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July 2009
USA: 'A Comedy of Errors': Why It's Time to Get Rid of the So-Called Terrorist Watch List (Alternet, link)
UK: Government under fire over ID cards (ZDnet, link)
June 2009
UK: After Iraq WMD fiasco, MI6 faces new challenge under Sir John Sawers (Times, link)
UK: Government
faces court battle over £400m contract for hi-tech passports
(Daily Mail, link)
Ethnic profiling tarnishes the EU - Relying on race when
deciding who to stop, search or detain is illegal and ineffective
– but European police continue to do it (Guardian, link)
UK: Blair
Peach death secrecy review (Guardian, link)
EU: EU security plans threaten freedom, says rights expert (Irish Times, link)
UK: Police and protests: Video shows surveillance protesters bundled to ground by police - Women arrested for challenging officer with no badge number and Predatory policing: As my arrest and imprisonment demonstrates, the preventative policing model is a licence to harass legitimate protesters (Guardian, links)
EU: Stockholm programme: The lives of ... all of us (Daily Mail, link)
GERMANY: Quietly
Arming Conflicts (Inter Press Service, link)
UK: Abandon
ID cards: The attempt to justify the ID card scheme on
the grounds of the risk of terrorism is not sustainable –
we simply don't need it
(Guardian, link) and ID
cards 'will not protect UK against terrorism': Identity cards
are pushing Britain towards a "Kafkaesque" society
and will do nothing to protect the UK against terrorism, a retired
Law Lord will warn (Daily Telegraph, link)
The Dawning of the Biometric Age: Say goodbye to PINs and photo IDs. Say hello to digital fingerprints and iris scans—and to new opportunities for security businesses (Business Week, link)
Is the rise of the digital ID inevitable? As biometrics gain sway, not everyone sees them as a force for good (Independent, link)
PI and Free Expression Groups Call for Limits on Surveillance (PI, link)
Americans seek international database to carry iris, palm and finger prints (Guardian, link). This article, and a number of others refer to the "International Information Consortium", formed ten years ago by the USA, UK, Australia and Canada - all in the USA-UK intelligence network set up in 1947. Police Review reports that the Consortium met at Bramshill Police College for its annual conference in May where it discussed international access to DNA databases.
UK-EU: Racist
rants of elected BNP man, Andrew Brons, revealedYorkshire MEP
Andrew Brons drew up some of the National Front's most inflammatory
policies (Observer, link)
Malta: Frontex
to help in migrants' return - Justice Ministers to discuss EC
proposals today (Times of Malta, link)
UK: Man who died after police restraint 'covered with injuries' (Guardian, link)
GREECE: Greece Cannot Take Very Much More, Analysis by Apostolis Fotiadis (Inter Press Service, link): ATHENS, Jun 1 (IPS) - United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres has asked the European Commission to call a meeting between the agency and countries around the Mediterranean to work out a joint strategy to deal with irregular migration. But while Italy is being internationally chastised for the refoulement of refugees that effectively annuls the country's responsibilities arising from international treaties, most notably the Geneva convention, neighbouring Greece is building up state-sponsored persecution of irregular migration that has gone largely unnoticed.
UK: Big Brother HAS gone too far ... and that's an ex-spy chief talking (Daily Mail, link)
May 2009
The technology of surveillance (BBC News, link)
UK: Tortured while MI5 left the room: Briton's claim after 7/7 attacks (Guardian, link)
USA: Report: FBI Mishandles Terror Watch List (Wired.com, link)
UK: G20 police 'used undercover men to incite crowds' - MP demands inquiry into Met tactics at demo (Observer, link)
UK: Court says police can be challenged on 'stop and search' powers - 11-year-old twins left distraught after incident (Guardian, link)
April 2009
Czech Republic:
Roma
Seek to Flee Czech Republic (Inter Press Service, link)
UK: Met
pays out compensation to protesters for unlawful arrest (Guardian, link)
UK: Government wants phone and internet providers to track users (Guardian, link).Many newspapers, following the publication of a Home Office consultation paper, followed this line of reasoning. A bit strange as service providers have been keeping communications data (traffic data) since December 2001 for phone calls, e-mails and mobile phone calls - which is now being extended to internet usage as well in line with the EU Directive on mandatory data retention. See: UK: Data retention and access consultation farce
UK: David Howarth MP: This is the list of items seized by the police at the Kingsnorth Climate Camp. The list was supplied by Kent Police following an FoI request (link)
UK: Nottingham power station protesters 'treated like terrorists' (Guardian, link)
USA-ICRC: US Torture: Voices from the Black Sites (New York Review of Books, link) International Committee for the Red Cross report.
