Posts by Dave 120 47 publicly visible posts • joined 25 Sep 2009
I'm posting this from an 18mb download 6mb upload connection over satellite. That costs me £45 a month.
Yes there is an 800ms ping so I can't play FPS games. For everything else it's fine. Available now in the UK. The best ADSL speed I can get is 500k because I'm in the hinterlands (8 miles from my exchange)
No, not really that important at all. That's the real world speed I get on an ongoing basis. Details of the survey are here. http://www.samknows.com/broadband/how-it-works You can be disparaging if you want but it's good enough for ofcom (not much of a recommendation perhaps)
In any case my point remains; why should I care that 20mb customers can soon get 40mb when so many people can't even get 2mb - the so called minimum we can all expect?
"No-one is keener than us to extend these super-fast speeds to rural areas"
Which is to say you're not in the least bit keen at all but neither is anyone else.
It's selfish of me I know but I'm 4 miles from my exchange and get 0.48mb - that's coming from samknows (I'm taking part in their long term survey and have one of ther boxes at home) so BT spending more money to make the people who have fast broadband even faster doesn't really make me feel all fuzzy.
If you can get failed deliveries routed to your nearest 24 hr tesco asda or waitrose (if you're posh) then what reason is there for high street post offices to exist anymore?
Why couldn't <insert supermarket chain here> do postage from their store? The lorries coming from the distribution centre with the supermarket stock probably return nearly empty, so why not offer people the option of posting parcels and letters in store as the logistics is already in place.
They already deliver your shopping so why not your amazon delivery with it?
Does the fact Lufthansa offers inflight wifi and has done for quite some time count as proof?
Personally I would have considered the fact that no plane crash has ever been attributed to someone leaving their wifi on as proof enough but suit yourself.
So no, it's not like having a stop sign at an intersection at all.
The real question is why would I buy a 16gb non upgradable storage device when I can get a wifi enabled SDcard reader and 16gb card for tenbux more. And I have lots of SDcards already.
If you had complained about people speeding past your local school I suppose you might like to see that they were going a speed trap on that road for a bit. Or patrolling whatever area was prone to trouble.
My local neighbourhood bobbies already do this by Facebook, after the fact of course - "we have spent the morning at such and such a community meeting" or whatever. They also post details of stolen property and whatnot.
"allowing the police to check for interesting messages and then ask the identities of the senders"
Wrong.
Viewing the records of messages sent may come under the DPA if they're historical BUT the identities of the senders is considered 'subscriber data' and this requires a separate RIPA application.
The police don't need any permission to view twitter messages but they sure as hell do to obtain the details of the person who posted them.
Nothing wrong with resetting your password as you're suggesting, in fact it'd be good practice.
As for why the court didn't ask Facebook, why should it? You're before it and it has the power to order you to hand over the info. If they wanted to search your house they don't ask the landlord or mortgage company.
If you then wanted to claim that the update you posted 6 months ago that your friends have commented on was 'planted' there you could. Good luck with that.
Actually you're 100% wrong. An absolute offence is one which does not require mens rea, or a guilty intent.
Breaking into someone's house is only a crime if you do it with the INTENT to either steal, cause damage, rape or inflict injury on someone or having broken in ACTUALLY inflict injury and steal. Otherwise it's trespass which is a civil tort.
Whereas speeding is an excellent example of an absolute offence, there is a number and if you exceed it then you commit the offence, end of. It doesn't matter if you meant to or not, you did and that completes the offence.
So that's a legal fail for you, though I guess you could say you win at being smug,
What's the point of centralising these stats anyway? They're only relevant to the local area, who are the ones paying and can already access them. Personally I want my police on the streets preventing crime not collating statistics for no good reason.
Any public sector procurement is a scam since the use of 'approved' suppliers pretty much guarantees that only the most expensive companies are used.
What is of more value is trying to leverage the collective spending power of all the home office police forces together to negotiate a hefty discount for hardware and service and fit for purpose Bespoke software.
But that'll never happen.
The police don't need your phone. If they need to they can access the cell site info from your carrier which is probably less prone to thinking you're in Vegas periodically.
And if you're of that much interest to them they'd take your phone for forensic examination chances are they already have.
Replace "domain names" with "car registrations". If a car got involved in a hit and run accident and you had the registration would it be okay for the DVLA to say to the police "we won't tell you the car is registered to, they requested that we keep that private"?
The ownership itself is not proof of the crime but it'd be a necessary step into investigating.
£300k, if that's what it cost to do the web app is nothing compared to the cost of all the police and associated admin staff it took to collect, tabulate, check, input and analyse the information that goes into making it. Wonder why there's never a policeman around when you need one?
