April 02, 2012

Had Enough Yet?

Democracy isn't all it's cracked up to be, is it?

The bloggosphere and the twittersphere is aflame today with the news that our darling government has instructed GCHQ to listen to all our phone calls and log all our emails, tweets and blogposts.

Yep. To catch a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of our society plotting against the government they have reacted swiftly: they now plan to eavesdrop on 62 million people. That should work well. Only last year we learnt that the police, using Stop and Search legislation, managed to arrest just 5 people out of the 400,000 they stopped and questioned. As initiatives go, this must surely rank as one of the worst ever.

Undeterred, the government will now repeat that exercise by storing billions of email and trillions of tweets in an attempt to locate those....what? Terrorists? BNP'ers? Racists? Benefit cheats? Illegal immigrants? Any of them? All of them?

Somebody once defined lunacy as repeating the same experiment and expecting different results. It is harder to find a more perfect example of that supreme stupidity than this latest violation of our rights.

As I wrote at Rosie's Hoose earlier:

"Rosie,

I am more than a little miffed by this latest move.

If the government, or its agents (the police, PF, or in England and Wales the CPS) thought I was up to no good, they must first obtain a search warrant to come to my home to go through my files, my paperwork, my drawers to look for evidence.

Why do they now assume they can bypass this vital protection simply because our files (and paperwork) are stored and sent electronically?

This is a gross violation of our rights and should be fought against.

If we, the great unwashed, simply stand idly by whilst they rake through our stuff, then we deserve it. We really do.

Time to wake up folks.

And once you are awake, stay awake. They will not be happy until there is a camera in every room in your home. Motorola have a couple of billion microchips (small enough to be delivered by a syringe) on the shelves and ready to go.

How much will you take? How many liberties will you let go of, before you will react?

Will you wait for that thousandth cut before fighting back?

Rights are not snatched away outright. They are eroded over time so that we don't notice. They are replaced with benefits.

Benefits are plastic.

Rights are solid gold.

Which do you want?

I've made my choice and I will fight all the way to hang on to them.

CR."


This latest rape, for that is all it is, must be fought with everything we can muster, for as long as we can fight, because if we do nothing, we truly deserve everything they do to us.

The government do not want us talking. That is dangerous for them. Freedom of speech is mighty fine, just as long as you are using government mandated speech. If you think about it, this all started back in 2006 with the smoking ban. What, (when you look at it openly and honestly), was its only achievement? Overwhelmingly, the ban served to shut down our pubs. Five years on it continues to do so at a rate of four pubs per day. Possibly more. Closing down pubs meant fewer people getting together to talk. Most conversations end up involving politics and that had to be discouraged.


Blair must have known what to do about our talking. So his government brought in that infantile legislation but he overlooked the internet. At least we could still get together virtually and continue the conversation. Moves were made by the last Labour government to wrest control of the conversation, but it was shot down by the LibDems and the Tories. The corpse was subsequently revived by the coagulation and will become animated very soon.


It seems that iDave is not so enamoured with us talking either. We are talking about the wrong things.


I maintain that the only way to stop the insanity is to use the two tools we can most readily access: we know them as Starve The Beast and Just Say No.

Both weapons are easy to deploy. Whenever you have the choice between adding to their war chest (which as we can see is being used against you, not for you), just....don't. Do without whatever it is that will add a few pence or a few pounds to the money they will spend on new repression tools.

Back this up by saying "No" when they send the begging letters.

If enough of us did this they would receive the message loudly and clearly.

Make them afraid.

Make them very afraid.

Remind them why they are there: to serve us

So I ask again: have you had enough yet?

If the answer is yes, then do something about it.


CR.

23 comments:

Katabasis said...

Given that this issue comes back after every single time it is shot in the head, I'm hoping this has finally proven to my Tory friends that there is some kind of agenda that all parties must follow once they are in power - and it is set by someone else other than our "representative" government or those it supposedly represents.

All those little Sir Humphreys are now officially the new O'Briens....

Magnum said...

Much as I agree with most of what you say, unfortunately, this is another bo-----cks from Brussels, see EURef this morning.
All power to your other elbow!!
Magnum

Onus Probandy said...

Have I missed where you posted your GPG public key?

Anonymous said...

We are all guilty now and therefore there is no problem whatsoever in our liberties being discarded. We now have to prove we are innocent. It's a case of fuck habeas corpus.

And who enforces the legislation of the government, merely puppets of the elites? Yup the rozzers/filth/old bill/coppers/pigs do. So the bottom line here cap'n is the police are oppressing society and must be resisted at all costs. They were members of the public before they took the 'bully' badge and people must not see them differently. It is the people who are oppressing the people here.

regards

Harbinger

Captain Ranty said...

K,

We live in hope....

Magnum,

Yes, I know that. We must leave. Immediately, if not sooner.

OP,

I was mystified at first but have since visited your blog and now I know what you mean. I will do it.

H,

You are spot on, as usual. We oppress each other. Such a shame.

CR.

Katabasis said...

Captain - I just got a comment appear in my Blogger spam folder so I'm not sure if its actually from you.

Can you confirm either way?

Captain Ranty said...

It ain't me K.

Can you save the IP Addresses from this guy?

Thanks

CR.

Katabasis said...

Thanks for the confirmation Captain. Would you mind if I shared the comment here? I was a bit put out when I first read it until I twigged a few seconds later that it's very unlikely to have been you.

Would be good for other people to be aware that someone is out there trying to say things in your name.

All I can get out of blogger so far is the generic ID used to identify the commenter - leading back to your site. Your actual comment you just left leaves an explicit reference to your blogger profile. At least I know now how to tell the two apart instantly.