UK: Specialist protest squads at centre of investigations into G20 police violence - Police territorial support teams, used at demonstrations and marches, involved in previous controversy (Guardian, link)
Global Detention Project (link)
UK: Anger over £78 deportation ruling (BBC, link)
UK: NHS Health records: Summary care records - you might die, but they never will - Once you can opt in, you can never opt out (Register, link)
Red Pepper: Viva Siva: Now in his eighties, A Sivanandan remains an important figure in the politics of race and class, maintaining his long-held insistence that only in the symbiosis of the two struggles can a genuinely radical politics be found. By Arun Kundnani
UK: ID cards 'could use chip-and-pin' (BBC News, link)
Surveillance Self-Defence (link)
UK: Jail for photographing police? (British Journal of Photograhpy, link)
March 2009
UK: IPCC 'not functioning properly', claims new report (Guardian, link)
UK: Police identify 200 children as potential terrorists (Independent, link)
USA: US teenager killed by police Taser attack (Amnesty International, link)
UK: Police to get 6,000 extra Tasers (BBC News, link)
Liberty wins ruling against Home Secretary over Harmondsworth disturbance (link) The Court of Appeal has ruled today that the Government was wrong not to order an independent inquiry into allegations of mistreatment at Harmondsworth immigration detention centre in 2006.
UK: Muslim man suffered 'gross brutality' during terrorism raid, court told - Metropolitan police say officers used reasonable force during arrest of Babar Ahmad (Guardian, link)
Germany, Britain, Netherlands Agree to Enhance Anti-Terror Cooperation (dw-world.de, link)
Internet's inventor warns of risk of allowing firms to spy on their users - Berners-Lee says law must protect privacy - Data is of huge commercial value, he tells conference (Guardian, link) and Who is watching you online? Technology that tracks the websites we visit is valuable for advertising and surveillance alike – and the law controlling its use remains unclear (Guardian, link)
Involvement in torture is always a violation of international law by Martin Scheinin (Guardian, link)
UK: Covert army unit played role in Menezes killing - Anti-terror troops deployed in Northern Ireland present at Tube shooting (Guardian, link)
GREECE: Violence Begins to Take Hold (Interpress, link)
UK: Spying on 60 million people doesn't add up (Guardian, link)
CANADA: SIS asked Sudan to arrest Canadian, files reveal - Abdelrazik is 'first case of Canadian rendition (link)
UK: Policemen face charges over Cardiff Three case (Guardian, link): "Thirteen serving and former police officers are facing charges of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice as a result of a 1988 murder investigation for which three innocent men were jailed. It is the largest number of officers ever to face such charges in British legal history."
February 2009
UK: Challenging the Home Office: After the cynical arrest of five men facing deportation, we need a review of counter-terrorism practice more than ever (Guardian. link) by Vitctoria Brittain.
UK: More minorities scanned for ID (BBC News, link): A disproportionate number of Asian and black people are being stopped by police and fingerprinted using a new mobile scanner, the BBC has learned. Of the 29,000 people stopped, 14% were Asian and 16.5% black despite those ethnic groups representing just 4% and 2% of the population respectively."
EU: Commission dismantles data watchdog group (European Voice, link):
"The European Commission has disbanded a group of experts that was supposed to review EU data protection legislation, following complaints in the French parliament that the body comprised people “representing American interests” ".
UK: Identity database accessed by town hall staff without justification: A database which is to be used as a model for the proposed ID card scheme has been accessed more than 30 times by council staff without authority (Daily Telegraph, link)
EU-USA: The United States and Europe Bury the “Swift Affair” (Le Monde, link)
EU: Eurojust supports wire-tapping of Skype conversations (euobserver, link)
UK: Data bill jeopardises confidentiality, say doctors' leaders (Guardian, link): "Dr Hamish Meldrum, chairman of the British Medical Association, said the profession was "extremely concerned" about legislation tabled by Jack Straw, the justice secretary, which would allow the Department of Health to share information on NHS databases with other ministries and private companies."
EU: European Commission fears 'increasing' espionage (euobserver, link) "The European Commission fears that its confidential documents are increasingly at risk from spies who use a number of covers while working in the EU capital.... The remarks come after the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, a German newspaper. the same day published parts of a confidential letter from the director of the commission's security services to its head of resources.
Germany: 'Europe Is Suffering from Too Little Democracy' (Spiegel Online, link): "Germany's high court is taking a closer look at the European Union's Lisbon Treaty, the document meant to replace the failed EU constitution. Early indications are that it doesn't like what it sees. If Germany says no, the treaty is likely dead. Commentators can't decide whether or not that is good."
UK: Licence to spy on drinkers - The police are forcing publicans to install CCTV before approving their licences (Guardian, link)
UK: Police towed Bristol driver thanks to out of date database (link)
January 2009
UK:Straw plan for private inquests back on agenda - National security cases would be held with no jury (Guardian, link)
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