August 2009 Archives

The unaccountable private company with a monopoly on public Police policies, the Association of Chief Police Officer of England, Wales & Northern Ireland, has published the

ACPO e-Crime Strategy August 2009 (.doc 267Kb)

What this document glosses over is the reduction of resources being allocated to fighting "eCrime", even compared with the inadequate, but now defunct National Hi-Tech Crime Unit.

A few observations:

There is currently no central reporting point for e-Crime. This is being addressed through the creation of the National Fraud Reporting Centre (NFRC), which will take national responsibility for the reporting of e-Crime alongside fraud. Changes are also required to ensure that e-Crime is included as a separate category within overall measures of crime and public confidence in the police, such as the British Crime Survey

We were promised that years ago when the National Hi-Tech Crime Unit still existed, so why did nothing happen ?

  • Reporting and Recording of e-Crime

Currently there is no central reporting point for e-Crime in the UK, and as a result victims of e-Crime are often uncertain about how, and to whom, they should report an e-Crime incident. The National Fraud Reporting Centre (NFRC) will take on this responsibility under the stewardship of City of London Police. The NFRC is being created to provide a central reporting point for fraud, and will also act as the primary reporting and recording centre for e-Crime in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

[...]

Where issues do not fall into the remit of the NFRC, callers will be referred to the most appropriate agency.

[...]

N.B. The National Fraud Reporting Centre (NFRC) is still not operational, despite having been announced last October.

Even when it is, there will still not be any public phone number or email address or secure web form, for the public or businesses to be able to contact properly trained staff, to report a computer virus infection or computer hacking intrusion which does not have an immediate financial fraud aspect.

  • Produce and disseminate a hash set library to be brigaded nationally, in partnership with CPS and CEOP

What exactly does "to be brigaded nationally" mean?. The dictionary definition of "brigaded" i.e. to form up military units into Brigades, surely cannot apply to this sentence.

  • Legal Issues
      - Remit: To develop legal guidance for the police response to e-Crime

There are a couple of huge omissions in this "eCrime strategy":

Extradition

What about potential international Extradition offences to or from the UK ?

Where is the clarity for the public, for the Police themselves, and for potential criminals, on whether someone accused of computer hacking or fraud or child porn etc. via the internet should be dealt with under the local laws of where they are arrested, or whether they should be Extradited to or from the UK ?

Given the international nature of the internet, this is a glaring omission in this "strategy".

Collateral damage to shared systems caused by eCrime investigations

Where is the ACPO commitment to prevent "collateral damage" to innocent businesses, not for profit groups and individuals during the investigation of a single alleged eCrime suspect, using shared computer and internet resources ?

Simply kicking in the door and "seizing computer evidence" may well bring online systems offline for longer than a natural disaster or a terrorist attack, and may cause more damage and disruption,to the UK, than the alleged eCrime being investigated.


the vague references to other vague, non-mandatory documents which may mention this, are not hood enough - this should be a clearly defined fundamental principle of this "National Strategy".

The Police Service has established standards for professional practice within e-Crime, such as the ACPO Good Practice Guide for Computer-Based Evidence published in conjunction with 7Safe, and the ACPO Managers Guide to e-Crime. The National e-Crime Programme will continue to identify and establish 'best practice' in e-Crime and promulgate this in collaboration with the NPIA.

See: ACPO Good Practice Guide for Computer-Based Evidence, (.pdf 2.4Mb)

This "Good Practice Advice" and the principle f avoidance of unnecessary "collateral damage", should ideally be made legally binding, with large fines and criminal penalties for negligence or abuse, on the Police and on private investigators or consultants, to whom this work is often sub-contracted to.

Another aspect of the political snooping which is being aimed at the Climate Camp political protestors and their sympathisers seems to be the new emphasis on Twitter and other Social Media like Facebook, Flickr and Blog monitoring and snooping

The Metropolitan Police seem to have been advised to set up their own Twitter feed

However this is a typical NuLabour centralised control freak model i.e. propaganda broadcast only - no way for the public to transparently feed back comments or suggestions.

Can none of the vast army of Metropolitan Police Service Press Office media spokesmen be spared to moderate some online discussion forums in real time, 24 /7 ?

The Metropolitan Police Twitter Policy::

[...]

The CO11 Met Police Event Planning Team Twitter account is managed by the enews team in the Directorate of Public Affairs, on behalf of colleagues across the department.

The account has been set up to specifically to inform the Camp for Climate Action of any operational updates relating to the policing of their event starting on 26 August.

[...]

Availability

We will update and monitor our Twitter account during periods of operational activity. Twitter may occasionally be unavailable and we accept no responsibility for lack of service due to Twitter downtime.

@Replies and Direct Messages

We welcome feedback and ideas from all our followers. However, we are not able to reply individually to the messages we receive via Twitter.

The CO11 team reads all @replies and Direct Messages and ensures that any emerging themes or helpful suggestions are passed to the relevant people.

[...]

They also seem to have hired some "social meedja" consultants (6consulting who claim to be "Social Media Monitoring and Engagement specialists"). They seem to be either "2 months in to a 6 month contract", or they might only be doing a 1 month "pilot project".

