Privacy row as checks on phones and e-mails hit 439,000
– TimesOnline.co.uk
– Quite a large number of requests made to monitor people.

Almost 450,000 requests were made to monitor people’s telephone calls, e-mails and post by secret agencies and other authorised bodies in just over a year, the spying watchdog said yesterday.

In the first report of its kind from the Interceptions of Communications Commissioner, it was also revealed that nearly 4,000 errors were reported in a 15-month period from 2005 to 2006. While most appeared to concern “lower-level data” such as requests for telephone lists and individual e-mail addresses, 67 were mistakes concerning direct interception of communications.

The disclosures came as Tony Blair admitted that the fingerprints of everyone obtaining identity cards could be checked against nearly a million unsolved crimes.

This is a massive move away from the presumption in Britain that a man is innocent until proven guilty. Tony Blair has admitted that the authorities will go on a fishing expedition through the files of innocent people to try to match them up to unsolved crimes.

Quite sneaky, wouldn’t you say?



  1. JohnS says:

    Well Tony has been learning at the feet of some of the best.

  2. TJGeezer says:

    Why all the bitching about Brit news bits here? Right at the top it SAYS it’s Brit Week at DU. Strikes me as a perfectly natural, clinically reactive response to people who complained there was too much Brit-bashing here before.

  3. john says:

    Nothing new here.
    Didn’t they make every male in a small town up north give DNA samples when they couldn’t solve a rape case? And then the guy they eventually charged had a buddy go give DNA for him the first time around. UK citizens has lost more rights than the US citizens can think of.

  4. fred says:

    #5
    Oh, no. Not the old “bad teeth” line again. Yes, yes, we’ve all got the message: the Brits are supposed to have bad teeth. Now give it a rest will you. It really gets tiresome. Try again in a couple of years, when we’ve forgotten all about it.

  5. Lauren the Ghoti says:

    Sorry, but I can’t get too worked up about this – or, for a’ that, the rapist they nailed w/ his DNA.

    Y’see, if you read carefully:
    “…the authorities will go on a fishing expedition through the files of innocent people to try to match them up to unsolved crimes”

    That’s bullshit. They’re going through the files of people, both innocent and guilty. The ones who produce hits, they’re not innocent. No one, here or across the pond, has any fucking right to get away with crime. The rights of the accused are only there to protect factually innocent people, should they be charged with a crime in error. They are not, and never were, to protect guilty persons from prosecution.

    I’m as much against the abuse of police power as anyone, or moreso, having been a victim of same on more than one occasion in my life. But I don’t see anything here to worry anyone who isn’t an at-large criminal.

    If -and that’s a huge “if” – it’s about crimes of violence, they want to check fingerprints, retinal scans, DNA – I say go for it. I ain’t done nothin’. And them that have, I wanna see off the street. Their “rights” ceased to exist when they did the deed.

  6. TJGeezer says:

    7 – If -and that’s a huge “if” – it’s about crimes of violence

    That’s the rub, isn’t it? In the U.S. at least, it would be about the damned drug war most of the time, most likely. Propping up the black market seems like the government’s first order of priority. Then there’s the decision reported by the AP yesterday (http://tinyurl.com/38xpem) that detainees of the US cannot challenge their detention in court.

    Okay, I’m talking about the U.S. But would you REALLY want to see that much power in the hands of enforcement bureaucrats, no matter how “friendly” you presume your government to be?

  7. jccalhoun says:

    You may not think you’ve done anything but when American citizens are held in military brigs without being charged with anything for years at a time, you don’t have to be accused of anything to get locked up.

    However, I’m not surprised that England is spying on its citizens. After all, in London you can’t set foot out in the street without being on camera. Big Brother is watching every time you leave your house, so why not just take the next step and watch everything they do?

  8. Lauren the Ghoti says:

    #8 – TJG

    Yeah, I know where you’re comin’ from there. At least the Brits haven’t suffered the wholesale corruption of their entire justice system like we have. When you start legislating morality instead of sticking to protecting citizens from predatory harm, you’re already on the ‘slippery slope’ to where any government intrusion into citizens’ private lives can be rationalized.

    The much-dreaded Thought Police are already here. We call them ‘drug warriors’ but the vast majority of their work consists of apprehending and incarcerating citizens who have done only one thing: they voluntarily ingested a substance of their choice in order to modify the thought processes of their own brains.

    The laws prohibiting the use of drugs amount to prohibit people from thinking the way they choose. Nothing else. We already have a huge, time-honored system of laws covering behavior and that’s all we need. If you or the next guy wants to get ripped on reef, on coke, on barbiturates, on alcohol – more power to ya, d00d. If ya die, your tough shit; we told ya about the risk, til we’re blue in the face. It’s your problem. Now if you get all fucked up, and your behavior starts interfering with my life, if what you do under the influence endangers me or mine, then you goin’ down, gnome sane? We let people get drunk – we don’t let them get drunk and drive. The first is the individuals’ own business and choice – the other brings the rights of others into the picture.

    Basta. Enough preachifyin’ for one afternoon. Peace out, y’all.


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