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May 10th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda The Home Office wants powers to monitor internet traffic, known as communications data, to keep track of serious criminals and terrorists.
However, the measures were described by civil liberties campaigners as a “Snooper’s Charter” and a “dangerous” invasion of privacy.
Press TV has conducted an interview with Chris Bambery, political analyst, to further discuss the issue. The following is a transcription of the interview.
Press TV: The British government’s controversial plan to spy on emails, web-browsing, text messages, phone calls, so basically the British government is doing what it accuses other countries of doing. What do you make of this plan and its impact, more importantly, on civil and political rights and freedoms in your country?
Bambery: The British government, as you say, is doing what it criticizes China, Russia, Iran — although not the United States which has introduced a similar law already — but it has criticized those countries for restricting access to the internet, to email, etc.
It is now introducing exactly the same sort of legislation despite the fact that this government, both parties which make up this government, promised to end surveillance of emails as part of their election campaign when they were elected.
Despite that, they’re now making it out so that security forces can have access to emails, web use, Skype, Facebook, Twitter and to land line phones. And companies have to hand that data over and make it accessible in an instantaneous basis to the security forces.
The government claims that there will be safeguards but it only requires the Home Secretary, the government minister, to instruct that to be carried through, so there’s little safeguard there, or to obtain a search warrant from a judge which is not that difficult – little safeguard there.
But they also claim that this is necessary to deal with terrorists and pedophiles but not ordinary citizens — ordinary citizens they claim to be OKAY. Well, even pedophiles and terrorists are ordinary citizens under the law until they are found guilty. Therefore, the surveillance will be on ordinary citizens.
I think we have to say something else. This is going to be carried out by GCHQ which is the Anglo-American spy center for the world. So, they’ll be using GCHQ to spy on British citizens all the time just as they use GCHQ to spy on people across the world by listening in.
This is a very serious attack on our rights, and it is a “snooper’s charter”. People now use these means for private business, for their private lives, not just for communicating with each other.
I think we should take it very seriously what the government is introducing, and I think that we should say that they’re going back on their word when they promised they’re elected, and they’re hypocritical in attacking countries like China for doing exactly what they’re doing.
Press TV: One of the things that’s interesting about this which is really alarming is this proposed Justice and Security Bill, as it’s called, would see what’s called secretive, closed material procedures extended to all civil proceedings.
Now what I’m gathering what that means is that behind closed doors they’re going to be making decisions or they’re going to be exchanging and making judgments of what’s dangerous or not. Tell us the implications of this, how dangerous a move this could be and what could be the implications in terms of at least for the people being accused of it?
Bambery: If you go back in history, this exactly the sort of thing which we had the revolutions in France, England and the United States against royal tyranny where people would snoop on your mail without you knowing about it.
And here we have, behind closed doors, a star chamber, [an unelected] body, a secret body which will be snooping right into your things with you never knowing, and assessing whether you are or not a security risk on a criteria which would not be made available. It is a very sinister and quite scary piece of legislation which has been put through here.
It will have to get approved by the European Union who will insist on certain safeguards, but the government is already saying in the Queen’s speech that those safeguards are already in place, that they seem pretty confident that they’ll get this through.
As I say, it’ll bring the United Kingdom into line with the United States where we’ve already seen a wave of protests against a similar “Snooper’s Charter” which has been enacted again by the government of the US.
Once again, we see Britain and the US implementing an attack on human rights. I think we should remind ourselves, these countries claim they are liberal in economic matters which means they are essentially free markets, but when it comes on a domestic agenda, they have been following now for three decades a very repressive policy of interfering with the right of demonstration, the right to free speech, the right of communication.
The level of surveillance in ordinary citizens in the United Kingdom is quite staggering now. We have the highest number of CCTV cameras keeping us under watch. When I travel across London, all my travel details could be made immediately available to the police or security forces if they want to get that. I can be tracked using my mobile phone as to my whereabouts.
It is actually quite scary just how much data is available to the security forces regarding ordinary citizens going about their daily business in the United Kingdom.
GMA/JR
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