PCs to hack into PCs! How PC is that?

It never ceases to amaze me. One reason why I think New Labour likes the European Union so much is that each has a mutual nosepoking philosophy. Lord Mandelson is chief amongst this breed of busybodies. Quite keen to go sniffing around other people's business, but very sniffy when it comes them being checked out.

So it is no surprise that the "remote searchers" of the New Labour regime will be licking their lips. What quite distinguishes a remote searcher from a hacker is unclear. Answers on a postcard to Gordon Brown, I'd say, or rather email for those so inclined.

It is all part of this catchall type approach we experience today. It's all this warrantless intrusion into our lives that the ruling elite think is so acceptable. It isn't. What keeps a democracy apart from the others is the rule of law. If the rules allow for below-the-belt stuff, then we will lose a lot.

An amendment to the Computer Misuse Act 1990 made hacking legal if it was authorised and carried out by the state. So who does the authorising? The Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) said such intrusive surveillance was closely regulated under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act. A spokesman said police were already carrying out a small number of these operations which were among 194 clandestine searches last year of people’s homes, offices and hotel bedrooms. That is all very fine, if we can trust their word, but it may not be so. Unless this is enshrined in law, all manner of "agencies" can go eavesdropping on a whim.

As usual, Dominic Grieve, the shadow home secretary, has made some very sensible comments. He is someone I could have a lot of faith in as Home Secretary, as opposed to Jacqui Smith, where words fail me! Grieve agrees that the development may benefit law enforcement. But he adds, “The exercise of such intrusive powers raises serious privacy issues. The government must explain how they would work in practice and what safeguards will be in place to prevent abuse.”

Yes, explain now and concisely. Any delay will be monitored!

Police state? I'm still thinking!

The latest bunch of moronic menaces to trample on our wellbeing as a nation are those snoopers from Cambridgeshire County Council. These jobsworths give the Stasi the look of incompetence! They seem to revel in snooping, being underhand and generally causing the rest of us to think the worst.

Shame on Cambridgeshire County Council. The lot of them!

Nobody has apologised. They think this behaviour is normal. Well it is not. They used anti-terror legislation to prey on a shopkeeper who has employed paper boys without a valid permit.

Instead of using common sense, they act like they are control freaks. Common sense would have suggested that the council sends an officer round to see the shopkeeper to warn them of an infringement and then, polititely, say that any future infringements may result in prosecution. That would be the common sense way.

However, we live under the New Priggery Party's rule, which encourages jobsworths like those at Cambridgeshire County Council not to employ common sense. Instead, they gladly use anti-terrorism laws to crack down on hapless shopkeepers, to spy on them from cars and to shove them through the courts willy-nilly. So another criminal record, another person done down by the new order.

Get a life Cambridgeshire County Council. We do not like your ways! Andrew Lansley, the Conservative MP for South Cambridgeshire, is quite right to say, "These powers should only be used for the scope they were intended, which is to tackle serious crime and terrorism." The trouble is we have a hopeless Home Secretary and a government that wallows in these kinds of attacks on people.

From the website, "Cambridgeshire County Council's community and living pages focus on citizen's interests". Question is - Do they really?

Birmingham bans unbelieving web browsing!

Birmingham City Council has got itself into a mess over website viewing by its staff. It's OK to view the antics of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the assembled bishops at the Lambeth Conference but not that of a group of druids or a coven of witches. The council has a Bluecoat Software computer system which allows staff to look at websites relating to Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and other religions but blocks sites to do with "witchcraft or Satanism" and "occult practices, atheistic views, voodoo rituals or any other form of mysticism".

It doesn't mean anything at all. If a heathen is temporarily interested in Catholic doctrines is that any different from a Catholic glancing into a site about the paranormal? Not at all. This is just about a council that's been sold a computer system that sounded good when the rep blurted out the details. Probably no questions were asked, so they got no answers. It's par for the course in modern UK.

