. Call me boring or banal but if I were a terrorist travelling on a UK motorway I would seek to look inconspicuous. Go ahead, arrest me. Imagine am I right, and that you are never going to spot a terrorist on camera, what else could you do with the info? Is there any *other* reason than datamining to allow intelleigence agencies this access? A tenner for the first person to come up with a legitimate counter terrorist use of the data.
The US are even worse than the UK when it comes to loss of data!

more errosion of basic human rights - I didnt see us the public having a say in this (cus if we did, it would have been boycotted just as quick as the national ID scheme).

Its one thing for us to monitor our own - but allowing others to monitor aswell is just taking the downright mick.
I think you're a bit behind by calling the UK a NASCENT security state. There isn't that much left to implement from Orwell's 1984. Spying on people without an ability to watch the watchers: check. Doublespeak: check (in principle any message from New Labour). Uncontrolled police forces: check (ask the Brazilian on the tube, or anyone who's ever had the word anti-terror thrown at them - or Poole council)..
So, does this mean from now on we will be getting signs up just below our road signs in tiny print that you couldn't possibly read whilst driving saying "please note, your travelling may be recorded for security or training purposes?".

"We would like to reassure the public that robust controls have been put in place to control and safeguard access to, and use of, the information."

Note that this does *not* say that such controls are in place -- just that they wish they could reassure the public.

In fact, we know that such controls are not in place. The Bush Administration doesn't respect the rights and privacy of it's own citizens, much less anyone else. 

Despite the fact that the US Constitution states that the government "shall not...", the Bush Administration takes the position that such restrictions are strictly for US citizens. (And then violates them anyway.)



Would these be the same robust controls the government uses to protect our private data?
>> Terrorists riding in a bus with "hezbollah" in big bright yellow letters

why not f*** with their heads a little? maybe it's time to start riding around in vans marked 'INTERNATIONAL COCAINE SMUGGLERS INC.'? Or just Hizbullah / Al Qa'eda / Democratic Party...
You know a Nanny State would be preferable to what we have here in the UK, which is a chaotic combination of self interested politics driven by greed and big business influence, and sheer blind juggernaut incompetence. We are going to hell in a handbasket and the government is standing idly by extolling the virtues of handbaskets in general terms, taking money from handbasket manufacturers to say so, and then looking the other way while we plummet to our doom. Never underestimate the power of greed and ignorance. The government never does the right thing, it always does the thing which looks best on TV.

Like the ban on Airsoft guns for example... ban anything that looks like a gun, not because it will prevent violent crime in ANY way but because it's easy, doable and achieves absolutely nothing while seeming to be taking bold and decisive action.
I recently visited Canada and was pulled aside for a detailed immigration enquiry. They were able to tell me which company I worked for which was suprising since I work for a UK branch of an American firm with no direct employment relationship (ie contract)... exactly how much information is being shared about us?
Along with the complete domination of public privacy all being caught on camera for sevurity reasosn or whatever reasons, this terrible nazi Labour government think of. So too are so many councils guilty of monitering motorists so they can be fined for driving or parking a millimetre out of place. This whoe country has gone mad especially those from labour givernment, this country has become nothing but a TV program for 'so called' security and law and order reasons. Welcome to Logans Run, it wasn't so far fictional after all was it? I hate the British system It is obscene, unhappy and miserable...I am leaving the UK as fast as I can.