The UK can join intrusive EU surveillance schemes including a pan-European network of police facial recognition databases with no need for parliamentary debate or scrutiny, says a new report published last week by Statewatch.
22 June 2021 — Dr. Bhatti.com
GPs are raising the alarm about plans to make 55 million NHS patients’ data available to corporations for profit. A group of GPs in East London are taking action to withhold the data and protect the privacy of their patients by refusing to share data from their Practice. They’re encouraging medical practitioners throughout England to join them through an open letter.
18 June 2021 — Statewatch
Statewatch News 18 June (Issue 12/21, also available as a PDF)
As public and private sector institutions push ahead with the development and deployment of remote biometric surveillance systems – currently best-exemplified by facial recognition technology – opposition is increasing.
21 March, 2021 — 21st Century Wire
By NEWS WIRE
The intergovernmental data trawling led by America’s NSA, and partnering with the other Five Eyes nations the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, has the capability for full spectrum dominance over almost every aspect of human life – provided that most functioning aspects of our society and economy are transferred exclusively to the digital domain. The implications of this will render the foundational concepts of personal freedom and sovereignty meaningless in a traditional sense.
Former NSA and CIA contractor turned whistleblower, Ed Snowden, explains how this digital dragnet has come to pass and what practical steps society needs to take to preserve essential aspects of a free civilization. Watch:
17 March 2021 — The Rutherford Institute
“Americans deserve the freedom to choose a life without surveillance and the government regulation that would make that possible. While we continue to believe the sentiment, we fear it may soon be obsolete or irrelevant. We deserve that freedom, but the window to achieve it narrows a little more each day. If we don’t act now, with great urgency, it may very well close for good.”—Charlie Warzel and Stuart A. Thompson, New York Times
Databit by databit, we are building our own electronic concentration camps.
8 March 2021 — True Publica
The story below tells of alarming backroom deals being done without public or parliamentary scrutiny into the highly sensitive (and extremely valuable) NHS patient data system. The company involved is Palantir, a highly controversial American company that TruePublica has reported on several times in the last few years – that was at the centre of the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica Brexit scandal.
20 October 2020 — Statewatch
The EU is expanding a host of databases used for migration and border control. A key focus of this is the increased collection and use of personal data to facilitate forced removals. Continue reading
13 October 2020 — Statewatch
As governments seek ever-greater surveillance powers, we need to keep them under control.
For almost three decades, Statewatch has reported on, analysed and fought against attempts by the EU and national governments to snoop further and further into our private lives – from the surveillance and retention of telecommunications data; to the profiling of travellers, tourists and migrants; and plans to create vast, centralised databases of sensitive biometric data. Continue reading
1 May 2020 — True Publica
By Rob Woodward – TruePublica: Britain’s NHS has become the latest target for big tech to stick its money funnel into and harvest our most personal and private data. It was bad enough that the state illegally and secretly stole our privacy, captured our secrets, recorded our conversations, filmed our private moments, took images of our children and invited in the biggest crooks on the planet to exploit the swag. But now, there’s a plan to capitalise, abuse, manipulate and profit from our physical and mental vulnerabilities.
26 April 2020 — True Publica
By TruePublica: Back in 2016 – TruePublica wrote: “One should wonder where the universal surveillance system dubbed the ‘snoopers charter’ being installed by Britain’s government is heading for eventually. Recently described by Edward Snowden in tweets as the “most intrusive and least accountable surveillance regime in the West” and its “a comprehensive record of your private activities, the activity log of your life.” It should really make you ask that question – where is it heading?
7 December 2019 — The Guardian
Jeremy Corbyn shows redacted documents of secret trade talks between the UK and US governments. Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA
Data about millions of NHS patients has been sold to US and other international pharmaceutical companies for research, the Observer has learned, raising new fears about America’s growing ambitions to access lucrative parts of the health service after Brexit.
19 October 2019 — WSWS
The UK’s police forces have full access to private information, including the political views, of thousands of men, women and children who have been referred to the government’s Prevent programme.
18 September 2019 — True Publica
This article is part of a series dedicated to a significant and wide-reaching BigBrotherWatch publication focusing on state surveillance that has been largely ignored by the mainstream media. Today, it is a very serious worry that our entire mechanism of democracy is being undermined by excessive and uncontrolled state surveillance. This disproportionate obsession by the government inhibits the fundamental ability of campaigners such as human rights activists, civil liberty experts and even local non-violent protestors to exercise their rights and has the potential to stall social change.
14 September 2019 — True Publica
This article is part of a series we are publishing from the ‘State of Surveillance’ report written by BigBrotherWatch, the civil liberties organisation. Much of the mainstream media have completely ignored its findings. Regular readers of TruePublica know we have published many reports and articles over the last four years relating to state surveillance (database) as we regard it to be a crucial battleground of our civil liberty. Today, it is a very serious worry that our entire mechanism of democracy is being undermined by excessive and uncontrolled state surveillance. This disproportionate obsession by the government and its agencies inhibits the fundamental ability of democratic rights to be exercised and amply demonstrates the thin ground Britain’s democracy stands on.
14 July 2019 — RT
Tech giants such as Google or Facebook store vast amounts of personal data for their own gain but they are also “happy to hand over” this data to governments, making people vulnerable to persecution, Edward Snowden warned.
1 July 2019 — Open Rights Group
The first half of 2019 has been strong for Open Rights Group (ORG). We have taken positive steps in challenging exploitative online advertising practices and protecting digital privacy. We are also getting ready for our biggest ever ORGCon London event taking place in less than two weeks!
17 June 2019 — Statewatch
e-mail: office@statewatch.org
Also available as a pdf file: http://www.statewatch.org/news/2019/jun/email-17-6-19.pdf
ANALYSIS
Analysis: The Commission and Italy tie themselves up in knots over Libya by Yasha Maccanico.
14 June 2019 — Verso Books
[Bridle’s book, ‘The New Dark Age‘, is a scary and absolutely essential book to read if you want to know where capitalism is taking us, unless we stop them. WB]
Despite the apparent accessibility of digital information, we’re living in a new Dark Age. In these videos, James Bridle explores colonial cabling, the distributing lack of neutrality in artificial intelligence, and conspiracy theories and the internet. Watch all the videos.
2 Jun, 2019 — RT
© Reuters / Vincent Kessler
The US government has a tendency to hijack and weaponize revolutionary innovations, Edward Snowden said, noting that the natural human desire to communicate with others is now being exploited on an unprecedented scale.
31 May 2019 — Global Research
“There will come a time when it isn’t ‘They’re spying on me through my phone’ anymore. Eventually, it will be ‘My phone is spying on me.’” ― Philip K. Dick
Red pill or blue pill? You decide.
Twenty years after the Wachowskis’ iconic 1999 film, The Matrix, introduced us to a futuristic world in which humans exist in a computer-simulated non-reality powered by authoritarian machines—a world where the choice between existing in a denial-ridden virtual dream-state or facing up to the harsh, difficult realities of life comes down to a red pill or a blue pill—we stand at the precipice of a technologically-dominated matrix of our own making.
The New Dark Age 