Archive for the “UK” Category
Source: The Guardian
The private sector will be asked to manage and run a communications database that will keep track of everyone’s calls, emails, texts and internet use under a key option contained in a consultation paper to be published next month by Jacqui Smith, the home secretary.
A cabinet decision to put the management of the multibillion pound database of all UK communications traffic into private hands would be accompanied by tougher legal safeguards to guarantee against leaks and accidental data losses.
But in his strongest criticism yet of the superdatabase, Sir Ken Macdonald, the former director of public prosecutions, who has firsthand experience of working with intelligence and law enforcement agencies, told the Guardian such assurances would prove worthless in the long run and warned it would prove a “hellhouse” of personal private information.
“Authorisations for access might be written into statute. The most senior ministers and officials might be designated as scrutineers. But none of this means anything,” said Macdonald. “All history tells us that reassurances like these are worthless in the long run. In the first security crisis the locks would loosen.”
The home secretary postponed the introduction of legislation to set up the superdatabase in October and instead said she would publish a consultation paper in the new year setting out the proposal and the safeguards needed to protect civil liberties. She has emphasised that communications data, which gives the police the identity and location of the caller, texter or web surfer but not the content, has been used as important evidence in 95% of serious crime cases and almost all security service operations since 2004 including the Soham and 21/7 bombing cases.
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Source: The Guardian
Every police force in the UK is to be equipped with mobile fingerprint scanners - handheld devices that allow police to carry out identity checks on people in the street.
The new technology, which ultimately may be able to receive pictures of suspects, is likely to be in widespread use within 18 months. Tens of thousands of sets - as compact as BlackBerry smartphones - are expected to be distributed.
The police claim the scheme, called Project Midas, will transform the speed of criminal investigations. A similar, heavier machine has been tested during limited trials with motorway patrols.
To address fears about mass surveillance and random searches, the police insist fingerprints taken by the scanners will not be stored or added to databases.
Liberty, the civil rights group, cautioned that the law required fingerprints taken in such circumstances to be deleted after use. Gareth Crossman, Liberty’s policy director, said: “Saving time with new technology could help police performance but officers must make absolutely certain that they take fingerprints only when they suspect an individual of an offence and can’t establish his identity.”
Details of the type of equipment and the scope of its use have been revealed in a presentation by the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA).
The initial phase of the Mobile Identification At Scene (Midas) project, costed at £30m-£40m, will enable officers to perform rapid checks on the fingerprints of people arrested or detained. The marks will be compared against records on Ident1, the national police database which holds information on 7.5 million individuals.
Geoff Whitaker, a senior technology officer with the NPIA, told the Biometrics 2008 conference that Project Midas would save enormous amounts of police time and reduce the number of wrongful arrests.
At present, officers have to take suspects to custody suites if they need to check fingerprints. On average, the agency’s research shows, the procedure takes 67 minutes. “If we scaled this [saving] up to the national level that would equate to 366 additional police officers on the beat,” Whitaker said. “One of the benefits is that it will reduce the number of errors - and we can reduce the number of arrests significantly.
“There’s a huge range of opportunities [for] mobile ID. It could be used on the deceased at the scene of a crime, on suspects for intelligence in the early part of an investigation, [or even] in a mortuary.”
Policing of big public occasions, sporting events, festivals, political conferences - as a well as immigration and border controls - could benefit from the equipment, he suggested.
“Another use is for prisoners in transit; it’s not uncommon for prisoners to swap identities on the way to prison,” he said.
Project Midas, he said, would give the police “a full, mobile national capability” to check identities.
The system is being designed to have the capacity to beam images of suspects back to officers on the streets to help confirm identifications. Some US police forces are already using the technology.
“The return of mugshots [to officers],” Whitaker added, “is something we would like to do.”
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Source: Bloomberg.com
Hidden in foliage next to a path in the southeast England seaside town of Hastings are digital cameras. Their target: litterbugs and dog walkers.
The electronic eyes feed images to a monitoring unit, where they’re scanned and stored as evidence to prosecute people who discard garbage or fail to clean up after pets, a spokeswoman for the town council said.
“It’s becoming a bit Big Brother-like,” said Sandra Roberts, 50, a Hastings kiosk manager, invoking George Orwell’s 1949 book “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” about a Britain where authorities pry into all aspects of citizens’ lives.
Local authorities are adopting phone-record logging, e-mail taps and camera surveillance to police such offenses as welfare fraud, unlawful dumping of waste and sick-day fakery. Telecommunications companies are about to join the list of crime monitors. Already, 4.5 million closed-circuit cameras watch public places across Britain, or about 1 camera for every 15 people, the highest ratio in the world.
“There’s too much of it now, all this spying,” said Ivor Quittention, 80, a retired owner of three hardware stores who lives in Hastings. The town’s spokeswoman, who declined to be identified, said spying is the most effective way of dealing with something residents complain about most.
The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, dubbed “the snoopers charter” by London-based civil-rights group Liberty, was passed by the ruling Labour Party in 2000 to legislate methods of surveillance and information gathering. The purpose of the law, known also as Ripa, was to help prevent crime, including terrorism, according to the Home Office.
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Source: World War III - WalesOnline
FIGHTER jets, infantry troops, destroyers and submarines will converge on Wales next month for one of the largest military exercises of all time.
The two-week exercise – codenamed Joint Warrior – is designed to recreate a scenario in which Britain and other sovereign nations go to war against a “state-sponsored terrorist movement” – using a vast array of lethal modern weapons.
Taking place between October 6 and October 16, it will provide coordinated training for all three UK Armed Services, plus forces from EIGHT allied nations.
The whole of Wales has been designated as a flying area for the exercise, while so-called “managed danger area” ranges at Castlemartin and Manorbier in Pembrokeshire and Pembrey near Llanelli will be used for ground strafing, bombing and missile practice using live ammunition.
An area of the West Wales coast has also been earmarked as a maritime “warfighting” area for Joint Warrior.
The exercise is aimed at giving pilots, ships’ crews and ground troops vital training before they deploy to war zones like Iraq or Afghanistan.
According to the RAF, Joint Warrior will be particularly useful for Forward Air Controllers (troops directing airborne missile strikes), the role made famous by Prince Harry who became known by his call sign Widow Six Seven while directing fire against the Taliban.
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Source: The Register
US war-tech behemoth Northrop Grumman announced yesterday that it had achieved another milestone in its battlefield raygun programme - ahead of schedule. Company blaster cannon execs believe that the first tests at combat power - 100 kilowatts - will take place as planned by the end of this year.
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Yesterday’s milestone, following the first successful test of a “chain” in March, was the combination of two chains to produce a single beam of 30kW. Northrop blaster chiefs believe it will now be a doddle to hook up a further six and put out a proper arse-kicking beam using electrical power.
“Our march towards providing compact, electrically powered, operationally scalable and affordable laser weapons for U.S. military services continues to produce world-leading results,” said Dan Wildt, Northrop directed energy veep.
“We’ve achieved all of our major milestones ahead of schedule,” added JHPSSL boss Jay Marmo. “We have proven all aspects of our scalable design for 100kW.”
The first application for battle lasers will probably be that of burning down incoming bombardment rockets, mortar bombs and the like. Military bases and perimeters in warzones (and some Israeli towns) are typically subject to constant harassing fire of this type, and a proper working defence would be very useful.
Static or semi-static use of this sort could be a good fit for the JHPSSL. Though the company describes the laser weapon itself as “compact” and “portable”, it admits that electro-optical efficiency will be in the 20 per cent area - it was “greater than 19 percent” in this most recent test.
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