They appear to be trawling the public internet (Twitter, Facebook, Flicker, blogs etc.) for "Corporate Brand" references to the Metropolitan Police, supposedly just for public relations media monitoring spin control purposes.

See The Register Met hires Twitter consultancy

However, according to their own website, and to this slideshow presentation, it seems that 6consulting have already been doing much more than that, with their Radian 6 and Metrix 6 software (which can be integrated into the Metropolitan Police's internal data trawling systems) , for the Greater Manchester Police:

Radian_450.jpg

Tomorrow sees the start of the Climate Camp protest / demo / hippy / anarchist festival, which is being held at a some supposedly as yet still secret location in London.

  • What in earth are they going to do for a whole week ?

  • How much of the detailed scientific and political power arguments about "Climate Change" will actually be mentioned in the press and media coverage of this event ?

Spy Blog is interested in the use and possible abuse of SMS text messaging to help organise this event, which, like the G20 protests seems to be trying to organise / manipulate several groups of people to gather at symbolic rallying points , most of which are associated with Climate Change "baddies" like oil company headquarters, bio-fuel and carbon trading speculators etc., which are allegedly not meant to be targets of protest.

Prepare to Swoop

[...]

And remember, be ready and waiting for your SMS message, in London, on Wed 26th August at 12 noon. You'll need to bring your gear for the Camp, but try to pack light!

Your mobile number

[text entry box] [text entry box]

UK only please, without country code eg. 07956-999666.

[...]

E-mail address

[text entry box]

Providing your e-mail address is optional, but will allow us to inform you of any changes before swoop day.

Finally...

* Please only sign up if you are coming to the Camp on the day of the swoop: Wednesday 26 th August.
* You will not receive a confirmation text message when you sign up.
* Your web browser may produce a warning about an invalid SSL certificate -- this is nothing to worry about, your information is still encrypted while being sent to our server and nobody else can read it.

[subscribe button]

Note: We take security seriously (both yours and our own) and will do our best to keep your number safe, encrypted on a server outside the UK. However, once we start sending messages it is trivial for the authorities to get details of those who receive them from the network operators. Likewise, it's easy for the authorities to obtain the details of all mobile phones within a specific geographical area (assuming battery inserted). If concerned, don't take your mobile to the action - get a new unregistered "Pay As You Go" mobile and use that on the day.

The fact that such precautions (such as they are) and warnings are at all necessary, shows how little trust there is between the organisers and the police, and does not bode well for a peaceful event.

The SMS alerts signup website, as stated above, does indeed skimp on using a "proper" SSL digital certificate, which throws up all sorts of error messages, and which will put off a few people who think, correctly, that it looks like a criminal phishing website.

This SMS alert signup web page https://smsalerts.tachanka.org/cc/storenumber.php does appear to be based in the USA, rather than the UK.

The inclusion of a link to a non existent graphic file "G20@)logo.jpg" in the mobile phone number submission confirmation web page, is indicative of the link between this event and with some of the G20 protests in April.

That event, which saw the death of a member of the public, Ian Tomlinson, also featured
what seemed to be a deliberately staged confrontation between the Police and some demonstrators, who were heavily outnumbered by members of the press and independent photographers at the only unboarded up window for several blocks around the Bank of Scotland in Threadneedle Street.

Obviously the Metropolitan Police should not have to bother to Intercept the content of these text messages, if they actually happen, since there are likely to be several Confidential Human Intelligence Sources or Agents Provocateurs already helping to organise this Climate Camp "swoop".

Based on past experience, what is very likely to happen is that the mobile phone SMS gateway service will not instantly deliver several hundred, or several thousand SMS text messages at 12 noon, either because of network congestion, or because the organisers are not paying for a premium business service, and are trying to do this on the cheap.

The signup workflow has no means of authentication of tomorrow's genuine SMS message, which is to reveal the location of the Climate Camp site, where all these groups are meant to magically converge.

It would have been very easy to have displayed an individual confirmation code for each mobile phone number that was signed up, which could have been included in each individual climate camp SMS text alert message sent out on Wednesday..

There is now a chance that some "disruption" will be caused by false SMS messages (it will only take a few to each group at the rally point locations).

This tactic could be used to entice the organisers representatives at each rally point location to "phone home" to the central organisers, thereby producing a pattern for Communications Traffic Data analysis of "friendship trees" of "co-conspirators"., which will abuse the privacy and security of many innocent people.

As if Snooping on the Climate Camp Swoopers via SMS was not enough, the Metropolitan Police also seem to be tracking and data mining "social networks" like Twitter, Facebook , Flickr and blogs etc. - see the next Spy Blog article.

Freedom_Not_Fear_Day_12_Sep_09_logo_275.jpg

Details of UK protests (and others mostly around the European Union), set for Sunday 12th September 2009, can be found via FreedomNotFear2009.org

There is also the German manifesto (in English, very similar to last year's) at the www.freedom-not-fear.eu wiki.

