e-nsecure.net blog - Comments on IT security and Privacy or the lack thereof.
Rat's Blog -The Reverend Rat writes about London street life and technology
Duncan Drury - wired adventures in Tanzania & London
Dr. K's blog - Hacker, Author, Musician, Philosopher
David Mery - falsely arrested on the London Tube - you could be next.
James Hammerton
White Rose - a thorn in the side of Big Brother
Big Blunkett
Into The Machine - formerly "David Blunkett is an Arse" by Charlie Williams and Scribe
infinite ideas machine - Phil Booth
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Chris Lightfoot
Oblomovka - Danny O'Brien
Liberty Central
dropsafe - Alec Muffett
The Identity Corner - Stefan Brands
Kim Cameron - Microsoft's Identity Architect
Schneier on Security - Bruce Schneier
Politics of Privacy Blog - Andreas Busch
solarider blog
Richard Allan - former Liberal Democrat MP for Sheffield Hallam
Boris Johnson Conservative MP for Henley
Craig Murray - former UK Ambassador to Uzbekistan, "outsourced torture" whistleblower
Howard Rheingold - SmartMobs
Global Guerrillas - John Robb
Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends
Vmyths - debunking computer security hype
Nick Leaton - Random Ramblings
The Periscope - Companion weblog to Euro-correspondent.com journalist network.
The Practical Nomad Blog Edward Hasbrouck on Privacy and Travel
Policeman's Blog
World Weary Detective
Martin Stabe
Longrider
B2fxxx - Ray Corrigan
Matt Sellers
Grits for Breakfast - Scott Henson in Texas
The Green Ribbon - Tom Griffin
Guido Fawkes blog - Parliamentary plots, rumours and conspiracy.
The Last Ditch - Tom Paine
Murky.org
The (e)State of Tim - Tim Hicks
Ilkley Against CCTV
Tim Worstall
Bill's Comment Page - Bill Cameron
The Society of Qualified Archivists
The Streeb-Greebling Diaries - Bob Mottram
Your Right To Know - Heather Brooke - Freedom off Information campaigning journalist
Ministry of Truth _ Unity's V for Vendetta styled blog.
Bloggerheads - Tim Ireland
W. David Stephenson blogs on homeland security et al.
EUrophobia - Nosemonkey
Blogzilla - Ian Brown
BlairWatch - Chronicling the demise of the New Labour Project
dreamfish - Robert Longstaff
Informaticopia - Rod Ward
War-on-Freedom
The Musings of Harry
Chicken Yoghurt - Justin McKeating
The Red Tape Chronicles - Bob Sullivan MSNBC
Campaign Against the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill
Stop the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill
Rob Wilton's esoterica
panGloss - Innovation, Technology and the Law
Arch Rights - Action on Rights for Children blog
Database Masterclass - frequently asked questions and answers about the several centralised national databases of children in the UK.
Shaphan
Moving On
Steve Moxon blog - former Home Office whistleblower and author.
Al-Muhajabah's Sundries - anglophile blog
Architectures of Control in Design - Dan Lockton
rabenhorst - Kai Billen
(mostly in German)
Nearly Perfect Privacy - Tiffany and Morpheus
Iain Dale's Diary - a popular Conservative political blog
Brit Watch - Public Surveillance in the UK - Web - Email - Databases - CCTV - Telephony - RFID - Banking - DNA
BLOGDIAL
MySecured.com - smart mobile phone forensics, information security, computer security and digital forensics by a couple of Australian researchers
Ralph Bendrath
Financial Cryptography - Ian Grigg et al.
UK Liberty - A blog on issues relating to liberty in the UK
Big Brother State - "a small act of resistance" to the "sustained and systematic attack on our personal freedom, privacy and legal system"
HosReport - "Crisis. Conspiraciones. Enigmas. Conflictos. Espionaje." - Carlos Eduardo Hos (in Spanish)
"Give 'em hell Pike!" - Frank Fisher
Corruption-free Anguilla - Good Governance and Corruption in Public Office Issues in the British Overseas Territory of Anguilla in the West Indies - Don Mitchell CBE QC
geeklawyer - intellectual property, civil liberties and the legal system
PJC Journal - I am not a number, I am a free Man - The Prisoner
Charlie's Diary - Charlie Stross
The Caucus House - blog of the Chicago International Model United Nations
Famous for 15 Megapixels
Postman Patel
The 4th Bomb: Tavistock Sq Daniel's 7:7 Revelations - Daniel Obachike
OurKingdom - part of OpenDemocracy - " will discuss Britain’s nations, institutions, constitution, administration, liberties, justice, peoples and media and their principles, identity and character"
Beau Bo D'Or blog by an increasingly famous digital political cartoonist.
