Government enlists public service 'spies'

[spindrifter]

Patrick Wintour and Hugh Muir
Friday May 19, 2006
The Guardian

Neighbourhood wardens, community support officers, park keepers, housing officers and other frontline council staff should be given regular access to local police intelligence in an attempt to clamp down on antisocial behaviour and other low-level crime, under plans being examined by Downing Street.

<snip>

Ministers believe an army of frontline public sector workers could provide information on criminals if they were, in return, given access to police intelligence.

The police will be unnerved by the proposals, which come after disputed Police Federation claims that ministers and chief police officers are willing to cut total police numbers by as many as 25,000 as the number of cheaper police community support officers increases.

<snip>

A spokesman for the Police Federation said it would be concerned by any plans to make police intelligence more widely available. "There will be issues about data protection and confidentiality," he said. "The biggest issue is that sensitive information is carefully handled. The police service is entirely accountable for all its actions and there are mechanisms in place if information is leaked.

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/homeaffairs/story/0,,1778675,00.html
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The British, as some of you know, have used the ASBO (Anti-Social Behavior Order) to ban/control people who are not in custody or on some other sort of court-ordered behavior monitoring. Too, they have installed CCTV all over the place so a person probably cannot scratch his or her butt without it being on record. Dissemination of police information to untrained posses could be unbelieveably bad. But--we seem to look across the pond and adopt a lot of these ideas in order to assure our "safety."

[Hubert Flottz]

1. The UK and US have flip flopped and adopted the KGB.

This shit gets wilder every day.

[BillZBubb]

2. Darn, when I was growing up, that's how they described tyranny

The Communists and Nazis had people in everyday jobs spying on everyone to make sure they weren't "anti-social". I hope the Bush regime doesn't stumble on to this idea.

[MadMaddie]

3. Isn't this what they did in PreWar Europe?

Neighbors ratting on their neighbors...

[NorthernSpy]

4. you know who would've loved to have participated in that program?

Dennis Rader, also known as BTK.

He was a codes enforcement officer and part-time dog catcher. He measured people's lawn grass with a ruler and wrote them up if it was not short enough. He also caught wandering pets and took them to the pound -- and sometimes "failed" to notify the owners until it was too late.

And oh, he just lived for stalking!

[Kutjara]

5. In the past five years, bLiar and his New Labour croneys...

...have done a fantastic job of turning Britain into a police state. Not only does it have the distinction of being the most 'watched' society on Earth (the average Londoner is caught on 300 surveillance cameras per day), but we also have the most photo-radar cameras per mile of road, and the greatest integration of police and other government databases.

Now the New Nazis want to turn every busybody into a cop. Nosy neighbors are being issued with radar guns and given powers to issue speeding tickets in their villages. Neighborhood Watch schemes are being encouraged to report all 'strange' behavior, not merely crimes. Public employees have become a mini-Gestapo, demanding 'papers' for the most trivial things. You can't even buy a TV without giving your name and address (so the TV license department can make sure you bought a license), and they send detector vans roaming through neighborhoods to root out non-payers.

In the next two years, the National ID card scheme will be introduced, full of smart-card, biometric goodness. Modern Britain is becoming the very model of Soviet efficiency.

[spindrifter]

6. Isn't there any of that good old

British stubbornness that refuses to go along with this crap? This snoopervision is exactly why I put the thread up. Here they are starting to ticket driving offenses based on films of the wicked people who block intersections or go through yellow lights and what have you.

[Kutjara]

7. I keep hoping that people will wake up.

The Brits are notorious for not taking politics seriously until it hits them in the face. Back in the late '80s, when Maggie Thatcher introduced the idea of Poll Tax (a tax on simply being alive), nobody said anything about it while it was working its way through Parliamentary committees. Nobody said boo when it was passed by both Houses. Noone noticed when the Queen signed it into law. Then, when the first Poll Tax bills arrived on people's doorsteps, the country went nuts. There were riots and sit ins and marches. The tax quickly got repealed and replaced with a revamped property tax.

I'm hoping something similar happens again. One day some fascist politico will introduce the wrong law, and it will be vendetta time.

I'm not holding my breath, though. Britain has its own core of wingnuts who are ever bit as delusional as the ones here. Just say 'law and order' and watch them roll over to have their bellies scratched.

[spindrifter]

9. It's totally disturbing.

There is less and less tolerance for personal differences. The press makes it appear that revenge is the only way to respond. Somehow they need to chill.

[alarimer]

8. How do you define antisocial behavior anyway?

Is it like flipping someone the bird? Refusing to say hello or meet eye contact? Vandalism? The article does not specify. I am anti-social in the sense that I don't really talk to people unless they talk to me. I curse, I shout, etc. So what are they trying to stop anyway? Cheating on taxes?

[spindrifter]

10. Well, kids can be anti-social,

as in a bunch of kids hang out at a mall and skateboard around. Grandpa Tightpants thinks the kids are demons and Auntie Narrow Mind agree. They go to court and get an ASBO order and before you know it the kids aren't allowed at the mall anymore. Similarly, you are sick and tired of your neighbor flipping you off or telling you to keep your flippin' car on your side of the street. You go to court and get an ASBO and the person can get punished the next time he gives you the one-fingered high sign. They are like very broad restraining orders.

[Kutjara]

11. In the UK, Antisocial Behaviour Orders (ASBOs)...

...were introduced to combat what was perceived as an upsurge in things like public drunkenness, persistently noisy or abusive neighbors, vandalism and graffiti, obnoxious kids harrassing people in shopping centers and public housing, disruptive schoolchildren; anything, really, that was short of outright crime but outside of 'social norms.' An ASBO is meant to be a warning to cease and desist. Break its terms, and you're commiting a crime.

In short, ASBOs are an ill-conceived way of trying to deal with the general coarsening of society. The fact that it was the government itself (first under Thatcher/Major and latterly under Blair) that created the money-obsessed 'me first' culture that has given birth to the 'rude generation' appears to have escaped everyone's notice. ASBOs are a bandaid on a haemmorage.