The price of freedom is eternal vigilance - oh, alright, you can take a quick look - it's probably all made up anyway

Assistant Commissioner Bob Quick, Metropolitan Police anti-terror ‘supremo’ ‘promptly’ resigned yesterday after he was photographed outside 10 Downing St clutching a top secret document listing UK Al Qaeda suspects atop a sheaf of papers. “YOU CAN’T QUIT QUICKER THAN A THICK QUICK QUITTER” screamed the Sun, referencing the cheery advertising slogan of KwikFit, a tyres and exhaust (muffler) depot. But Thus readers know that his resignation, far from timely, is long overdue. On December 22, 2008 Thus Passim: bob-be-nimble-bob-be-quick-resign-from-the-enquiry-now/ detailed how Assistant Commissioner Quick was leading the investigation into Home Office leaks which saw an outrageous and probably illegal raid of the office of Tory MP Damien Green under the auspices of the government, who openly accused the Tory Front Bench of colluding in efforts to compromise national security. We questioned whether it was appropriate for Quick to head up this enquiry – into himself. Needless to add, the ‘investigation’ continues. More worryingly, Thus reported that had compromised the security of his own family and his own force by running a wedding car hire business under his wife’s name from his home, boasting in local newspaper advertisements: “Cars . . with former police officers at the wheel.”

Loadsamoney! Taser lady Jacqui Smith can't stand all this whingeing about executive perks. She pays her mortgage, subsidises her sister's house, employs her hubby and buys his TV porn, all on a miserable Cabinet Minister's salary. What's your problem, losers?

Had PC Quick done the honourable thing at that time, the alleged security services raids on UK ‘terrorist cells’ in Manchester and elsewhere which the spin doctors are now predictably calling ‘a real and present Al Qaeda threat to Britain’ would not have been allegedly compromised. He was gifted at the time with the full support of Home Secretary ‘Taser’ Jacqui Smith (Thus passim) herself deeply implicated in the politically-motivated raid on the Tories. Subsequently Ms. Smith herself was revealed to have ‘misinterpreted’ the rules on MPs’ expenses, having used her ‘second home’ allowance to pay the mortgage on her (first home) family residence while staying at her sister’s London house. It was also revealed that Ms Smith’s husband (employed at taxpayer expense as her constituency secretary) had bought subscriptions to porn movies which the Home Secretary had submitted as expense claims.

Cloying statements of regret and gratitude from Ms. Smith for Bob Quick’s sterling work in saving the country from (unspecified) perils float on a reeking sea of cant. Video footage which shows that 47 year old father of nine, Ian Tomlinson, who died of a heart attack at the recent G20 protests, was not only an innocent bystander posing no threat and taking no part in the protests, but was savagely assaulted by a masked riot police officer surrounded by colleagues, who were not ‘showered by bottles and stones’ and who did not identify themselves after the incident, indicates the dangerous levels of unaccountability into which ‘Fortress Britain’ has descended. The ‘investigation’ into what looks very much like criminal assault resulting in death will be held by another division of the Metropolitan Police. We all know the conclusions, so why bother?

Jacqui Smith should resign, not least for her abuse of the public purse, but also for promoting, sponsoring and endorsing Quick’s former worrying behaviour in running a second business, albeit in his wife’s name, using police credentials as its calling card. Predictably, the Establishment has attempted to spin away from this latest descent into Third World farce by listing the tireless work in which the police and security services are engaged to keep the Al Qaeda threat at bay. But whilst we marvel in admiration at their efforts, let’s not forget the last time we heard about a major terror threat emanating from Manchester. On 19 April, 2004, 400 police raided several homes and held 8 Asian men, a woman and a 16 year old boy on suspicion of engineering a plot to blow up Old Trafford stadium and cause mass carnage. The evidence was a block purchase of tickets by a ‘group of Asians.’ The headlines in the (Murdoch-owned) Sun, at that time a partisan supporter of Tony Blair, read: “EXCLUSIVE: MAN UTD SUICIDE BLASTS FOILED.” There was absolutely no substance to the plot. Their only crime was supporting Manchester United (not yet indictable). They received no apology. Neither did those accused of the equally fantastic, unfounded ‘Ricin plot.’ Today’s Daily Telegraph cites ‘M15 sources’ in stating that thousands of shoppers were targeted over Easter. Despite the release without charge of one of the ten Pakistani students arrested and no discovery of a bomb factory or explosives of any description so far, Phil Woolas, the gaffe-prone northern Immigration Minister whose particular fetish is identity cards, declared brashly on Channel Four news: ‘We got them.’ Manchester police have now declared the ‘target zones’ safe for Easter shopping after all, so Woolas must be right. There appears to be some confusion amongst these high level sources, however. Some reports claim the Pakistani students were Taliban, others Al Qaeda. Britain, and the US, are certainly ‘at war’ with both, but Taliban activity so far afield would be very rare, if not unique. Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Kashmiri group allegedly behind the Mumbai attacks would seem the more likely candidates if any, especially since a couple of the nitwits behind the failed 21/7 London suicide bombings were allegedly members. Two of the suspects travelled to Pakistan last year, but then again, they are Pakistani. Two come from Peshawar, a hotbed of terrorism, but then again Liverpool John Moores University, where they study, actually has a student recruitment agency in Peshawar. But I’m merely speculating, unlike our brilliant police and security services, who have saved the day yet again.

