BA to fingerprint domestic passengers

[David Hansen]

On 5 Mar 2008 at 18:13, Tom Thomson wrote:

> If any person exhibits trust in our government and the bureaucracies
> that it claims to control that decreases my estimate of that person's
> intelligence - and most people I know think the same way as I do.  The
> people who incompetently administer and pretend to secure our
> infrastructure are definitely "them", and I would be ashamed to have
> those disgusting clowns classified along with me as "us".

AOL.

In another life I was recently reading the article at 
<http://www.spacehijackers.co.uk/html/projects/dsei07/ready.html> and 
the related pages. It is about the amusing idea of taking a tank to an 
arms fair and selling it to the highest bidder. Nothing wrong with that 
you might think, but it appears that there is so little crime in East 
London that the police picked on people who are not carrying out crimes 
in order to relieve their boredom. This despite the fact that criminal 
offences had taken place inside previous arms fairs and the police had 
not lifted a finger to stop them [1]. If the police had been interested 
in catching criminals then a look round the stalls of the arms fair 
would have produced a number of arrests, but obviously they would 
prefer to intimidate and harass people who are not doing anything 
wrong.

The bit that relates to this list is at the bottom of the page, "To 
test out the theory of whether our phones were being bugged, at one 
point Spritely called Bristly to arrange a late night move of the tank, 
and sure enough within 15 min's, the police had turned up at our doors 
again. Hmmm?"

If this is true (I have no way of knowing one way or the other, but I 
suspect it is as the rest of the article is factual) it shows the 
falseness of the vomit inducing words of the Hutton about the public 
officials and staff of the telecommunications companies concerned with 
RIP. You may remember these words, bullshit about keen as mustard, hard-
working people striving valiantly to protect us poor ill-informed 
people from the nasty wasty people who we are too stupid or uncaring to 
know are around. If only us stupid people knew the truth we would be 
kissing the ground these people walk on. A slight exaggeration, but not 
much of one:-) [2]

Given the contents of his recent report it is clear that there is no 
point in asking the appropriate Hutton to look into the matter. Like 
the original Mr Hutton he will avoid asking the appropriate questions 
with great determination, instead undertaking the activity of checking 
whether some boxes have been ticked on some form. Having failed to 
investigate the matter the Hutton will then say, "well done chaps, keep 
up the good work", as always.



[1] IIRC this included having illegal weapons and selling illegal 
weapons in the fair.

[2] <http://www.official-
documents.gov.uk/document/hc0708/hc02/0252/0252.pdf>

"8. I have been impressed by the quality, dedication and enthusiasm of 
the personnel carrying out this work. They possess a detailed 
understanding of the legislation and are always anxious to ensure that 
they comply both with the legislation and the appropriate safeguards. 
All applications made to the Secretary of State are scrutinised by 
officials in the warrants unit within their respective Departments 
(e.g., the Home Office, the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence 
and by similar officers in departments in the Northern Ireland Office 
and Scottish Executive). They are all skilled in their work and there 
is very little danger of any defective application being placed before 
the Secretary of State. I will refer in some detail to errors which 
have occurred during the period under review. Where errors have 
occurred, they are errors of detail or procedure and not of substance. 
The Agencies always make available to me personnel and documents that I 
have requested. They welcome my oversight as ensuring that they are 
acting lawfully and appropriately and seeking my advice and as a 
reassurance to the general public that their activities are overseen by 
an independent person who has held high judicial office. I am left in 
no doubt at all as to the Agencies´ commitment to comply with the law. 
In case of doubt or difficulty, they do not hesitate to contact me and 
to seek advice."

"10. [snip] Those in the CSPs who work in this field have great 
enthusiasm in their work. They recognise the importance of it in the 
public interest, and the necessity of doing all their work accurately 
and efficiently, and show considerable dedication to it."





-- 
  David Hansen, Edinburgh 
 I will *always* explain revoked encryption keys, unless RIP prevents 
me   
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2000/00023--e.htm#54