We demand:

1. Cutback on surveillance measures

  • no blanket registration of all air travellers (PNR data)
  • no information exchange with the US and other states lacking effective data protection
  • no secret searches of private computer systems, neither online nor offline
  • abolish the blanket logging of our communications and locations (data retention)
  • abolish the blanket collection of our biometric data as well as RFID passports
  • abolish the blanket collection of genetic data
  • abolish permanent CCTV camera surveillance and automatic detection techniques
  • scrap funding for the development of new surveillance techniques
  • protect us from surveillance at the workplace by effective personal data protection in employment law
  • e-government projects must take into account the protection of citizens' and employees' data right from the start
  • no standardization of public databases in Europe (Stockholm programme)
  • no systematic surveillance of monetary transactions or any other mass data analysis within the EU (Stockholm programme)
  • no information exchange with the US or any other nation lacking effective human rights
  • no hidden searches of private computer systems, neither online nor offline

We are not sure what the difference between" "secret" and "hidden" searches of private computer systems is.

2. Evaluation of existing surveillance powers

We call for an independent review of all existing surveillance powers as to their effectiveness and harmful side-effects.

3. Moratorium on new surveillance powers

Following the homeland armament of the past few years we demand an immediate hold to new homeland security laws that further restrict civil liberties.

4. Guaranteeing freedom of expression, dialogue and information on the Internet

  • no restrictions on Internet access by governmental institutions or internet service providers
  • ban the installation of filtering infrastructure on ISP networks
  • only independent and impartial judges may request the removal of Internet content
  • create a full right to quote multimedia, today indispensable to public debate in democracies
  • protect common internet places of expression (participatory sites, forums, comments on blogs) today threatened by inadequate laws encouraging self-censorship (chilling effect)

There does not seem to have been any progress on these demands in the last year - see the previous Freedom Not Fear Day - Saturday 11th October 2008.

There is more anger, more frustration and contempt bordering on hatred, from ordinary people, from all parts of the political spectrum, directed at our morally weak and technologically inept Government politicians and apparatchiki, jobsworth securocrats and other vested interests,

What does it take to get these alleged "public servants" to listen to , and act on, our privacy and freedom concerns ?

I'm a Photographer Not a Terrorist !

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Obviously inspired by the Icelanders are NOT Terrorists! campaign, which highlighted just how inept and internationally embarrassing Gordon Brown and his henchman Alistair Darling's mis-handling of the Icelandic banking crisis, there is now another protest against this Labour government and its army of jobsworth apparatchik bureaucrats, who are making life hell for ordinary, law abiding photographers (i.e.most of the general public) , under the spurious pretext of "security theatre" / Climate of Fear.

phnat-logo-black-on-white-212x300.jpg

I'm a Photographer Not a Terrorist !

This campaign blog also has a Bust Card for photographers to print out and carry, with some handy legal advice for Photographers (and for the very confused and poorly trained Police on the streets etc.), which is being improved through the comments.

N.B.they should also print out the 24 hour contact details for some firms of solicitors experienced in criminal and human rights arrests, criminal charges and legal appeals etc. since, iIf you are harassed and then arrested, you will probably no longer have access to your mobile phone or PDA electronics contacts address book.however , the Police will probably be snooping through this and copying it "for intelligence" purposes if they can.

See our Hints and Tips for Whistleblowers etc - new window">Hints and tips for Whistleblowers etc., especially the section on What to do if you are arrested as a whistleblower:

The last part of the 3 part BBC Radio 4 series MI6:A century in the shadows entitled New Enemies, has provided a few glimpses into the current world of UK Government "intelligence".

However, as is always the case, this programme raises more questions than were answered by the senior current and former heads of the Secret Intelligence Service, Joint Intelligence Committee, diplomats, and politicians etc.

The programme is available on BBC iPlayer, and will be repeated at 21:30 on BBC Radio 4 tonight.

Here are some transcripts of what seem to Spy Blog, to be the most interesting bits (the denial of torture or complicity in torture, has already made the headlines in some of the mainstream media).

The Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) has published:

The Management and Use of Automatic Number Plate Recognition (.pdf 892Kb)

The policy advice on the use of Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR), is mostly common sense, especially regarding actual roadside ANPR with at least two other mobile patrol vehicles to actually stop and search vehicles which have been flagged up by the ANPR / Police National Computer / Local Intelligence database system.

This document does not say much about the National ANPR Data Centre (NADC), but there are some clues about the ANPR data stored on the Police National Computer, with some potentially abusable or easily misinterpreted Warning Markers and the PNC ID categories, which could easily lead to false positives, where innocent people being threatened with firearms or tasers. Similarly, known really violent and dangerous people could just as easily be stopped by the Police, who are unprepared for them, thereby potentially putting themselves and the passing public at risk, because of false negative matches, again involving just a single digit error.

About this blog

This United Kingdom based blog attempts to draw public attention to, and comments on, some of the current trends in ever cheaper and more widespread surveillance technology being deployed to satisfy the rapacious demand by state and corporate bureaucracies and criminals for your private details, and the technological ignorance of our politicians and civil servants who frame our legal systems.

The hope is that you the readers, will help to insist that strong safeguards for the privacy of the individual are implemented, especially in these times of increased alert over possible terrorist or criminal activity. If the systems which should help to protect us can be easily abused to supress our freedoms, then the terrorists will have won.

We know that there are decent, honest, trustworthy individual politicians, civil servants, law enforcement, intelligence agency personnel and broadcast, print and internet journalists etc., who often feel powerless or trapped in the system. They need the assistance of external, detailed, informed, public scrutiny to help them to resist deliberate or unthinking policies, which erode our freedoms and liberties.

