How is the British police state choosing to close in on its citizens now-a-days?
Well, firstly, a criminal background check is needed to supervise your kids in a park.
Only council-vetted “play rangers” are now allowed to monitor youngsters in two adventure areas in Watford while parents must watch from outside a perimeter fence.
The Watford Borough Council policy has been attacked as insulting and a disgrace by furious relatives who say they are being labelled as potential paedophiles. (Of course, there’s no chance of the “play rangers” being pedofiles. I mean, they’re just “play rangers” who have arranged their lives to spend an extended amount of their time around kids who are not their own. What’s so odd about that?)
It will further fuel concerns over a growing nanny state amid the deepening row over the Government’s new national anti-paedophile database.
That will see at least 11 million adults have to be vetted to work with children or vulnerable adults, including parents who give officials lifts to and from social or sports clubs.
Councillors in Watford claim they are only following Government guidelines and cannot allow adults to walk around playgrounds “unchecked”.
They’re also clamping down on “dangerous” political protest.
• Vehicles associated with protesters are being tracked via a nationwide system of automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) cameras. One man, who has no criminal record, was stopped more than 25 times in less than three years after a “protest” marker was placed against his car after he attended a small protest against duck and pheasant shooting. ANPR “interceptor teams” are being deployed on roads leading to protests to monitor attendance.
• Police surveillance units, known as Forward Intelligence Teams (FIT) and Evidence Gatherers, record footage and take photographs of campaigners as they enter and leave openly advertised public meetings. These images are entered on force-wide databases so that police can chronicle the campaigners’ political activities. The information is added to the central NPOIU.
They are extending the right to search property and seize assets to the Mail Department and Transport for London (aka the subway).
Draconian police powers designed to deprive crime barons of luxury lifestyles are being extended to councils, quangos and agencies to use against the public, The Times has learnt.
The right to search homes, seize cash, freeze bank accounts and confiscate property will be given to town hall officials and civilian investigators employed by organisations as diverse as Royal Mail, the Rural Payments Agency and Transport for London.
The measure, being pushed through by Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary, comes into force next week and will deploy some of the most powerful tools available to detectives against fare dodgers, families in arrears with council tax and other minor offenders.
The radical extension of the Proceeds of Crime Act, through a Statutory Instrument which is not debated by parliament, has been condemned by the chairman of the Police Federation. Paul McKeever said that he was shocked to learn that the decision to hand over “intrusive powers” to people who were not police was made without consultation or debate.
They are “seizing the assets of thousands of elderly and mentally impaired people and turning control of their lives over to the State – against the wishes of their relatives.”
A secret court is seizing the assets of thousands of elderly and mentally impaired people and turning control of their lives over to the State – against the wishes of their relatives.
The draconian measures are being imposed by the little-known Court of Protection, set up two years ago to act in the interests of people suffering from Alzheimer’s or other mental incapacity.
The court hears about 23,000 cases a year – always in private – involving people deemed unable to take their own decisions. Using far-reaching powers, the court has so far taken control of more than £3.2billion of assets. (And given them to…?)
The cases involve civil servants from the Office of the Public Guardian (OPG), which last year took £23million in fees directly from the bank accounts of those struck down by mental illness, involved in accidents or suffering from dementia.
The officials are legally required to act in cases where people do not have a ‘living will’, or lasting power of attorney, which hands control of their assets over to family or friends.
But the system elicited an extraordinary 3,000 complaints in its first 18 months of operation. Among them were allegations that officials failed to consult relatives, imposed huge fees and even ‘raided’ elderly people’s homes searching for documents.
[...]Only 60,000 people in Britain have registered these ‘living wills’ with the authorities, and the problems begin when someone is suddenly, unexpectedly mentally impaired.
They’re expanding their DNA database, the largest police DNA database in the world, and if a judge tells them to stop, they just keep on going.
Chief constables across England and Wales have been told to ignore a landmark ruling by the European court of human rights and carry on adding the DNA profiles of tens of thousands of innocent people to a national DNA database.
Senior police officers have also been “strongly advised” that it is “vitally important” that they resist individual requests based on the Strasbourg ruling to remove DNA profiles from the national database in cases such as wrongful arrest, mistaken identity, or where no crime has been committed.
European human rights judges ruled last December in the S and Marper case that the blanket and indiscriminate retention of the DNA profiles and fingerprints of 850,000 people arrested but never convicted of any offence amounts to an unlawful breach of their rights.
Britain already has the largest police national DNA database in the world, with 5.8m profiles, including one in three of all young black males. Thousands more are being added each week.
Just to make sure that their people are obeying the rules, they’re going to increase spending on surveillance program by 1700%, which will give them access to every internet click their citizens make.
An astonishing £380 a minute will be spent on surveillance in a massive expansion of the Big Brother state.
The £200million-a-year sum will give officials access to details of every internet click made by every citizen – on top of the email and telephone records already available.
