Liberties
-
BREAKING NEWS: Activists are on the ground in DC camping out for net neutrality!
It’s happening. A group of dedicated net neutrality activists are gathering right now outside the FCC’s headquarters in Washington DC. They brought, banners, signs and… sleeping bags. Continue reading
-
NHS Care.data safeguards jettisoned by govt. By Kelly Fiveash
Vital safeguards for protecting patients’ privacy when NHS England records are shared with companies were scrapped by peers on Wednesday night. A proposed tweak to the Care Bill, tabled by Lord Owen, would have brought in independent, statutory oversight to better protect the handling of patient information across the health service, following the care.data debacle. Continue reading
-
Twitter campaign backfires on New York Police Department By Sandy English
On Tuesday, the New York City Police Department (NYPD) attempted a public relations campaign on the popular microblogging platform, Twitter. @NYPDNews, the Twitter account of the department, asked its followers, “Do you have a photo w/ a member of the NYPD? Tweet us & tag it #myNYPD.” The PR effort proved a catastrophic failure. Within… Continue reading
-
Britain’s Dirty Drone Secret
On Monday the House of Lords will debate Clause 64 of the Immigration Bill. If passed this Clause will allow the Home Secretary to remove citizenship from British citizens, regardless of whether this may render them stateless. Continue reading
-
Series of scandals shakes public trust in the police By Ben Gliniecki
A recent report by the Inspectorate of the Constabulary (HMIC) announced that public trust in the police has been severely shaken by the long list of scandals that have been revealed in recent months. Clearly someone at HMIC is being paid a large salary to say things that everybody else already knows. The working class… Continue reading
-
Statewatch News Online, 24 March 2014 (05/14): Borders, deaths and resistance
24 March 2014 — Home page: http://www.statewatch.org/ • e-mail: office@statewatch.org NEWShttp://www.statewatch.org/news/ 1. STATEWATCH: New issue of Journal: Borders, deaths and resistance2. EU: European Parliament: Strengthening of certain aspects of the presumption of innocence3. FINLAND: SMART BORDERS4. UK: Jimmy Mubenga: G4S guards face plane death charges Continue reading
-
Why the Jimmy Mubenga trial matters. By ex-Chief Inspector of Prisons By David Ramsbotham
On Thursday the Crown Prosecution Service announced that three former G4S guards, Stuart Tribelnig, Terry Hughes and Colin Kaler, would stand trial for the manslaughter of Jimmy Mubenga on a BA plane in October 2010. Long before Mubenga’s death, Lord Ramsbotham was among those who warned repeatedly that Home Office contractors used dangerous methods of… Continue reading
-
The David Miranda ruling and the attack on press freedom By Julie Hyland
The formulations employed by Lord Justice Laws, Mr. Justice Ouseley and Mr. Justice Openshaw in their judgement last Wednesday go far beyond this one incident—itself an unprecedented assault on journalistic freedom. They point to the outlawing of any notion of a “free press.” On the spurious grounds of “anti-terrorism” and “national security”, no one is… Continue reading
-
Linking to free stuff is not piracy, EU rules
Managing a site with links to freely available copyrighted content does not amount to online piracy, an EU court has ruled. The justices advised their Swedish colleagues, who are reviewing a journalists’ lawsuit against a link-hosting website. Continue reading
-
‘The day we fight back’: 6,000 websites protest surveillance, honor Aaron Swartz
More than 6,000 websites, including Reddit, Tumblr, Mozilla, are taking part in an online protest against government surveillance. The action marks two years since website blackouts against SOPA and PIPA and commemorates Aaron Swartz’s death. Continue reading
-
How safe are your medical records?
At Liberty we’ve reacted with significant concern over NHS England’s new plans for a ‘care.data’ database. This could see your private medical records – including highly sensitive data – shared on a single database. Continue reading
-
Inhuman treatment of UK woman in privately-run prison By Dennis Moore
Nadine Wright, a 37-year-old from Peterborough, was a remand prisoner when she was left alone in a prison cell in November after she suffered a miscarriage. It is alleged that, with the dead foetus on the floor, she was then told to clean up the blood in the cell. She was on remand because she… Continue reading
-
UK police get away with killing of Mark Duggan By Julie Hyland
The eight to two verdict by a coroner’s inquest that Mark Duggan was lawfully killed by London’s Metropolitan Police is a travesty of justice. The jurors arrived at their findings despite unanimous agreement that the 29-year-old father of six was unarmed when he was shot twice in Tottenham, north London by an armed police officer… Continue reading
-
German police declare parts of Hamburg “no-go zone” By Christoph Dreier
Early Saturday morning, police in the northern German city of Hamburg declared the entire district of St. Pauli and large parts of Altona, Eimsbuettel and Sternschanze to be a “no-go zone.” The announcement of such a broad “no-go area” is unprecedented in German post-war history. In such areas police officers are entitled to arbitrarily check… Continue reading
-
Click here to BEAT OFF Cameron’s SMUT ban By Jasper Hamill
Anyone using Chrome can now employ a simple extension called Go Away Cameron to bypass the new network-level “safety” filters implemented by the UK’s biggest ISPs: TalkTalk, Sky and this week, BT. Continue reading
-
WordPress.com Stands Up For Its Users, Goes to Court to Challenge DMCA Abuse
The abuse of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s notice-and-takedown process to silence lawful speech is well-documented and all too common. Far less common, though, is a service provider that is willing to team up with its users to challenge that abuse in court. Continue reading
-
The Security State: Our business doesn’t depend on collecting personal data says Apple
Apple’s transparency report on governmental data requests assures the company mostly helps investigating criminal offences, such as thefts of Apple products. The company complains of a ‘gag order’ banning disclosure of number and core of such requests. Continue reading
The New Dark Age 