This anonymous office building on a business park near Heathrow Airport is where the Government has begun monitoring millions of British holidaymakers using its controversial new ‘terrorist detector’ database.
The top-secret computer system – tied into the airlines’ ticketing network – makes judgments about travel habits and passengers’ friends and family to decide if they are a security risk.
Like something from a science-fiction film, the Home Office has designed it to spot a ‘criminal’ or terrorist before they have done anything wrong.
The building’s address is, some might say sinisterly, called Status Park 4.
But the intrusiveness of the system at the heart of Government’s so-called ‘e-Borders’ scheme has provoked such fury among civil liberties campaigners that some consider it akin to a modern-day Stasi headquarters.
Do you honestly think that most western countries haven’t already been doing this for years?
For goodness sake – you need to get out more!
how long till conficker gets it ties in
no doubt its all windows based
they will proberly end up makeing money from this by sell on the detail.
i dont buy into this terisium rubbish
as the post says facist state were Terrorist card is allways a option
jackie smith wont be happy untill we have lost all our rights.
and why ?
well if you have done nothing wrong you have nothing to worry about.
Grimbo said it all.The NSA is tracking every movement electronicly speaking.They do not bother most people because they only look at the stuff when things like 9/11 happen.This data then becomes a gold mine of info on the people who planned or were complicent in the operation.Check out “Enemy of the State” this movie got it right.
#2. English please?
Let’s not get carried away – the system isn’t ‘making judgements’ about anything so all the Summer Glau fans can calm down! It’s nothing more than the same pattern recognition and relationship modelling that’s been going on for years.
Oh, and I used to work in that building on the 1st floor when it was Netscape’s UK headquarters back in 1998. Very suspicious people worked on the floor above us: all dark suits and briefcases chained to wrists. Never did find out who they were.
#2 is a computer generated reply that fails the Turing test.
it doesn’t bother me, the UK government is so incompetent they wouldn’t have a clue what to do with all the information.
Still, how much worse could Britain be than that pansy-ass France???
Like doctors and executioners, states wield instruments. Whether for better or for worse, it is in everyone’s interest that those instruments are sharp and concealable.
We are well on our way to arresting and imprisoning people for what somebody or some computer thinks they are going to do.
I think they made a movie about something like that? Judge Stone?
Not a good movie either nor would it be a good world.
They already do that some places?
One of the problems with the US’s version of this system is that it is impossible to find out if you are even on the durned thing. At least in Britain, it shouldn’t be too long before someone leaves a laptop in the Tube with all of this data in an unencrypted file. Then all will know…
When their own citizens begin to launch terrorist attacks (ala 7/7) – this sort of security becomes necessary to protect others. I don’t think any terrorist was ever defeated by civil liberties.
Great…
I wonder have they already caught a single terrorist thanks to this system?