Tuesday 19 August 2008

Hundreds of millions to be spent on 'snooping silo'

Under the auspices of something called the 'Interception Modernisation Programme' the British government is to spend hundreds of millions of pounds on a huge surveillance facility, according to the Register. Apparently:

"The IMP budget was part of the intelligence agencies' undisclosed funding bid to the Comprehensive Spending Review last year. In an answer to a parliamentary question on 8 July, the Home Office refused to provide any budgetary details, citing national security concerns.... It's envisaged that the one-stop-shop database will retain details of all calls, texts, emails, instant messenger conversations and websites accessed in the UK for up to two years."

Read the whole report and ponder our descent into totalitarian hell.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

boy, what a stitch up.

We were talking about internet freedom earlier. It kinda conforms with (rather than confirms) what I was suggesting; that they don't care what content you look at, so long as they can check up on it later, should the 'need' arise.

Controlling content is counter productive (and hinders ad revenue). They just wanna know what we're looking at. (and it beats pumping money into actual manufacturing, now that we're a command service economy)

BTW, I was looking forward to your thoughts on Quigley, but it has struck me that perhaps you were waiting for a reply from moi. ah well.

BTW 2: I watched the final cut of Zeitgeist-The movie yesterday- which I presume you've seen- and (God help me) found myself swaying on 9/11. Should I declare myself an agnostic?! maybe I was just in a receptive mood!

All that stuff about Jesus the Sun God in the first part is highly simplistic -but in the right direction.( the subject deserves a film by itself)

And the stuff about the ONe World Government in the last half is conspiratorial tailspin -necessarily, I suppose.)

Trooper Thompson said...

Did you say that? I think that's true up to a point - iron fist, velvet glove - but you'll see in the news today how gaming companies are taking action against people who 'illegally' downloaded their games, having got the details from the service providers. This is how control will be increased, via corporate power. But this is a little separate - although the hundreds of millions of pounds taken from the taxpayers will be straight in the pockets of the corporations. It's an unholy alliance.

I have seen Zeitgeist, but it was a while ago. It seemed to be two movies stitched together, but certainly interesting. I'll have to do some revision.

Re: 9/11, you'll have to watch out for the documentary 'Fabled Enemies' which will be released in a couple of weeks. I'm glad to hear that you're thinking about it. Someone's gotta fill that void I left!

Trooper Thompson said...

As for Quigley, I forgot about that. I'll have a look now.

Anonymous said...

I was in a receptive mood. all better now.