Email & PGP Contact

Please feel free to email your views about this blog, or news about the issues it tries to comment on.

blog@spy[dot]org[dot]uk

Our PGP public encryption key is available for those correspondents who wish to send us news or information in confidence, and also for those of you who value your privacy, even if you have got nothing to hide.

We offer this verifiable GPG / PGP public key (the ID is available on several keyservers, twitter etc.) as one possible method to establish initial contact with whistleblowers and other confidential sources, if it suits their Threat Model or Risk Appetite, but will then try to establish other secure, anonymous communications channels e.g. encrypted Signal Messenger via burner devices,or face to face meetings, postal mail or dead drops etc. as appropriate.

Current PGP Key ID: 0x1DBD6A9F0FACAD30 which will expire on 29th August 2021.

pgp-now.gif
You can download a free copy of the PGP encryption software from www.pgpi.org
(available for most of the common computer operating systems, and also in various Open Source versions like GPG)

We look forward to the day when UK Government Legislation, Press Releases and Emails etc. are Digitally Signed so that we can be assured that they are not fakes. Trusting that the digitally signed content makes any sense, is another matter entirely.

Hints and Tips for Whistleblowers and Political Dissidents

Please take the appropriate precautions if you are planning to blow the whistle on shadowy and powerful people in Government or commerce, and their dubious policies. The mainstream media and bloggers also need to take simple precautions to help preserve the anonymity of their sources e.g. see Spy Blog's Hints and Tips for Whistleblowers - or use this easier to remember link: http://ht4w.co.uk

BlogSafer - wiki with multilingual guides to anonymous blogging

Digital Security & Privacy for Human Rights Defenders manual, by Irish NGO Frontline Defenders.

Everyone’s Guide to By-Passing Internet Censorship for Citizens Worldwide (.pdf - 31 pages), by the Citizenlab at the University of Toronto.

Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents - March 2008 version - (2.2 Mb - 80 pages .pdf) by Reporters Without Borders

Reporters Guide to Covering the Beijing Olympics by Human Rights Watch.

A Practical Security Handbook for Activists and Campaigns (v 2.6) (.doc - 62 pages), by experienced UK direct action political activists

Anonymous Blogging with Wordpress & Tor - useful step by step guide with software configuration screenshots by Ethan Zuckerman at Global Voices Advocacy. (updated March 10th 2009 with the latest Tor / Vidalia bundle details)

Links

Watching Them, Watching Us

London 2600

Our UK Freedom of Information Act request tracking blog

WikiLeak.org - ethical and technical discussion about the WikiLeaks.org project for anonymous mass leaking of documents etc.

Privacy and Security

Privacy International
United Kingdom Privacy Profile (2011)

Cryptome - censored or leaked government documents etc.

Identity Project report by the London School of Economics
Surveillance & Society the fully peer-reviewed transdisciplinary online surveillance studies journal

Statewatch - monitoring the state and civil liberties in the European Union

The Policy Laundering Project - attempts by Governments to pretend their repressive surveillance systems, have to be introduced to comply with international agreements, which they themselves have pushed for in the first place

International Campaign Against Mass Surveillance

ARCH Action Rights for Children in Education - worried about the planned Children's Bill Database, Connexions Card, fingerprinting of children, CCTV spy cameras in schools etc.

Foundation for Information Policy Research
UK Crypto - UK Cryptography Policy Discussion Group email list

Technical Advisory Board on internet and telecomms interception under RIPA

European Digital Rights

Open Rights Group - a UK version of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a clearinghouse to raise digital rights and civil liberties issues with the media and to influence Governments.

Digital Rights Ireland - legal case against mandatory EU Comms Data Retention etc.

Blindside - "What’s going to go wrong in our e-enabled world? " blog and wiki and Quarterly Report will supposedly be read by the Cabinet Office Central Sponsor for Information Assurance. Whether the rest of the Government bureaucracy and the Politicians actually listen to the CSIA, is another matter.

Biometrics in schools - 'A concerned parent who doesn't want her children to live in "1984" type society.'

Human Rights

Liberty Human Rights campaigners

British Institute of Human Rights
Amnesty International
Justice

Prevent Genocide International

asboconcern - campaign for reform of Anti-Social Behavior Orders

Front Line Defenders - Irish charity - Defenders of Human Rights Defenders

Internet Censorship

OpenNet Initiative - researches and measures the extent of actual state level censorship of the internet. Features a blocked web URL checker and censorship map.

Committee to Protect Bloggers - "devoted to the protection of bloggers worldwide with a focus on highlighting the plight of bloggers threatened and imprisoned by their government."

Reporters without Borders internet section - news of internet related censorship and repression of journalists, bloggers and dissidents etc.

Judicial Links

British and Irish Legal Information Institute - publishes the full text of major case Judgments

Her Majesty's Courts Service - publishes forthcoming High Court etc. cases (but only in the next few days !)

House of Lords - The Law Lords are currently the supreme court in the UK - will be moved to the new Supreme Court in October 2009.

Information Tribunal - deals with appeals under FOIA, DPA both for and against the Information Commissioner

Investigatory Powers Tribunal - deals with complaints about interception and snooping under RIPA - has almost never ruled in favour of a complainant.