Speaking as someone who is 4 miles from their exchange and can't get more than 500k ADSL and no cable I really couldn't care less.
But hey, why not wring more money out of the people who have good speeds and don't need any more. Its surely more profitable than having to do a bit of work to get some new customers by laying more cable, above or below ground.
Considering there are more guns than citizens in the USA I can imagine covering someone with a gun when you're on your own is probably standard until you've got an idea of whether they're going to kick off.
I'm sure if the judge thought the cop acted questionably at the time the author of the article would have mentioned it.
" I can't see many people refusing"
You really think so? I'd be willing to bet the majority of the commenters on these last 3 articles would do exactly that out of a sense of mistrust of the police/state/world or just bloody mindedness.
The PACE amendment idea isn't a good one, and isn't needed.
First lets look at what happens to the images we're taking about.
Your (insert media type here) contains (or reasonably MIGHT contain) evidence of an offence. The police need evidence to do their job, I think most people can agree with that at least.
If you're a professional camera man for a national media organisation it's going to be fairly likely that you'll keep the footage and you or it can be found by making enquiries to your employer. So thats what the police do. All the time. Without issue. But if you are an individual, affiliated with a blog/online mag/small newspaper that ability to follow up is less certain. In either case there is the issue of continuity and integrity of the images as someone already mentioned.
So in order to reduce the risk of evidence being lost altered damaged or destroyed the police need it there and then
They can, and should, ask you for it. Variable degrees of politeness involved but be that as it may you could volunteer to provide the (media type) and get the name/number of the officer. Job done, thanks very much.
Of you could refuse, for whatever reasons seem good to you.
This presents the police with a problem as they still need the evidence.
So they have the power to seize it, there and then. Because its not possible to wait for a warrant, which would certainly be granted in the circumstances outlined already, as in the intervening time the evidence could be lost, deliberately or accidentally. You should still get the officers name or number to follow it up.
Here's what happens next: The entire contents from the media are copied intact onto a write once disk. Actually onto 2. This is done by a person who knows what they're doing. One disk is sealed and marked as an exhibit. It is never opened unless ordered by a judge. The second is used for viewing and for making further sub copies if required. The person making these disks then writes a statement to the effect of "I know what I'm doing and I made this copy which contains everything that was on the media."
At that point the media can be returned to you.
How long that takes depends on the circumstances but I seriously doubt its the only media you have and your life will end without it.
Theress nothing strange, unusual, dodgy or "new" about this process and its what happens every time cctv footage from a shop/pub/garage forecourt is used by police as evidence.
What Mz Ozimek is doing is linking this normal procedure with the more odious, seemingly persistent and patently wrong practice of police trying to prevent people taking pictures when they have no right or power to do so.
But this story isn't about that and shouldn't be linked to that. In my opinion.
Its interesting to note that if you're confrontational, difficult and uncooperative from the outset with police they may judge that there's no point in asking as you'd indignantly say no so they just go to option B.
It should be obvious that how the police treat you might be affected by how you treat them but there's a strange mentality round here that you should be able to be as abusive as you like and the police are obliged to wipe your spit off their face and call you "sir".
Just to comment on the question of what ACPO do and why.
The idea is that ACPO issue guidance so that all forces deal with things in the best and most consisten way.
So say some police force has a well polished and efficient system whereby any time a photographer has images that are required the media is seized, the photographer given a receipt, the media copied and returned to them quickly.
And in another force the whole camera is taken, bagged and held until after the court case.
Well clearly the former is preferable and achieves the objective of retrieving evidence with the minimum of disruption to the photographer. Well ACPO is responsible for finding and then disseminating best practice to all the forces.
That's the theory anyway. Laws are always so vague that SOMEONE has to interpret the best way to uphold them.
So in reality only the memory card needs to be seized, until a certified copy can be made.
The certified copy is then marked as an exhibit for investigative/court purposes. And you should be able to get your memory card back. If anything is deleted or modified in the meantime that could be considered tampering with evidence.
The only difference between this story and seizing CCTV of shoplifters is the cooperation of person with the police.
If you had photographed a crime, especially an assault, why wouldn't you want to help catch the offender? In fact its your duty to do so, "the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent upon every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence"
Why is I can get 8mb wireless broadand including VOIP phone service in rural Spain for less per month than my BT PHONE line rental on which I can only get < 1mb ADSL despite being 4 miles from an exchange.
My own fault for picking this place to live before ADSL had been invented I guess.
I'm with you for the first 2 paragraphs.