It is a 1,700 per cent increase on the cost of the current surveillance regime.
[...]‘The increase in money spent on tapping phones and emails is all the more baffling when Britain is still one of the few countries not to allow intercept evidence in court, even in terrorist cases.’ (Astonishing)
And if you disagree? UK police officers armed with submachine guns will be able to handle that as well.
A hand-picked team from CO19, the Metropolitan Police’s elite firearms unit, will walk the beat in gun crime hotspots where armed gangs have turned entire estates into “no go” zones.
Local politicians and anti-gun campaigners have reacted with anger at the news that the officers will carry Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine guns – capable of firing up to 800 rounds-per-minute – and Glock semi-automatic pistols.
CO19 currently provides armed support in volatile situations like sieges and terrorist attacks, with its officers on constant call in vehicles around London.
But this is the first time that armed officers will be sent on permanent foot patrol anywhere in the country outside Northern Ireland.
“Historically, CO19 was only called out when someone rang up to report a gun crime,” said Inspector Derek Carroll, head of the new unit.
[...]Unlike their counterparts in the United States, British police officers not routinely carry guns, although armed patrols are frequently deployed in the aftermath of shootings and to guard potential terrorist targets.
Although only one crime is solved for every 1,000 of their closed-circuit TV’s (read: security cameras put up on every street corner to spy on you), they still have so many of them that they may actually be paying people to monitor them through an online “game.”
A new internet game is about to be launched which allows ’super snooper’ players to plug into the nation’s CCTV cameras and report on members of the public committing crimes.
The ‘Internet Eyes’ service involves players scouring thousands of CCTV cameras installed in shops, businesses and town centres across Britain looking for law-breakers.
Players who help catch the most criminals each month will win cash prizes up to £1,000.
The Internet Eyes’ website will also feature a rogue’s gallery of the so-called ‘criminals’ along with a list of their offences and which internet user caught them.
But civil rights campaigners today condemned the game, which launches in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, next month, and branded it ‘a snoopers paradise’.
They claim nosey neighbours could snoop on homeowners putting the wrong rubbish in bins and even motorists guilty of the most minor misdemeanors.
[...][The owner] will charge those who use the service, which could eventually include local authorities and even police forces as well as shop owners, £20 a week per camera to have their CCTV included on the site – amounting to thousands each year.
[...]Last month it was revealed that Britain has 4.2 million CCTV cameras – the equivalent of one per 14 people – one-and-a-half-times as many as Communist China.
This could actually be one of the few “growth industries” left, considering that they are planning on putting 20,000 CCTV’s directly into the homes of some of the “worst families.”
THOUSANDS of the worst families in England are to be put in “sin bins” in a bid to change their bad behaviour, Ed Balls announced yesterday.
The Children’s Secretary set out £400million plans to put 20,000 problem families under 24-hour CCTV super-vision in their own homes.
They will be monitored to ensure that children attend school, go to bed on time and eat proper meals.
Private security guards will also be sent round to carry out home checks, while parents will be given help to combat drug and alcohol addiction.
Around 2,000 families have gone through these Family Intervention Projects so far.
But ministers want to target 20,000 more in the next two years, with each costing between £5,000 and £20,000 – a potential total bill of £400million.
Ministers hope the move will reduce the number of youngsters who get drawn into crime because of their chaotic family lives, as portrayed in Channel 4 comedy drama Shameless.
Sin bin projects operate in half of council areas already but Mr Balls wants every local authority to fund them.
Oh, and how are things shaping up with their economy?
Shock economic figures today stunned the City by revealing that Britain is wallowing in its longest recession since records began.
The official statistics — which showed that the economy contracted by 0.4 per cent — prompted a furious new row about the Government’s handling of the economy.
The figures, from the Office for National Statistics, mean that national output has now fallen for an unprecedented six successive quarters.
But I’m sure they’ll be able to figure out who’s doing that to their economy and punish them appropriately.
Big Brother is also here in Pennsylvania, the birthplace of our Nation. See http://dailycensored.com/2009/08/28/big-brother-is-here/
However, in PA, the local press helped with most of the funding unlike in Britain where it seems that the press is still free to expose it, at least for now.
[...] YIKES: Project Censored round-up of the British police state [...]
It looks as if most countries are using terrorism as a way to take away the peoples right. It is happening across the globe and we the people have allowed our governments to do it. Look at who controls the money for they are controlling the world. We are slaves, we work and they take our money. It doesn’t matter who is elected to office the international bankers control them. Security cameras just another ploy to take away your freedoms. All of humanity needs to wake up and not allow these criminals to destroy our lives and our childrens lives. They should all be charged in each country with treason. Who has the courage? Why have governments across the world allowe this to happen?
[...] last checked in with the British police state about two months ago. Let’s see what’s [...]
[...] What's New in the British Police State? | Dailycensored.com [...]
To fight crime, they take away privacy. Not totally sure if that’s justified.