Parliamentary Opposition

The incompetent yet authoritarian Labour party have not apologised for their time in Government. They are still not providing any proper Opposition to the current Conservative - Liberal Democrat coalition government, on any freedom or civil liberties or privacy or surveillance issues.

UK Government

Home Office - "Not fit for purpose. It is inadequate in terms of its scope, it is inadequate in terms of its information technology, leadership, management systems and processes" - Home Secretary John Reid. 23rd May 2006. Not quite the fount of all evil legislation in the UK, but close.

No. 10 Downing Street Prime Minister's Official Spindoctors

Public Bills before Parliament

United Kingdom Parliament
Home Affairs Committee of the House of Commons.

House of Commons "Question Book"

UK Statute Law Database - is the official revised edition of the primary legislation of the United Kingdom made available online, but it is not yet up to date.

FaxYourMP - identify and then fax your Member of Parliament
WriteToThem - identify and then contact your Local Councillors, members of devolved assemblies, Member of Parliament, Members of the European Parliament etc.
They Work For You - House of Commons Hansard made more accessible ? UK Members of the European Parliament

Read The Bills Act - USA proposal to force politicians to actually read the legislation that they are voting for, something which is badly needed in the UK Parliament.

Bichard Inquiry delving into criminal records and "soft intelligence" policies highlighted by the Soham murders. (taken offline by the Home Office)

ACPO - Association of Chief Police Officers - England, Wales and Northern Ireland
ACPOS Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland

Online Media

Boing Boing

Need To Know [now defunct]

The Register

NewsNow Encryption and Security aggregate news feed
KableNet - UK Government IT project news
PublicTechnology.net - UK eGovernment and public sector IT news
eGov Monitor

Ideal Government - debate about UK eGovernment

NIR and ID cards

Stand - email and fax campaign on ID Cards etc. [Now defunct]. The people who supported stand.org.uk have gone on to set up other online tools like WriteToThem.com. The Government's contemptuous dismissal of over 5,000 individual responses via the stand.org website to the Home Office public consultation on Entitlement Cards is one of the factors which later led directly to the formation of the the NO2ID Campaign who have been marshalling cross party opposition to Labour's dreadful National Identity Register compulsory centralised national biometric database and ID Card plans, at the expense of simpler, cheaper, less repressive, more effective, nore secure and more privacy friendly alternative identity schemes.

NO2ID - opposition to the Home Office's Compulsory Biometric ID Card
NO2ID bulletin board discussion forum

Home Office Identity Cards website
No compulsory national Identity Cards (ID Cards) BBC iCan campaign site
UK ID Cards blog
NO2ID press clippings blog
CASNIC - Campaign to STOP the National Identity Card.
Defy-ID active meetings and protests in Glasgow
www.idcards-uk.info - New Alliance's ID Cards page
irefuse.org - total rejection of any UK ID Card

International Civil Aviation Organisation - Machine Readable Travel Documents standards for Biometric Passports etc.
Anti National ID Japan - controversial and insecure Jukinet National ID registry in Japan
UK Biometrics Working Group run by CESG/GCHQ experts etc. the UK Government on Biometrics issues feasability
Citizen Information Project feasability study population register plans by the Treasury and Office of National Statistics

CommentOnThis.com - comments and links to each paragraph of the Home Office's "Strategic Action Plan for the National Identity Scheme".

De-Materialised ID - "The voluntary alternative to material ID cards, A Proposal by David Moss of Business Consultancy Services Ltd (BCSL)" - well researched analysis of the current Home Office scheme, and a potentially viable alternative.

Surveillance Infrastructures

National Roads Telecommunications Services project - infrastruture for various mass surveillance systems, CCTV, ANPR, PMMR imaging etc.

CameraWatch - independent UK CCTV industry lobby group - like us, they also want more regulation of CCTV surveillance systems.

Every Step You Take a documentary about CCTV surveillance in the Uk by Austrian film maker Nino Leitner.

Transport for London an attempt at a technological panopticon - London Congestion Charge, London Low-Emission Zone, Automatic Number Plate Recognition cameras, tens of thousands of CCTV cameras on buses, thousands of CCTV cameras on London Underground, realtime road traffic CCTV, Iyster smart cards - all handed over to the Metropolitan Police for "national security" purposes, in real time, in bulk, without any public accountibility, for secret data mining, exempt from even the usual weak protections of the Data Protection Act 1998.

RFID Links

RFID tag privacy concerns - our own original article updated with photos

NoTags - campaign against individual item RFID tags
Position Statement on the Use of RFID on Consumer Products has been endorsed by a large number of privacy and human rights organisations.
RFID Privacy Happenings at MIT
Surpriv: RFID Surveillance and Privacy
RFID Scanner blog
RFID Gazette
The Sorting Door Project

RFIDBuzz.com blog - where we sometimes crosspost RFID articles

Genetic Links

DNA Profiles - analysis by Paul Nutteing
GeneWatch UK monitors genetic privacy and other issues
Postnote February 2006 Number 258 - National DNA Database (.pdf) - Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology

The National DNA Database Annual Report 2004/5 (.pdf) - published by the NDNAD Board and ACPO.