Between Both Worlds - "Thoughts & Ideas that Reflect the Concerns of Our Conscious Evolution" - Kingsley Dennis
Bloggerheads: The Alisher Usmanov Affair - the rich Uzbek businessman and his shyster lawyers Schillings really made a huge counterproductive error in trying to censor the blogs of Tim Ireland, of all people.
Matt Wardman political blog analysis
Henry Porter on Liberty - a leading mainstream media commentator and opinion former who is doing more than most to help preserve our freedom and liberty.
HMRC is shite - "dedicated to the taxpayers of Britain, and the employees of the HMRC, who have to endure the monumental shambles that is Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC)."
Head of Legal - Carl Gardner a former legal advisor to the Government
The Landed Underclass - Voice of the Banana Republic of Great Britain
Henrik Alexandersson - Swedish blogger threatened with censorship by the Försvarets Radioanstalt (FRA), the Swedish National Defence Radio Establishement, their equivalent of the UK GCHQ or the US NSA.
World's First Fascist Democracy - blog with link to a Google map - "This map is an attempt to take a UK wide, geographical view, of both the public and the personal effect of State sponsored fear and distrust as seen through the twisted technological lens of petty officials and would be bureaucrats nationwide."
Blogoir - Charles Crawford - former UK Ambassodor to Poland etc.
No CCTV - The Campaign against CCTV
Barcode Nation - keeping two eyes on the database state.
Lords of the Blog - group blog by half a dozen or so Peers sitting in the House of Lords.
notes from the ubiquitous surveillance society - blog by Dr. David Murakami Wood, editor of the online academic journal Surveillance and Society
Justin Wylie's political blog
Panopticon blog - by Timothy Pitt-Payne and Anya Proops. Timothy Pitt-Payne is probably the leading legal expert on the UK's Freedom of Information Act law, often appearing on behlaf of the Information Commissioner's Office at the Information Tribunal.
Armed and Dangerous - Sex, software, politics, and firearms. Life’s simple pleasures… - by Open Source Software advocate Eric S. Raymond.
Georgetown Security Law Brief - group blog by the Georgetown Law Center on National Security and the Law , at Georgtown University, Washington D.C, USA.
Big Brother Watch - well connected with the mainstream media, this is a campaign blog by the TaxPayersAlliance, which thankfully does not seem to have spawned Yet Another Campaign Organisation as many Civil Liberties groups had feared.
Spy on Moseley - "Sparkbrook, Springfield, Washwood Heath and Bordesley Green. An MI5 Intelligence-gathering operation to spy on Muslim communities in Birmingham is taking liberties in every sense" - about 150 ANPR CCTV cameras funded by Home Office via the secretive Terrorism and Allied Matters (TAM) section of ACPO.
FitWatch blog - keeps an eye on the activities of some of the controversial Police Forward Intelligence Teams, who supposedly only target "known troublemakers" for photo and video surveillance, at otherwise legal, peaceful protests and demonstrations.
If it's true that this sort of technology is being used in a very unstructured way (people not going through booths or screening areas) then I think it will be incredibly unsuccessful at catching terrorists.
Routinely exposing people to X rays on a daily basis would clearly be idiocy, as any medical person would tell you. It's far more likely that the systems used will be of the passive type, which do not pose any health risks.
However, even if the technology works perfectly safely I would really question the usefullness of such a system. Screening a small number of people on a random basis is highly unlikely to stop potential suicide bombers, and we rapidly get into a couple of murky areas. Firstly, if the screening is selective how do you choose who to screen? Do you pick out people who look asian, and if so what will that do for race relations? Secondly many people routinely carry metal objects such as laptops, ipods, phones, toolbags, jewelry, belts and so on. Are they really going to get people to take off or take out that stuff every single day that they go to work?
I predict that this sort of screening will be a waste of taxpayers money and people's time, and will catch few or no terrorists. It's just the politicians trying to look as if they're doing something to combat terrorism.
@ Sir Arthur - agreed
Remember that US manufacturers of "security" equipment, provided that they have got themselves on the US Government Homeland Security approved list, are exempt from civil liability lawsuits for causing false alarms, or if their technology fails to work properly i.e. fails to detect weapons or explosives etc.
Presumably this immunity also extends to any "collateral damage" health effects on the public.
See the so called SAFETY Act (Support Anti-Terrorism by Fostering Effective Technologies Act) of 2002, part of the misnamed PATRIOT Act.
https://www.safetyact.gov
Therefore any manufacturers' claims that the equipment actually works or is safe have to be independently tested, but this does not appear to be within the scope of this forthcoming trial at Paddington station.