But as for going to a judge? At present if the police want to use it for any other purpose then they need a RIPA surveillance authorisation from a senior officer (like Deputy comissioner or chief superintendant). You may find this unsatisfactory in that they're regulating themselves but consider that the officer scrutinies these applications as a full time job and is subject to review from the surveillance comissioner and so you end up with a HIGHER quality and consistency of control than you'd get from a judge who doesn't understand the technology or only does applications once in a blue moon and is open to scutiny by an expensive and slow judicial review process well after the fact when its too late anyway.
As for retention of data if you think about it you'd have to retain it (if it disclosed an offence) until all actual or potential legal proceedings had concluded or you'd end up with someone appealing a speeding ticket/no insurance a year later and the evidence used to fine them no longer existing.
The ironic thing is if the phone had've been found by a police officer and he/she discovered the images while trying to establish the owner the guy would've probably got off with it because the evidence on which the subsequent search was based was not obtained in accordance with the laws protecting the public from intrusion into their private life by police.
An external court which is about as objective as you're going to get examined the case in detail and determines that the UK has reasonable, appropriate and sufficiently strict controls on the use of surveillance by the state.
On the other hand, they don't know as much about it as an el Reg commenter.
The offences of threats to kill and threats to cause criminal damage both require intent on behalf of the person making the threat that it will be believed.
This puts a very heavy burden on any prosecution, it can be very difficult to prove that when someone made a threat they intended the person to believe them. But that's as it should be, it should be more difficult to prove someone is guilty than for them to prove they're innocent.
If I tweet "If I get hassled by one more flower seller I'm going to beat them to death with my ipad" that's completely different from tweeting "On my way to Jane Fay's house to kill her". One is probably hyperbole the other a sinister threat. Probably.
Removing the element of intent from offences, a current fashion it seems, makes it all too easy for stupid and or pedantic people to over-zealously prosecute people who, lets face it, have done no real harm.
If the removal of the phone had no legal basis then any force used was unlawful.
If you could prove theft then the use of force made it robbery.
Don't forget to ask for a copy of the search record that will (should) include the numbers of every officer involved. This record is mandatory even for a S44 search.
It detects guns, knives, non metallic bulges, bottles of water and boobies. Fingertips have a low carbon footprint, don't break down, are portable and can be individually assigned to each member of security staff. They even get to keep them when they go home.
And what happens when the world at large gets to hear about that bomber in the middle east with the "cavity bomb".
Yes sir, please remove your shoes, belt, metallic objects and take a firm hold of your ankles.
If people want to shove some mystery powder up their nose without knowing what it does then let them. If they die from it or turn into a vegetable, well they knew the risks.
Same goes for motorcycle helmets - if you're stupid enough not to wear one you only have yourself to blame when you become an organ donor on the way home.
Since my local Tescos has more CCTV cameras in one store than the police has in the whole city centre why do we keep hearing this government big brother bollocks?
There is such a lack of factual reporting and proper research on this issue its incredibly difficult to get enough information to come to any conclusions.
If anyone has links to some peer reviewed research I'd love to see them.
Its a shame that what could have been a fairly innocuous incident was spoiled by apparently poor training/knowledge on behalf of the police.
Of course we'll discount the possibility that the photographer might be egging the pudding and that there were no other relevant factors at play and he was as amiable and cooperative as he infers.
It is right that, unusually, the powers the police have for stopping and searching under terrorist legislation do not require reasonable grounds to exercise their use. You can get upset about this if you want but thats the way it is. Other legislation also provides a power to require someone to provide information as to their identity and movements, again requiring no suspicion of any offence. Failing to do so IS an arrestable offence.
What is often confused is that GROUNDS for an arrest are not the same as NECESSITY for arrest.
But based on the story as presented the necessity of the arrest seems to be the issue here. Ironically though you can be "detained" for as long as is necessary to search you, or ascertain your identity and movements which would have amounted to the same thing but not technically been an arrest as such under law.
In all likelihood the police at the time responded negatively to being photographed and used the "gathering information likely to be of use to terrorists". An unkind person might argue that annoying the police was the intention of the photographer by taking their picture in the first place.
Yes the police have made a mistake and yes I suspect rather than admitting it have tried a bit of FUD instead. But in the interests of balance I would say this. I suggest that the majority of people do not like to be photographed and I have come across many who believe it is illegal to do so. If you doubt it, walk up to a stranger getting into their car and take a picture of them and see what happens.
Add that fundamental dislike with the paranoia of the polcie about terrorism and complex legislation and its hardly surprising that this will happen. But that comes back to my first point that Kent police themselves (eventually) admitted, training is key.
I have my own views about WHY you get by default such corporate bollocks from police forces nowadays. But that would just be ranting...
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