Eeclaim Your DNA from Britain's National DNA Database - model letters and advice on how to have your DNA samples and profiles removed from the National DNA Database,in spite of all of the nureacratic obstacles which try to prevent this, even if you are innocent.

Miscellanous Links

Michael Field - Pacific Island news - no longer a paradise
freetotravel.org - John Gilmore versus USA internal flight passports and passenger profiling etc.

The BUPA Seven - whistleblowers badly let down by the system.

Tax Credit Overpayment - the near suicidal despair inflicted on poor, vulnerable people by the then Chancellor Gordon Brown's disasterous Inland Revenue IT system.

Fassit UK - resources and help for those abused by the Social Services Childrens Care bureaucracy

Former Spies

MI6 v Tomlinson - Richard Tomlinson - still being harassed by his former employer MI6

Martin Ingram, Welcome To The Dark Side - former British Army Intelligence operative in Northern Ireland.

Operation Billiards - Mitrokhin or Oshchenko ? Michael John Smith - seeking to overturn his Official Secrets Act conviction in the GEC case.

The Dirty Secrets of MI5 & MI6 - Tony Holland, Michael John Smith and John Symond - stories and chronologies.

Naked Spygirl - Olivia Frank

Blog Links

e-nsecure.net blog - Comments on IT security and Privacy or the lack thereof.
Rat's Blog -The Reverend Rat writes about London street life and technology
Duncan Drury - wired adventures in Tanzania & London
Dr. K's blog - Hacker, Author, Musician, Philosopher

David Mery - falsely arrested on the London Tube - you could be next.

James Hammerton
White Rose - a thorn in the side of Big Brother
Big Blunkett
Into The Machine - formerly "David Blunkett is an Arse" by Charlie Williams and Scribe
infinite ideas machine - Phil Booth
Louise Ferguson - City of Bits
Chris Lightfoot
Oblomovka - Danny O'Brien

Liberty Central

dropsafe - Alec Muffett
The Identity Corner - Stefan Brands
Kim Cameron - Microsoft's Identity Architect
Schneier on Security - Bruce Schneier
Politics of Privacy Blog - Andreas Busch
solarider blog

Richard Allan - former Liberal Democrat MP for Sheffield Hallam
Boris Johnson Conservative MP for Henley
Craig Murray - former UK Ambassador to Uzbekistan, "outsourced torture" whistleblower

Howard Rheingold - SmartMobs
Global Guerrillas - John Robb
Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends

Vmyths - debunking computer security hype

Nick Leaton - Random Ramblings
The Periscope - Companion weblog to Euro-correspondent.com journalist network.
The Practical Nomad Blog Edward Hasbrouck on Privacy and Travel
Policeman's Blog
World Weary Detective

Martin Stabe
Longrider
B2fxxx - Ray Corrigan
Matt Sellers
Grits for Breakfast - Scott Henson in Texas
The Green Ribbon - Tom Griffin
Guido Fawkes blog - Parliamentary plots, rumours and conspiracy.
The Last Ditch - Tom Paine
Murky.org
The (e)State of Tim - Tim Hicks
Ilkley Against CCTV
Tim Worstall
Bill's Comment Page - Bill Cameron
The Society of Qualified Archivists
The Streeb-Greebling Diaries - Bob Mottram

Your Right To Know - Heather Brooke - Freedom off Information campaigning journalist

Ministry of Truth _ Unity's V for Vendetta styled blog.

Bloggerheads - Tim Ireland

W. David Stephenson blogs on homeland security et al.
EUrophobia - Nosemonkey

Blogzilla - Ian Brown

BlairWatch - Chronicling the demise of the New Labour Project

dreamfish - Robert Longstaff

Informaticopia - Rod Ward

War-on-Freedom

The Musings of Harry

Chicken Yoghurt - Justin McKeating

The Red Tape Chronicles - Bob Sullivan MSNBC

Campaign Against the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill

Stop the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill

Rob Wilton's esoterica

panGloss - Innovation, Technology and the Law

Arch Rights - Action on Rights for Children blog

Database Masterclass - frequently asked questions and answers about the several centralised national databases of children in the UK.

Shaphan

Moving On

Steve Moxon blog - former Home Office whistleblower and author.

Al-Muhajabah's Sundries - anglophile blog

Architectures of Control in Design - Dan Lockton

rabenhorst - Kai Billen (mostly in German)

Nearly Perfect Privacy - Tiffany and Morpheus

Iain Dale's Diary - a popular Conservative political blog

Brit Watch - Public Surveillance in the UK - Web - Email - Databases - CCTV - Telephony - RFID - Banking - DNA

BLOGDIAL

MySecured.com - smart mobile phone forensics, information security, computer security and digital forensics by a couple of Australian researchers

Ralph Bendrath

Financial Cryptography - Ian Grigg et al.

