The Inquisitr » big brother

British Police warn: be on the look out for bling

Duncan Riley — Wed, 13 May 2009 04:06:46 +0000

Police in Gloucestershire, England have launched an anti-bling campaign in an effort to improve the local crime rate.

The campaign, titled (and we’re not making this up) “Too Much Bling? Give Us a Ring” encourages members of the public to call Crimestoppers when they see someone with too much bling, “with the aim of cracking down on those who live a lavish lifestyle on the profits of crime.”

According to these Police, those who flaunt bling may have obtained the bling through criminal means. Gloucestershire’s Chief constable Dr Timothy Brain told the Daily Mail “In the current time of financial uncertainty, those who live a lavish lifestyle with no discernible, legitimate income become even more apparent.”

The program is also encouraging people to report anyone who drives flash cars or buys expensive items without the apparent means to afford them during the credit crunch…because apparently that’s something easily done by just looking at a person.

“By flaunting their ill-gotten gains criminals signal contempt for everyone who works hard, and act as very poor role models for the younger members of society” Chief Constable Brian added.

Saying this sounds like Big Brother is really stating the obvious, and Britain is by all reports already in the grip of an Orwellian nightmare anyway. Just something else that can be added to the list.

Children in Britain being watched for terrorist tendencies

Steven Hodson — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 21:03:14 +0000

We all know how much the British government and its police forces love to take the Big Brother approach to its citizens but now that has been extended to the children. Under the Channel Program 200 children, some as young as 13, have been placed on what amounts to a watch-list of those who might harbour terrorist tendencies. The program which is being run by the Association of Chief Police Officers ask parents, teachers and other community figures to watch for signs of children who may have an attraction to extremist beliefs or those who might have been targeted by radicalisers.

To back up the reasoning for the program Sir Norman Bettison, the chief constable of West Yorkshire Police and the most senior British police officer in charge of terror prevention, refers back to the July 7 subway bombings.

"One of the four bombers of 7 July was, on the face of it, a model student. He had never been in trouble with the police, was the son of a well-established family and was employed and integrated into society.

"But when we went back to his teachers they remarked on the things he used to write. In his exercise books he had written comments praising al-Qa’ida. That was not seen at the time as being substantive. Now we would hope that teachers might intervene, speak to the child’s family or perhaps the local imam who could then speak to the young man."

Source: The Independent

The program which is being funded by the British Home Office has police officers working with Muslim communities to discover if they can the children that are at risk of radicalization; or who show an interest in extremist material.

Once identified the children are subject to a "programme of intervention tailored to the needs of the individual". Sir Norman said this could involve discussions with family, outreach workers or the local imam, but he added that "a handful have had intervention directly by the police".

He stressed that the system was not being used to target the Muslim community. "The whole ethos is to build a relationship, on the basis of trust and confidence, with those communities," said Sir Norman.

I’m really of a mixed mind on this one but tend to look up the program with a fair amount of suspicion given how the British police are the frontline for the Government’s desire to know pretty well what every citizen is doing – or has done. At the same time programs like these if conducted properly could actually work. I guess time as usual will be the deciding factor.

[hat tip to Cory Doctorow – Boing Boing]

$250 plus a little war-driving equals stolen identities [VIDEO]

Steven Hodson — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 20:30:14 +0000

I don’t imagine that Chris Paget is the most popular person with the State Department or the proponents of RFID enhanced passports and driver’s licences. Especially since he has proven that with as little as $250 worth of off the shelf components and some time driving around you to can become an identity farmer.

The device which Chris built in his spare time operates out of his car and contains everything needed to sniff out and then clone RFID (radio frequency identification tags) tags. In a recent example he drove around for 20 minutes in downtown San Francisco and successfully copied the RFID tags of two passport cards without the knowledge of their owners.

"It’s one thing to say that something can be done, it’s another thing completely to actually do it," Paget said in explaining why he built the device. "It’s mainly to defeat the argument that you can’t do it in the real world, that there’s no real-world attack here, that it’s all theoretical."

Source: The Register

Here is the video showing his little excursion

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Currently the range of Paget’s device is about 30 feet but he says with a little modification it could read the tags up to a mile away. Apparently the Feds are to concerned with this as they say they have no plans to overhaul the technology being used. So not only do we have to worry about excessive government intrusion with this new technology but we also have to worry about our identity being stolen.

AT&T May Start Monitoring You

JR — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 16:44:32 +0000

AT&T is looking at getting on the big brother bandwagon by starting to watch its Internet customers’ web activity.

The company says it’s “carefully considering” a Web monitoring initiative, according to information just obtained by the New York Times. The revelation came in a letter to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, which had questioned several ISPs about their privacy practices.

AT&T, in contrast to other providers, said it would like to look into such a program for its advertising system — though as of now, execs say, they have no such system in place. AT&T did say it would most likely consider an “opt in” scenario rather than an “opt out” one, meaning you would have to actively agree to have your Web habits tracked.

Why, we might ask, would anyone possibly sign up for that?

No related posts.

Study: Big Brother IS Watching At Work

JR — Thu, 22 May 2008 15:26:46 +0000

You may want to watch who you’re emailing from work. A new study released this week finds almost half of all large companies are paying someone to read your messages.

The study, conducted by Proofpoint, shows 41 percent of large U.S. companies — those with 20,000 or more employees — admit to having staff members in charge of monitoring or analyzing outgoing emails. About 30 percent of all companies, small or large, have such staff. And get this: Half of them say their virtual hall monitors have no other duties outside of watching you.

More than a quarter of employers say they’ve fired someone based on what they’ve found in the last year. The most common concerns? “Adult, obscene, or potentially offensive content.”

Of course, it’s not just messages they’re monitoring. Eleven percent of U.S. companies say they’ve punished employees for what they’re doing on blogs or message boards during company time. Thirteen percent have disciplined workers for their social network time.

In other news, I don’t know if you got the memo, but we’re using the new cover sheets on all our TPS reports now. So if you could go ahead and try to remember to do that from now on, that’d be great.