Carrying a laptop computer, MP3 player, mobile phone etc. on theTube. is already enough to get you arrested, DNA sampled, fingerprinted, photographed etc. and have your home searched, and computer and other equipment sezed - as happened to the innocent David Mery:
http://gizmonaut.net/bits/suspect.html
Perhaps it is all a wasteful and expensive public relations exercise, just, like the installation of metal detectors at the bottom of an escalatorat the Hammersmith Bus and Tube station complex, for a couple of days:
http://www.spy.org.uk/spyblog/2004/12/hammersmith_bus_station_metal.html
It's interesting that Heathrow Express is the target application (an expensive business suit service with only three stops). Are they going to apply it to the parallel Heathrow Connect service from Paddington to Heathrow? If so, they'll have to install their stuff at the five extra stations not served by HEx, which are all also served by trains heading to other destinations from the same platforms. If they don't equip these stations then the whole thing has a vast hole in it and any putative terrorist can simply get on at Ealing and travel completely safely to the heart of Heathrow with whatever he's carrying. As usual, the intention is that you don't spot this trifling flaw and instead revel in the 'magic ray detects suicide bombers' headlines faithfully spat out by any number of news sources. Oh, hello, by the way. Long time reader, first time poster, etc.
@ Tom - hello !
Remember that the Heathrow Express was alleged to be one of the targets of the ineptly handled "no ricin plot", which seems to have been used by the Labour Government to partly justify everything from the war on Saddam Hussein's regime, to the latest Terrorism Bill 2005.
Does imaginary ricin show up on the X-ray scanner? There's a skiffle number in there if anyone's interested.
[Heathrow Connect wasn't around in 2002 or whenever the ricin idiocy was supposed to happen]. As for the case itself, I've never seen anyone in poker bluff for so long on no cards whatsoever.
The BBC website has a few details:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4435502.stm
Apparently
If they try to avoid the "voluntary" scanners, will they be deemed to be "acting suspiciously" and be stopped and searched by hand under the Terrorism Act or other Police powers, exactly as happened with the "metal detector" trial at Hammersmith ?
Will the "random" selection be like at Heathrow Terminal 4, where it appeared that mostly non-white people were being "randomly" selected ?
http://www.spy.org.uk/spyblog/2005/02/racial_profiling_at_heathrow_a.html
"Nothing to hide, nothing to fear" ? Sounds familiar.
The Department for Transport will have to prove, not just claim, that they are not storing "naked" images, even temporarily, or else they or the operators of the equipment will have committed a Child Porn offence the instant that a child is scanned.
No doubt there will also be an "opinion poll survey" of the self selected sample of people willing to undergo the scanning, which will magically "prove" that the majority of the travelling public approve of the trial, and by extension any grandiose plans that Alistair Darling has for spending billions of pounds of our money.Are there going to be notices placed by the scanners to inform the public that they are about to enter a scanner zone.
What are the long term health risk to pregnant woman let alone the rest of us who ride the trains daily.
What you described -- sneakily imaging under people's clothing as they walk by -- was tried for the first time today by the israelis at their hagana street railway station. And they were very rude to anyone who noticed and complained!
@ sara_sarah - were the "see through your/your children's clothes" scanners of the portal "one person at a time" variety like at Heathrow Airport, or of the more general "let's image everyone walking past within range" variety which Qinetiq and others have demonstrated ?
DO WE HAVE A CHOICE
March 22, 2008
Dear Friends,
I have created a new poll “Health Concern from Backscatter Screening at Airports for Kids under 11”, a very hot and controversial topic.
It seems that "Backscatter X Rays" are going to take over the "Security Gates". There are definite concerns with even the security-gate issue. The devil's argument is that the magnetic field the kids are exposed to is very small, not more than magnetic field of earth. Now, look at this. Magnetic field of earth is one part in a hundred-thousand tesla, but it is uniform, and our body has adapted to it. Now, passing through gates (current does not go without wires, so you won't have current in your body, but magnetic field travels in vacuum), you experience the field there. The magnetic field in your brain is of the order of one part in 10 000 000 000 000 tesla (13 zeros), and I don't like kids getting through gates under any circumstances.
Also, consider the emotional scar from the following situation.
Alarm at the security gate beeps for reasons unknown to parent or child. Airport authorities label the child as a potential traveling bomb, and forcibly strip the child naked, sometimes in public, the child, totally unprepared for the situation, not realizing what is happening to him or her.
Now, consider backscatter X rays, which penetrates clothes and gets images. What would it cause to human skin upon reflection? How much dose would be built up for a frequent traveler? What would be their effect on kids, when they get married? Would girls experience breast cancer, blood cancer or ovarian cancer at a later age? We do not know the answers as get. The question is to let kids experience this because of "security". here, we have to compromise between security, modesty and privacy. I am proposing an optimized solution in this poll, and would like to get your frank views and comments. Poll address is:
http://www.misterpoll.com/polls/330827
Also, there is a new launch of “Clothing and health policy for kids under 11 in school”. The address is:
http://www.misterpoll.com/polls/330702
Please fill that out too. Many thanks. A new version of "Thoroughness of Physical Examination” shall be available soon.
Regards,
Sylvie Frossard
sylvie_frossard@yahoo.fr