It would be cynical to see this latest ‘Al Qaeda terror threat’ outbreak as an attempt to spin the beleaguered UK government and its incompetent Home Secretary out of the more prosaic clear and present danger resulting from an objective enquiry into her personal affairs, abuse of police power for political gain and the unlawful killing of an innocent man (two, if you count Juan Charles de Menezes). It would probably be unfair to equate the uptick of fearmongering with the tactics of Tony Blair in 2005, who announced, on BBC Radio Woman’s Hour of all places: “What they [the security services] say is that you have got to give us powers in between mere surveillance of these people – there are several hundred of them in this country who we believe are engaged in plotting or trying to commit terrorist acts – you have got to give us power in between just surveying them and being sure enough to prosecute them beyond reasonable doubt. There are people out there who are determined to destroy our way of life and there is no point in us being naïve about it.” In the year following the introduction of the 2005 Prevention of Terrorism Act, despite the ‘several hundred identified terrorist operatives,’ only 17 people were convicted, but the government diverted attention away from a far more destructive force – Gordon Brown’s bulimic public spending surge, designed to disguise the Tsunami of the swelling bubble economy. 

Al Qaeda, whoever or whatever they may be, needs to do nothing at all. The UK government’s off-the-leash attack dogs are acting as the provisional wing of the public relations department of Terrorism Inc. They need new handlers.

John J Kelly

Despite these apparently turbulent developments, BT is ploughing ahead with the implementation of its ‘Webwise’ tracking software which profiles user behaviour by tracking online viewing through ISP data. BT should think carefully about the effect this may have on its already-tarnished reputation, but it probably won’t.

Lies, damned lies and statistics. Over 1000 people asked for ID cards – counted over TWO years

carving up the crime statistics

In a demonstration of the contempt for sensible interpretation of statistics which recently got the UK government into trouble for claiming that knife crime had fallen based on a sample of 78 incidents over three months, “Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has said that 1,142 messages from the public to the Identity and Passport Service (IPS) between November 2006 and October 2008 were classified as ‘wants an ID card’. This made ID-card requests “by far the most common subject matter”, Smith said on Thursday, in response to a parliamentary question from Liberal Democrats’ Home Affairs spokesperson Chris Huhne.” In real terms, that’s around 1.5 ‘messages’ a day. By contrast, up to 2 million people actively protested against the Iraq War in one day, but the government ignored them. Worse yet, Ms Smith admitted that “the IPS received 3,073 items of correspondence on the scheme between 1 November, 2006, and 31 October, 2008 but admitted that the IPS did not sort the correspondence according to support for or opposition to the scheme. (Thanks to ZD Net). So the erosion of democracy and slide into banal authoritarianism continues apace. We already know the endgame. We’ll get ID cards, the system will fail and vastly exceed its budget. The data warehousing will be managed at great expense by US companies. There will be huge breaches of security and fraud. But the statistics hold out a glimmer of hope. At this rate of take-up, the government could save a huge amount by purchasing card-making kit and laminators from Woolworths and individually making up the identity cards. There are plenty of out-of-work folks who could help, taking photos of the 1100 people who definitely want an ID card and putting their names in a special ‘Loonytunes’ databank. Their psychological profiles identify them as prime targets to vote positively for any mad government initiative, volunteer for crazy scientific experiments, buy Jaguar cars and sign up for BT Broadband. So it’s not all doom and gloom.

Another victory for profiling.

