Be Excellent To Each Other

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7674775.stm

Dear christ.

My jaw is desperate to hit the floor.



TERRORISTS ARE NOT KILLING PEOPLE IN OUR SOCIETY, YOU WITLESS FUCKING ARSEHOLE.

Fucking hell. So much for going to bed in a good mood. I don't even know where to begin.



At which border are the enemy troops massing?
or
Where is the armed insurrection against the constitutional order?

In those circumstances, we can argue the case for a relaxation on normal safeguards for the purpose of the emergency. There isn't one. A group of fantasists who got lucky one day the tube does not count.

If Mr Hoon is worried about 'people being killed' I look forward to the immediate banning of the automobile.

I think he should lead by example, and tell us all about where his friends and former lovers live, who he talks to on every phone call, what about, where, and why. And he should have a camera installed in his toilet of course, so we know he's not plotting to kill anyone while in there. Why not? WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO HIDE, HOONY BOY?

Their answer of course would be "Yes, because of our measures".

Top work by that rarest of things, known excellent MP Julia Goldsworthy there though.

In which case, you reply "then there's no need for any more, is there?"

But surely that makes you some sort of terrorist, right?

Fucking hell, it depresses me to realise that 95% of the people in the country won't ever hear about this bill and it'll get voted into an Act before anyone know what's up.

Parliament can make or unmake any law it likes.

I'm scared, daddy.

NO NO NO NO NO NO FUCKING NO NO IT ISN'T YOU FUCKING FUCK

Kill me, kill my family, rape me, burn my children.

I would wish them all before I wish for 60million people to be watched, followed, judged. For privacy to die, for freedom to be squashed, for such knowledge and power to rest in the governments hands. For the great experiment that is freedom to bloody end.

Freedom first, safety second, you cowardly evil fuck.

What Lave said. My 'right' to be immortal and never live with the 0.00001% chance of suffering the consequences of living in a country that prospers from slaughtering and exploiting thousands of millions of people does not trump the right of 60 million people to live without strangers peering into every private detail of their lives. Not least because it doesn't fucking exist.

I'm actually seething.

I just got up to finish a book and thought I would refresh some sites. To get that.

If it wasn't for Julia Goldsworthy in that clip, I would probably have doubled that font size.

So we got 850 people to read skeptobot, and about 10 to 20 people on Penny Arcade to write to their MP. After a days hard work.

And that CUNT says that. And he gets cheers. And he gets to say it on TV - to what a million? We are fucked.

EDIT: Not the best sleepy angry depressed post to be top of the page. Sorry, I'll stomp back off to bed now.

Sign the petition!

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/no-to-1984/

Shame about the shockingly cliche-ridden wording of the petition explanation.



(er - it's not your petition, is it?)

Letter sent. Petition signed.

Aha! It's obvious really. This is actually a cunning plan to get terrorists to prop up the flagging Royal Mail by forcing them into using post, the only remaining untraceable long distance communication method!

Apart from public libraries and internet caféfés, of which there are ... ooh, well under a million in london alone. Oops, eh?

Dam it, wish I could write like this:



From http://www.theliberati.net/quaequamblog ... rial-poll/

Will need to find a way to be civil to my MP on this matter. I normally am, but given my mood this morning I doubt the letter would display this. Do you think he'd like a DVD of 'The Lives of Others'?

I'll get a letter off over the weekend. land law calls me at the moment.

Ordered a printer last night, hurray!

Excellent letter, oh Lordly one. I have stolen it and am sending it to my MP via post, as he seems like a bit of a Luddite.

Nowt to do with me, someone just left it as a comment on Skeptobot. I think once one has started it's best to stick with the first that pops up, rather than make another with better wording. The actual thing you sign is fine though.

"That Communications Data Bill, thats shit that is"

Or to go for a slightly more succint version.

"Not to be killed by a car is a pretty good civil liberty. Let's ban all cars."

This government seems to support continued depletion of quality of life until there's no life left to protect. Citizen.



Well exactly. Having seen the actual exchange on Question Time Extra her "What the Christ?" reaction was exactly mine too.



Indeed, I wonder why the government aren't proposing to open and read all posted mail..... Perhaps because people would realise that's too far, even though it's exactly what's being proposed here?



So does the blogger, that's a paraphrase of Ben Franklin's "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

or as he also put it, ""Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor Liberty to purchase power.".

That's a good one. I'm a fan of the usual Ben Franklin quote but have been on the lookout for others. Also the one from 'A Man for all seasons', which I should watch some day*.

I think I might need a drunken Tom Paine reading session tonight to cheer myself up.

