Everyone over the age of 13 must be tracked by the government… Fortunately, the populace seems to have wised up and is starting to wonder why exactly they must be followed by Big Brother. Now let’s see if they follow suit in the the rest of the so called ‘free’ world.
Spying on your neighbour and reporting them to the authorities. Not for profit, but for fun! If you’re lucky your local council will appoint you to be the volunteer, unpaid, neighbourhood spy! No, it’s not Nazi Germany, not Stalin’s USSR, not even Bush’s US of A. It’s the United Kingdom, birthplace of Churchill!
I can’t put it any better than el Reg can. Apparently the arctic ice has actually grown by 30% since August 2007.
Yes, without a warrant, UK council workers now have 1043 powers of entry to your house at any time to check if you have any weapons of mass destruction lying about, or illigally hypnotising people, or any of a whole list of zany reasons.
Open a smoking club. The down sides: everybody must be a member of the Germany Smokers Club and only members can be allowed in during club meeting times.
Yet another (but now, Grammy award winning) musician is sticking it to her record company and telling her fans to download, as long as they come around to see her live.
After Warner Music asked Kid Rock to denounce file sharing, he turned around and pissed all over Warner instead, by announcing that they stole from the musicians, and he wanted as many people as possible to download his music so they could hear him and then come watch him perform live. Well done that man!
Yup, Sweden is the next country to trounce on everyone’s privacy: it’s going to tap all communications passing through it and analyse it. So if you’re sending an email from the UK to Norway, the data passes through Sweden and is thus subject to review. Nice thought, eh, that the EU has so much to Read more about Sweden’s gonna tap y’all![…]
In a rare display of common sense, the US Congress has put through laws making it illegal to discriminate on DNA – ie. insurance companies can’t raise their rates or refuse to cover someone who has had DNA testing and has had results indicating a risk for certain genetic diseases. Not only is it none Read more about DNA discrimination[…]
Who knew, that damned no-fly list?! A second air marshal said one agent “has been getting harassed for six years because his exact name is on the no-fly list.”
Central databases are great for ALL kinds of things! Not scared yet?
An excellent 1960s essay on the dangers of centralised databases. He gets it almost exactly right.
When the nation’s intelligence agencies wanted a computer network to better share information about everything from al Qaeda to North Korea, they turned to a big name in the technology industry to supply some of the equipment: Google Inc. The Mountain View company sold the agencies servers for searching documents, marking a small victory for Read more about Google has lots to do with intelligence[…]
The former SAS officer accused of plotting a coup in Equatorial Guinea says Sir Mark Thatcher was involved in the plan. Simon Mann was arrested along with 67 others in Harare, Zimbabwe, in March 2004, charged with conspiring to depose the government of president Teodoro Obiang Nguema. Official URL
Wikileaks is currently in the news because and idiot US judge ordered the domainname wikileaks.org down, following the publication of leaked documents on there. Of course this hasn’t stopped wikileaks, as it’s also available on their IP adress, as well as under .be (which is what this is linked to). Anyway, leaked documents can be Read more about Wikileaks[…]
This organisation makes an interesting point: they don’t want to be afraid, and they petition you to send a letter to your government saying something like I am not afraid of terrorism, and I want you to stop being afraid on my behalf. Please start scaling back the official government war on terror. Please replace Read more about Downsize DC: refuse to be afraid[…]
Without the people really knowing or approving of their data in the system, a health care database has been set up with some very personal details in it of all people in Holland. The Vecozo database is searchable by 80,000 people. Not too surprisingly, people aren’t too happy about this.
The smoking nazi’s have now gone to the next step in the UK – due to the smokers now being outside, there is a contamination of the “natural smell of fresh air” so time to throw up abatement orders! The smoker retreat is becoming a rout in the onslaught of the evil anti-everything people.
The Economist has a good article on all the ways that society is watching and following you around nowadays. An interesting point they make is that privacy has only been considered important since WW II. They fail to mention 2 reasons that this might be so: 1) The size of databases was only then becoming Read more about What society is watching[…]
APEC security is lousy and people are stupid peons who will do anything if you give them a reason. We have been indoctrinated by fear. The Chasers prove it on Youtube
So now the bastards have made sure that you’re actually outside killing yourself in the rain, wind, sleet, cold, whatever with your cigarette, they’ve decided that the litter you create when you throw away your cigarette butt is aweful enough that they’re going to automatically ticket you for littering after they’ve automatically identified you with Read more about CCTV spying on smokers[…]
In an interesting art project, where the director wanted to make a movie out of only CCTV footage (which the UK, under the DPA has to provide quickly and for a fixed fee if you want to see your own face with other faces blacked out) about a woman living in a land of faceless Read more about UK Data Protection Act Flaunted[…]
Yeah, used to be Rock and Roll stars had to crash cars into swimming pools to be noticed. Nowadays all they have to do is smoke during a concert. Way to live!
Now police in the UK can invoke the 2006 Violent Crime Reduction Act to issue directions to leave, basically banishing a person (or group of people) from an area for up to 48 hours if they look like they might cause alcohol related disorder, no matter if they’ve actually had anything to drink. This is Read more about Thought Crime UK[…]
Techdirt has two articles running pertaining to how music could use the new digital paradigm to improve there sales and services. The article on Prince and how he exploits the new media show an interesting business model: He also seems to realize a key point in understanding the difference between music that hasn’t yet been Read more about Why the RIAA is wrong and music is turning more and more to file sharing[…]