Police went Crackers in Wimbledon, aided and abetted by the tabloids, they hounded the wrong man for 12 years

With the conviction of Robert Napper, the Metropolitan Police announced today that there was no need for an enquiry into the Colin Stagg fit-up, on the grounds that ‘lessons were learned.’ In other words, the Police know what they did wrong and it won’t happen again. So that’s alright then. Except it’s not. It has not been too widely reported that the female police officer who participated in a ‘honey trap’ to frame Colin Stagg received £125,000 compensation, early retirement and a pension, while Napper, the person responsible for the crime, who had been reported to the police by his own mother for rape, was arrested twice for carrying a loaded handgun within eight weeks of the murder on Wimbledon Common, had a history of copycat crimes, including rape and battery of a mother and child and was allowed to roam free to commit further horrible crimes while the police and tabloid media engaged in a vicious miscarriage of justice aimed at clearing up the case of a mother brutally murdered in front of her infant child. Their grotesque entrapment antics led to further crimes being committed. It has been claimed that using today’s technology, the same ‘mistakes’ could not happen, yet contrary to media reports, DNA samples from both Napper and Stagg were available and could have been used to at least eliminate Stagg from their ‘enquiries.’ This is doubtful: Stagg was ‘convicted’ by the police, egged on by the media, keen to find a perpetrator for a heinous crime, at an early stage. The ‘honey trap’ was sordid, illegal and reckless. There should be an enquiry, but there won’t be. 

John Baker’s piece for THUS (below) summarises the details of this case better than I can. It is sad and remarkable that we are not taking this opportunity to re-examine the lack of police (and media) accountability which led to this gross miscarriage of justice. The victims were not just the family of the murdered woman, nor Colin Stagg and his family. Several other people raped and possibly murdered by Napper, certifiably criminally insane, might have been spared had the police not behaved like actors in a bad TV drama. As far as we know, nobody lost their job or has been called to account – at least not publicly.

John J Kelly

by John J Kelly

The government’s bailout plan for threadbare foreign technology and data collection corporations is gathering pace, despite the fact that like Iraq, the Dome or the Special Relationship, the majority can’t see the point of the drastic plastic Identity Card project and doubts that any good will come of it. But the UK government is determined to finish what it started – the Balkanisation of civil liberties and UK Plc. (in Administration). Apologies if I’m sounding a tad Monday morning, but I’ve just noticed that the overwhelming majority of the (estimated) £19 billion of UK taxpayers’ money earmarked for this flawed project will be spent on contractors such as EDS (Ross Perot’s liberal US behemoth) , IBM (US company who needs no introduction), Siemens (Germany), Fujitsu (the only Japanese company daft enough to buy ICL), Thales (a French water company) and a carpetbag of ‘international’ consultants (I’m only guessing, but CapGemini (Fr) surely loom large). We all know that the costs will balloon (even more), the project will have deadly security flaws and these foreign companies will repatriate our cash while remaining embedded in our national security in a deadly embrace. In a bizarre turn – file under ‘you couldn’t make it up’ – Jacqui Smith’s Home Office is seeking special powers to search the homes of UK employees of these companies for the next 20 years without recourse to search warrants (in the event of theft or, more likely, sensitive policy leaks). Yet we are told that there is absolutely no danger in assembling this database.

We already know that the government’s (largely outsourced) security vetting procedures led to up to 5000 illegal immigrants working in government departments. We suspect that the Damian Green farrago (Thus passim) has a lot to do with pathetic attempts to stymie more embarrassing leaks of that nature. But we need more police and government control over our lives. Not on my street we don’t. We’ve already got a hatful.

London, May 2008. Nearly 600 police in riot gear goosestepped up MY road scaring off Muslims and showing off their helmets when Brown showed Sarkozy and Carla round the Emirates Stadium, before I'd even started publishing THUS. This is not a fake picture.

Today, Gordon Brown is meeting a coalition of willing idiots (Sarkozy and Barroso, but not the sensible Mrs Merkel, leader of Europe’s largest economy) to tell them how to rescue their economies by charging banks 12% interest and expecting them to lend below Libor to bust businesses. (Those German fools are charging less than 5% interest to their desperate banks – next thing they’ll be manufacturing stuff to SELL to people for MONEY instead of playing Monopoly). Presumably his advice to Sarkozy will be to buy more British utilities with semi-nationalised French state utilities and take over our infrastructure completely. Mr Barroso needs to send us more immigrants to exploit from newly-initiated member states.