I'd be interested to hear what replies people get and what parties our MPs are from.

* Here:

I'd like a drunken Tom Paine to read to me too.

Of course, by doing so, you're giving the Government the addresses and emails of all the awkward anti-establishment troublemakers that they should probably start surveilling with this new power in order to gather sufficient evidence for spurious (and secret) charges under the various terrorism offences and then lock them up in Belmarsh.

*puts on tinfoil hat*

Surely all this means is that everyone will start using encryption and loads of proxies. Granted it's more and more complex to do so but I wouldn't be surprised the Government bring laws into limiting encryption too and shutting down access to proxies.

I don't know how many civilians have been killed in Britain by terrorists in total since the war - a few hundred, maybe a thousand if you add all the vaguely related IRA turf war killings and so on. Overall, this is less than the number of people who die from, for instance, Marfan Syndrome. How far are the government willing to go to stop Marfan Syndrome? Is not the greatest civil liberty the freedom from Marfan Syndrome? Marfan Syndrome is killing people in this country right now!

Or we could all call ten random phone numbers and visit ten random websites every day, and poison the data pool, as it were.

Or indeed just sending 99% of stuff by post where there's no record of a sender.

Thats whats wonderful we'll drown out all the signal. Especially when



happens.

Except it won't be everyone, it'll be a minute % of us.

But still even 50,000 doing all there browsing and facebooking through Tor will make the terrorists using Tor all the harder to trace.

I like my random phone calls thing. It would make for an ace new year resolution, plus you get to talk to new people.

Indeed, but it will be everyone in the "Do not good" camp.

I actually think that if I believed that this kind of thing would genuinely be used in a responsible manner, with no 'just one more thing we need to collect' agenda creeping it towards putting a camera in your bathroom and no 'well, let's use this data for all sorts of fun things' abuse on the horizon, then I wouldn't actually mind this entity existing.

For much the same reason I don't mind armed response tactical units having firearms, but would oppose giving guns to every officer.

I don't think the government are evil. I think they're cowardly. They don't know how to deal with the unexpected so come up with these schemes as a comfort blanket so when something bad happens they can tell their opponents 'well, you opposed this measure' and hope to look good.
I dread to think what would happen in a real crisis. I can't imagine Brown with a machine gun from the window of Downing Street as invaders take London. He is no Churchill.

For a start he doesn't drink. Or take crack sweets.

We need *real* politicans, damnit.

At least we're not in Australia folks!

http://www.infoworld.com/news/feeds/08/ ... ?source=gs

And what's the betting it'll be adopted here soon? For the good of the children, mind...*



* Children that is. Not hoodie-wearing, knife-wielding, yobs.

In other news, this is article 12 of the European declaration of human rights...



There's your legal challenge to this right here.

Oooh shit, thats a good point Dudley.

Got and a good reference? If not I'll find one myself later.

I'll add that to Skeptobot. I think I will contact my MP with it too.

(Also: Lord Chris - I updated the Ref to you to make it clearer you wrote the awesome - but do you want it changed to Lord?)

From the very top sir

http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html

Also, this will no doubt come to the UK almost immediately after.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/st ... 03,00.html

To right. Anyone attempting to besmirch my honour or reputation is going to be meeting me in Hyde Park at dawn with their second.

Unless you want to get all Heisenberg on their arses, I imagine you'll have trouble persuading a court that monitoring is 'interference'.

Eh? How not, when it comes to privacy?

Do that anyway for teh lulz please.

I agree with Mark, monitoring is the very definition of interfering with privacy.

You sir are a scruffian, and, I strongly suspect, a Whig. I am also given to understand you habitually use the butter knife in both the butter and the confits. You cad, sir. You are entirely without honour.

Yay, I will make an entry in my calendar and commemorate this occurrence annually.

Ah - my mistake. I fixated on the 'correspondence' part, and was stating that monitoring is not 'interfering with' correspondence. It is, of course, interfering with privacy.

Insolence sir! Insolence! I will not take such words from the likes of you! Why, I have heard rumours that you passed the port to the right whilst dining with the Earl of Gloucester! You are no gentleman!

Cheers Dudley!

Just noticed that if you want to tell Geoff Hoon that despite his beliefs you would rather be blown to smitherines by Terrorists than lose your freedoms you can let him know here:
http://www.geoffhoonmp.co.uk/contact/.

I'm just being an evil pirate to download the Question Time talk via iplayer-dl (fair use is a crime!), and I'm going to try to make a youtube video detailing the ridiculous things he says, then recommending you let him know you disagree.

Thats if I can resist just flashing the word CUNT repeatedly over the text.