A city council statement said the authority had a "long-standing internet usage policy for staff". It added, "We are currently implementing new internet monitoring software to make the control of internet access easier to manage. The aim of this is to provide greater control for individual line managers to monitor internet usage, and for departments, such as trading standards and child protection, to gain access, if needed, to certain sites for business reasons." Does it need such a gobbledegook statement. No, it doesn't. Just a simple policy of no viewing sites which are deemed inappropriate.

Where has the notion of trust and responsibility gone? Surely not into the brains of a corporation-sponsored computer! We've seen what can happen to computers when in the hands of civil servants and local government officers.

If a child protection officer views an inappropriate site, is the software so sophiscated as to think "Umm, he's looking at that for his job and not his kicks"? I don't think so. Birmingham City Council is facing a possible lawsuit from the National Secular Society. I'd like to see them try, not because I support their views generally, but because they have a point here.

Birmingham should think again.

Uncle Sam saw you drive from Bognor to Brighton!

For those who keep bleating about the anti-terror laws and how effective they are should think again. Saying, "well, if you haven't done anything you shouldn't be worried", and sounding all prim and proper about it is no good. Jacqui Smith is living up to her status as a typical prying New Labour Home Secretary. All apparatchik and no common sense.

She has discreetly (or by stealth!) introduced new measures which will allow images of cars captured on road-side cameras, and "personal data" derived from them, including number plates, to be sent overseas to such august organisations as the CIA. The Daily Telegraph has uncovered her weasley ways. When she announced last year that British anti-terrorism police could access "real time" images from cameras used in the running of London's congestion charge, she did not imply that it could be used by "others". A statement by Miss Smith to Parliament on July 17, 2007, detailing the exemptions for police from the 1998 Data Protection Act, did not mention other changes that would permit material to be sent outside the European Economic Area (EEA) to the authorities in the US and elsewhere. Typical New Labour. All spin and deception.

So when you are out for a drive this weekend with the family, give a wave to the cameras as you pass by. After all, Uncle Sam wants you to know he appreciates your co-operation.

George Orwell's 1984 alive in Poole, Dorset!

Under the New Labour fright regime, spying on innocent people is a functioning aspect of our lives. The council in Poole, Dorset have taken advantage of the anti-terror laws brought in by the Blair part of this disgraceful government. Poole Borough Council has disclosed that it had legitimately used the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) to spy on a family. This family had be "shopped" to the council by an unknown person. For two weeks the middle-class family was followed by council officials who wanted to establish whether they had given a false address within the catchment area of an oversubscribed school to secure a place for their three-year-old.

The investigators were too dim to find this out in less than TWO WEEKS! I think it monstrous that anybody in Poole BC thinks that applying such terror tactics is something to be tolerated in Britain today. Mike White is the Cabinet member for education. He boldly promotes this on the council website. "I feel 35 years business background gives me something to offer. I enjoy getting things done and giving something back to the community." Surely he doesn't mean signing up to the horrors of the New Labour fright regime? This man is a Conservative. I cannot believe he was not told of such action by his officials. It is almost unprecedented to use the terror laws to spy on people in this way. He could have found out by merely asking the people involved. A few quick checks would have either rumbled them or found them to be innocent, which in fact they were! Shame on you, Mr. White (or should you now be Mr. Off White?).

According to the Daily Telegraph, the "spies" made copious notes on the movements of the mother and her three children, who they referred to as "targets" as they were trailed on school runs. The snoopers even watched the family home at night to establish where they were sleeping. I am totally opposed to spin and deceit from politicians and totally opposed to draconian laws in a free democracy. This was OTT big time!

The mother at the centre of this spying said,"I'm incensed that legislation designed to combat terrorism can be turned on a three-year-old. It was very creepy when we found out that people had been watching us and making notes. Councils should be protecting children, not spying on them." Exactly!

Poole Borough Council - get your act together, for goodness sake! You are Conservative controlled, but that does NOT mean you control people. This is a very un-Conservative piece of 1984-style control freakery!