Anyone know if it is possible to get IP address info for a specific comment via Blogger's new interface?

Captain Ranty said...

K,

Please do so.

I have now changed the email address at Blogger as well, so it will be even easier to spot the fake.

Many thanks for any assistance rendered to stop this fool.

CR.

Katabasis said...

Here's the comment pretending to be from you - people might want to take note of the writing style too:

"hi,Katabasis

I have decided to change direction with my blog , because of your previous postings on the blog .it's obvious you will not meet the standard that i will require for a more hard hitting lobbying approach. i have decided to cull the weaker posters to give the blog a new look and to be more credible, and quite frankly cock eyed conspiracy theories are exactly what the blog can do without

Thanks for your input in the past.

CR"

Captain Ranty said...

Thanks mate.

This is the bile he thinks he has perfected. The same shite appears at many blogs. The poor spelling/poor capitalisation is a give away.

Apart from which, I would never write something like this on anyone's blog. least of all yours. We have supported each other from the beginning.

I am sorry that this creep made you feel badly.

CR.

Katabasis said...

Oh no need to be sorry mate. I'm having a chuckle about it now as my first thought was "WTF? Was the Sir Humphreys and O'Brien comparison a step too far?" :)

It's very sad that someone is trying to do this though. I'll be sure to alert you (and others participating) of similar comments I see made in your name elsewhere.

Bill Sticker said...

Do something? Like overloading the system perhaps?

Jan M said...

Hi CR,

Just saw this on Faustie's blog, second blog down, if this is true that's why their doing what they dam well please, couldn't care less about us the people, knowing that the next election will of no consequence whatsoever, we'll be totaly ruled by the EU.
http://faustiesblog.blogspot.co.uk/

A curse on their houses.

Anonymous said...

Try the TOR network for complete privacy - no snooping on me!

Woodsy42 said...

So how long will it be before "attempting to conceal online activity" becomes a crime?

It's too neat isn't it. The EU directive, news of the huge US data centre in Utah, and just after visiting Washingtom Dave announces we need one.

Anonymous said...

Looks like some folk have been fighting back - against the GATSOs (speed cameras), LOL

http://www.speedcam.co.uk/gatso2.htm

Anonymous said...

It's all about "protecting" you from terrorism. They have to monitor calls, just in case "Al Qaida" (a construct of fevered / devious imaginations if ever there was one) are plotting another major attack.

"Oh, and while we're at it, we'll be checking for drug deals, but that's all. Oh, and money laundering. And planned atrocities from extreme right-wing groups, like BNP. And human trafficking. And Paedophilia. And credit card crime. And general criminal activity. But don't worry - if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear."

Harbinger

Christopher - Conservative Perspective said...

Captain,

FYI,,,

I received a "communique" with your name attached and to be honest it did not sound like your words?

Could you please contact me via my email info under 'contact' on my site to either verify or clear this up.

Thank you, Christopher

Anonymous said...

Comes as no great surprise. It is an obsession of the treacherous civil service, after all.

Interesting article on this at Spyblog.

The Open Rights Group has a summary as well.

Link to an epetition, if anyone finds signing them valuable.

Whilst this may get headed off again it should be pointed out that the insecurity services already have many capabilities that they should not have, and if it is defeated this time it will come back again and again and again...

People should already take measures to secure their privacy in these areas, and not place their faith in liar politicans to do it for them. We may argue whether or not that should be the case in an open and free society but that is ultimately pointless because we don't live in one. We know the government does not serve us, it serves other people. It is an untrustworthy, petulant, power hungry, hypocritical tool of psychopaths and madmen, and you cannot trust it one bit.

There are positives to this latest round of absurdity and stupidity:

- More people may find things like Tor and similar technologies. They are already being helped by the MSM mentioning the deep web and the Tor technology as the Times did this morning, albeit with the usual spiel of "OMG you can get GUNS and DRUGS on it!!!!" Increased adoption of these will lead to faster speeds and more development; in the case of the Tor Project we may eventually see the Thunderbird Bundle being released sooner rather than later. Things like TAILS will come on stronger.

- More people may find things like VPNs, with similar effects to the above. It would be very difficult to "outlaw" usage of VPNs.

- More people may find encryption technologies such as that mentioned above; not just for email but for files and entire systems, and learn how to use plausible deniability with them as well.

- More people may dump Windoze in favour of vastly superior systems, or at the least familiarise themselves with things like the Cryptome CLSID shit lists. Either would lead to an increase in technological awareness amongst some, which counteracts the move towards dumb tonka toy locked down tablets and similar things, a deliberate move being perpetrated by the big boys at the moment. (Actually, M$ will kind of help in the case of Windoze, as it is about to dump an enormous festering turd on the market, known as Windows 8, which is horrid in every way.)

The key word of course being "may", and I am not suggesting the above are suddenly going to happen en masse. There are things to keep the sheeple mesmerised like last week's nonsense, or the karaoke evening on BBC1 on Saturdays and the tomfoolery contest on ITV or the various occult ceremonies this year.

But then again these sort of proposals seem to generate a deeper, more instinctive unease amongst many, Certainly in more people than we may at first believe given the other things we talk about here. Reading threads on this topic at places like Digital Shite is interesting. You get plenty of the moronic "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" brigade but plenty of others in opposition.

#telldaveeverything

Regards

TSL

Nisakiman said...

I am not sure how he got my email addy but i have been sent a "thanks but no thanks" notice too.

Nisakiman said...

I have been sent a "thanks but no thanks " email too.

Anonymous said...

I've seen several comments on blogs saying that half of the nodes on the TOR network are run by GCHQ.