The EIB is suddenly to blame

Brown has apparently just woken up to the fact that the European Investment Bank (EIB) was set up to advance development loans to European businesses, and has EU cash available to do exactly that. When the Euro was weak against Sterling, UK banks made it difficult for small and medium sized businesses to take advantage of EIB loans at preferential rates (preferring to lend at rates preferential to themselves, of course). Some estimate that up to £4 billion per year in qualifying loans for UK companies went unclaimed for several years. It is risible that the UK government is now trying to blame the EU at the same time as claiming leadership in the credit crisis, but entirely consistent with the policy of shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted (then shooting the stableboy, especially if he’s European).

Meanwhile, we’ll maintain the pretence of British independence by doing whatever the US, a busted flush tells us to do. It’s Monday morning and I’m grumpy, but last week the European Court condemned Britain’s illegal DNA database (THUS passim). Gordon Brown could reduce the national debt by several billion by putting the hated identity card scheme on hold and he could stop pretending that spending vast amounts scrubbing the decks of the Titanic with (foreign) toothbrushes is likely to work. Talk to the Germans, Gordon. They have some experience of economic reconstruction. It tends to involve a degree of hard work, readjustment to economic realities and (in the case of the former GDR) dismantling the wasteful and corrupting apparatus of the police state.

A Ms Sample has stolen Jacqui Smith's identity

I’ve been sleeping much better these days now that I can look forward to a lovely identity card coming along sometime soon with my new passport. It’s great to know that I shall have my very own unique identity secured in digital format, no expense spared. I’ll no doubt be getting a full life history to go along with it. It will probably know more about me than I do myself. By Jim Hare. 

It’s certainly going to be great fun for the Executive, thinking of all the uses that the card can be put to, all the data that can be collected, all held safely at the heart of government. Where I go for my holidays, where I work, what trains I use, where I shop, the football team I support. The list seems endless. And it will be. It’s not difficult to install card readers – we’ve had them for years – and you can put them more or less anywhere you like. All you need to do is develop the airport approach to life: a swipe of the card adds another few bytes to your digital databank. Great for posterity – you’ll be able to look back and see how many times I went to Asia – or to Asda. 

Don't panic! Identity thieves will be caught on camera

Idyllic as this may sound, I’ve suddenly remembered a book I once read where people were under constant surveillance, their every move watched and recorded. The idea was to keep everyone safe but it achieved the opposite. There was no individual privacy. There was state induced fear, orchestrated by the eponymous Ministry. The foundations of fear were laid by means of a manufactured, constant war. Thank goodness it was fiction. 

The identity card itself seems fairly innocuous. The problem is what it can be made to do, and the accompanying methods and processes for ordinary daily life (the wraparound). The state clearly already knows a good deal about me – tax, health, school, and so on. These all seem relatively sensible, understandable and tolerable. There are valid reasons for the information to be collected, and reasonable ways for me to ensure that it is correct.  

The identity card and what it can bring is a completely different proposition. It is the information and controlling device par excellence – it hits the information jackpot for the state. In effect, the introduction of the identity card is an exercise in massively adding to the power and control of the state. Never mind the argument: if you’ve done nothing, you have nothing to fear. The fundamental issue is that however well- meaning the intention, no-one can be sure that it will not be misused to the detriment of individuals, and of course society as a whole. It’s about more power in the hands of government, quasi-government, and potentially downright non-government organisations, including organised crime. 

The latest technology will ensure complete data privacy

I don’t think that there are sufficient levels of trust or confidence in the state to allow it to acquire such a massive extension to its already large powers and controls. If anything, given the incompetence displayed in more or less every department of state – economic, transport, energy, etc – at best it is clear that the state is a hazard (health and safety speak) to its citizens. What price the introduction of more powers to the state – and very importantly, the insidious introduction that they will have? There is a grave danger that the state will be able to use its new found powers to threaten, exploit, and subjugate.  

The democratic levers that we currently have are a blunt instrument when it comes to dealing with the powers that will be wittingly or unwittingly unleashed on behalf of the state. Even the briefest historical perspective should give pause for quiet reflection of similar sinister episodes in both recent and distant times. Our system of justice and legal processes are not instrumented or sufficiently tuned to arbitrate these matters effectively. 

Consider how the Land of the Free was unable to able to deal with the Guantanamo phenomenon, and that our own House of Commons voted for 42 days detention without charge. We already have the CCTV cameras. Now we’re getting tasers. Where is all this leading? 

By the way, there is absolutely no ideology behind any of these thoughts. Simply the precautionary principle.