UK Liberty - A blog on issues relating to liberty in the UK

Big Brother State - "a small act of resistance" to the "sustained and systematic attack on our personal freedom, privacy and legal system"

HosReport - "Crisis. Conspiraciones. Enigmas. Conflictos. Espionaje." - Carlos Eduardo Hos (in Spanish)

"Give 'em hell Pike!" - Frank Fisher

Corruption-free Anguilla - Good Governance and Corruption in Public Office Issues in the British Overseas Territory of Anguilla in the West Indies - Don Mitchell CBE QC

geeklawyer - intellectual property, civil liberties and the legal system

PJC Journal - I am not a number, I am a free Man - The Prisoner

Charlie's Diary - Charlie Stross

The Caucus House - blog of the Chicago International Model United Nations

Famous for 15 Megapixels

Postman Patel

The 4th Bomb: Tavistock Sq Daniel's 7:7 Revelations - Daniel Obachike

OurKingdom - part of OpenDemocracy - " will discuss Britain’s nations, institutions, constitution, administration, liberties, justice, peoples and media and their principles, identity and character"

Beau Bo D'Or blog by an increasingly famous digital political cartoonist.

Between Both Worlds - "Thoughts & Ideas that Reflect the Concerns of Our Conscious Evolution" - Kingsley Dennis

Bloggerheads: The Alisher Usmanov Affair - the rich Uzbek businessman and his shyster lawyers Schillings really made a huge counterproductive error in trying to censor the blogs of Tim Ireland, of all people.

Matt Wardman political blog analysis

Henry Porter on Liberty - a leading mainstream media commentator and opinion former who is doing more than most to help preserve our freedom and liberty.

HMRC is shite - "dedicated to the taxpayers of Britain, and the employees of the HMRC, who have to endure the monumental shambles that is Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC)."

Head of Legal - Carl Gardner a former legal advisor to the Government

The Landed Underclass - Voice of the Banana Republic of Great Britain

Henrik Alexandersson - Swedish blogger threatened with censorship by the Försvarets Radioanstalt (FRA), the Swedish National Defence Radio Establishement, their equivalent of the UK GCHQ or the US NSA.

World's First Fascist Democracy - blog with link to a Google map - "This map is an attempt to take a UK wide, geographical view, of both the public and the personal effect of State sponsored fear and distrust as seen through the twisted technological lens of petty officials and would be bureaucrats nationwide."

Blogoir - Charles Crawford - former UK Ambassodor to Poland etc.

No CCTV - The Campaign against CCTV

Barcode Nation - keeping two eyes on the database state.

Lords of the Blog - group blog by half a dozen or so Peers sitting in the House of Lords.

notes from the ubiquitous surveillance society - blog by Dr. David Murakami Wood, editor of the online academic journal Surveillance and Society

Justin Wylie's political blog

Panopticon blog - by Timothy Pitt-Payne and Anya Proops. Timothy Pitt-Payne is probably the leading legal expert on the UK's Freedom of Information Act law, often appearing on behlaf of the Information Commissioner's Office at the Information Tribunal.

Armed and Dangerous - Sex, software, politics, and firearms. Life’s simple pleasures… - by Open Source Software advocate Eric S. Raymond.

Georgetown Security Law Brief - group blog by the Georgetown Law Center on National Security and the Law , at Georgtown University, Washington D.C, USA.

Big Brother Watch - well connected with the mainstream media, this is a campaign blog by the TaxPayersAlliance, which thankfully does not seem to have spawned Yet Another Campaign Organisation as many Civil Liberties groups had feared.

Spy on Moseley - "Sparkbrook, Springfield, Washwood Heath and Bordesley Green. An MI5 Intelligence-gathering operation to spy on Muslim communities in Birmingham is taking liberties in every sense" - about 150 ANPR CCTV cameras funded by Home Office via the secretive Terrorism and Allied Matters (TAM) section of ACPO.

FitWatch blog - keeps an eye on the activities of some of the controversial Police Forward Intelligence Teams, who supposedly only target "known troublemakers" for photo and video surveillance, at otherwise legal, peaceful protests and demonstrations.

Other Links

Spam Huntress - The Norwegian Spam Huntress - Ann Elisabeth

Fuel Crisis Blog - Petrol over £1 per litre ! Protest !
Mayor of London Blog
London Olympics 2012 - NO !!!!

Cool Britannia

NuLabour

Free Gary McKinnon - UK citizen facing extradition to the USA for "hacking" over 90 US Military computer systems.

Parliament Protest - information and discussion on peaceful resistance to the arbitrary curtailment of freedom of assembly and freedom of speech, in the excessive Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 Designated Area around Parliament Square in London.

Brian Burnell's British / US nuclear weapons history at http://nuclear-weapons.info

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UK Legislation

The United Kingdom suffers from tens of thousands of pages of complicated criminal laws, and thousands of new, often unenforceable criminal offences, which have been created as a "Pretend to be Seen to Be Doing Something" response to tabloid media hype and hysteria, and political social engineering dogmas. These overbroad, catch-all laws, which remove the scope for any judicial appeals process, have been rubber stamped, often without being read, let alone properly understood, by Members of Parliament.

The text of many of these Acts of Parliament are now online, but it is still too difficult for most people, including the police and criminal justice system, to work out the cumulative effect of all the amendments, even for the most serious offences involving national security or terrorism or serious crime.

Many MPs do not seem to bother to even to actually read the details of the legislation which they vote to inflict on us.

UK Legislation Links

UK Statute Law Database - is the official revised edition of the primary legislation of the United Kingdom made available online, but it is not yet up to date.

