In a frightening new decision, a federal appeals court says that you have no expectation of privacy when the police want to track your location using your cell phone. U.S. v. Skinner, Case No. 09-6497. The court said that the police don’t need to bother getting a warrant if they want to stalk you by […]

THE use of controversial surveillance powers designed to fight terrorism increased dramatically in Wirral over the past three years. The town hall’s use of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act – RIPA –rose from just two occasions in 2008/09 to 23 last year. The surveillance operations exploit anti-terror laws but many local authorities have been […]

In George Orwell’s 1984 the Outer Party comprised a mere thirteen percent of the population and was subject to the ideological filters in play at the Ministry of Truth and the broader bureaucratic structure. A specific language and way of thinking were closely adhered to. Given their political import, Outer Party members were the most […]

And authoritarian American psychologists are eager to label anyone “taking a cynical stance toward politics, mistrusting authority, endorsing democratic practices, … and displaying an inquisitive, imaginative outlook” as worthy of a trip to the insane asylum. *** The [British] Government has established a shadowy new national anti-terrorist unit to protect VIPs, with the power to detain suspects […]

Now someone has noticed this anomaly, which means that working-class people are still living in posh areas of our cities. It’s a scandal, as a headline in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph pointed out: “No one has a right to live in Kensington at taxpayers’ expense.” A right-wing think-tank has tackled this injustice head-on with a report […]

The result of “austerity” and “adjustment” is a massive program of social genocide. If you want to see the effects of austerity and adjustment, look to Africa, Asia, and Latin America, where the Western nations, banks, corporations, and international financial institutions – like the World Bank and IMF – have imposed neoliberalism, austerity, and adjustment […]

The effects of austerity are to increase poverty, unemployment, and misery. People are fired from the public sector, welfare and social benefits are reduced or lost, retirement ages are increased to keep people in the work force and off the pension system, which is also cut. Cuts to health care and education take a social […]

What happens to all those new security cameras and other surveillance technologies that were installed for the Games? Privacy experts fret that, as with Athens, Beijing and Vancouver, the Olympics means a steep ratcheting up of security that never really gets ratcheted down. “It would be a tragedy if the most visible legacy of the […]

The British Government deliberately overplayed the threat of a dissident IRA attack on London ahead of the Olympics, according to a leading security source. The source, on the frontline of counter-terrorism for over 30 years, told The Irish Post that British intelligence services know dissident Republicans are incapable of mounting attacks on mainland Britain, but […]

Fresh consideration is to be given to the introduction of airport-style mass security screening at mainline rail stations and across London’s tube network. The Home Office has launched a search for new and emerging technologies that are capable of rapidly screening huge numbers of passengers and which could be used in major train and tube […]