UK Commissioners

UK Commissioners some of whom are meant to protect your privacy and investigate abuses by the bureaucrats.

UK Intelligence Agencies

Intelligence and Security Committee - the supposedly independent Parliamentary watchdog which issues an annual, heavily censored Report every year or so. Currently chaired by the Conservative Sir Malcolm Rifkind. Why should either the intelligence agencies or the public trust this committee, when the untrustworthy ex-Labour Minister Hazel Blears is a member ?

Anti-terrorism hotline - links removed in protest at the Climate of Fear propaganda posters

MI5 Security Service
MI5 Security Service - links to encrypted reporting form removed in protest at the Climate of Fear propaganda posters

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Secure Your Fertiliser - advice on ammonium nitrate and urea fertiliser security

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Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure - "CPNI provides expert advice to the critical national infrastructure on physical, personnel and information security, to protect against terrorism and other threats."

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Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) recruitment.

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Government Communications Headquarters GCHQ

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National Crime Agency - the replacement for the Serious Organised Crime Agency

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Defence Advisory (DA) Notice system - voluntary self censorship by the established UK press and broadcast media regarding defence and intelligence topics via the Defence, Press and Broadcasting Advisory Committee.

Foreign Spies / Intelliegence Agencies in the UK

It is not just the UK government which tries to snoop on British companies, organisations and individuals, the rest of the world is constantly trying to do the same, regardless of the mixed efforts of our own UK Intelligence Agencies who are paid to supposedly protect us from them.

For no good reason, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office only keeps the current version of the London Diplomatic List of accredited Diplomats (including some Foreign Intelligence Agency operatives) online.

Presumably every mainstream media organisation, intelligence agency, serious organised crime or terrorist gang keeps historical copies, so here are some older versions of the London Diplomatic List, for the benefit of web search engine queries, for those people who do not want their visits to appear in the FCO web server logfiles or those whose censored internet feeds block access to UK Government websites.

Campaign Button Links

Watching Them, Watching Us - UK Public CCTV Surveillance Regulation Campaign
UK Public CCTV Surveillance Regulation Campaign

NO2ID Campaign - cross party opposition to the NuLabour Compulsory Biometric ID Card
NO2ID Campaign - cross party opposition to the NuLabour Compulsory Biometric ID Card and National Identity Register centralised database.

Gary McKinnon is facing extradition to the USA under the controversial Extradition Act 2003, without any prima facie evidence or charges brought against him in a UK court. Try him here in the UK, under UK law.
Gary McKinnon is facing extradition to the USA under the controversial Extradition Act 2003, without any prima facie evidence or charges brought against him in a UK court. Try him here in the UK, under UK law.

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FreeFarid.com - Kafkaesque extradition of Farid Hilali under the European Arrest Warrant to Spain

Peaceful resistance to the curtailment of our rights to Free Assembly and Free Speech in the SOCPA Designated Area around Parliament Square and beyond
Parliament Protest blog - resistance to the Designated Area restricting peaceful demonstrations or lobbying in the vicinity of Parliament.

Petition to the European Commission and European Parliament against their vague Data Retention plans
Data Retention is No Solution - Petition to the European Commission and European Parliament against their vague Data Retention plans.

Save Parliament: Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill (and other issues)
Save Parliament - Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill (and other issues)

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Open Rights Group

The Big Opt Out Campaign - opt out of having your NHS Care Record medical records and personal details stored insecurely on a massive national centralised database.

Tor - the onion routing network
Tor - the onion routing network - "Tor aims to defend against traffic analysis, a form of network surveillance that threatens personal anonymity and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security. Communications are bounced around a distributed network of servers called onion routers, protecting you from websites that build profiles of your interests, local eavesdroppers that read your data or learn what sites you visit, and even the onion routers themselves."

Tor - the onion routing network
Anonymous Blogging with Wordpress and Tor - useful Guide published by Global Voices Advocacy with step by step software configuration screenshots (updated March 10th 2009).

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Amnesty International's irrepressible.info campaign

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BlogSafer - wiki with multilingual guides to anonymous blogging

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NGO in a box - Security Edition privacy and security software tools

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Home Office Watch blog, "a single repository of all the shambolic errors and mistakes made by the British Home Office compiled from Parliamentary Questions, news reports, and tip-offs by the Liberal Democrat Home Affairs team."

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Reporters Without Borders - Reporters Sans Frontières - campaign for journalists 'and bloggers' freedom in repressive countries and war zones.

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Committee to Protect Bloggers - "devoted to the protection of bloggers worldwide with a focus on highlighting the plight of bloggers threatened and imprisoned by their government."

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Icelanders are NOT terrorists ! - despite Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling's use of anti-terrorism legislation to seize the assets of Icelandic banks.

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No CCTV - The Campaign Against CCTV

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I'm a Photographer Not a Terrorist !

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Power 2010 cross party, political reform campaign

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Cracking the Black Box - "aims to expose technology that is being used in inappropriate ways. We hope to bring together the insights of experts and whistleblowers to shine a light into the dark recesses of systems that are responsible for causing many of the privacy problems faced by millions of people."

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Open Rights Group - Petition against the renewal of the Interception Modernisation Programme

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WhistleblowersUK.org - Fighting for justice for whistleblowers