Big Brother - A Nation of Suspects

Remember in May 2008 when I wrote this?

"I see that Nanny's much "respected" and "efficient" Home Orifice is considering plans to build a humongous database to store the details of every phone call made, every email sent and every web page visited by British citizens in the previous year."

At the time the Conservatives campaigned against such a move.

Move forward some four years and oddly enough, on the same day that Cameron is appearing before Leveson, the Home Orifice and Theresa May have chosen to announce that Nanny intends to go forward with plans to monitor our electronic and online activities.

Nanny intends to track everything we do electronically, in a way that no other democratic country does.

Nanny uses the convenient "it will catch paedophiles" excuse.

Ms May claims that Nanny's laws would only be used to access "crucial bits of information" and would not invade people's privacy. She denied that there was a lack of control over the laws despite admitting that there were more than 500,000 requests for such information.

Pathetic!

The Telegraph quotes Dominic Raab, a Tory MP:

"Mass indiscriminate surveillance risks turning Britain into a nation of suspects. 

The security case for extra powers has not been made out, and the technical risks of fraud and data loss are huge.”

David Davis sums up the issue succinctly by noting that it would only catch the innocent and incompetent. He went on to say (as per the Guardian):

"This is exactly the same thing that Labour proposed in 2009. They went from a central database to this and we attacked it fiercely. In fact, David Cameron attacked it.

It's not content, but it's incredibly intrusive.

If they really want to do things like this – and we all accept they use data to catch criminals – get a warrant. Get a judge to sign a warrant, not the guy at the next desk, not somebody else in the same organisation."

He has hit the nail on the head, as with all of Nanny's plans for introducing new laws on this that and the other, she always conveniently fails to remember that we already have laws and procedures (eg relating to warrants) that can (if used properly) deal with issues such as "online criminality".

However, even if we manage to stop this, I am afraid far worse is coming.

Ladies and Gentlemen I present project Stellar Wind (due to go live in 2013):

"Its purpose: to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world’s communications as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of international, foreign, and domestic networks. The heavily fortified $2 billion center should be up and running in September 2013.

Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital “pocket litter.”....

Everybody’s a target; everybody with communication is a target.”

Good luck everyone, we are entering an era where will be watched, monitored and manipulated by the state as never before!


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Nanny's Ever Growing Little List

Last week Nanny added the legal high Mexxy to her ever growing list of banned "legal" highs.

Suffice to say this ban will have bugger all effect on reducing people's consumption of the this, or any other, legal high. In fact, until Nanny banned it, many people (Sally Bercow also counts as "people") were not even aware of its existence but now are looking up retailers of the product on the net.

The Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) were less than impressed with the ban, and noted that the solution to tackling legal highs does not lie in "adding inexorably to the list of illicit substances" and questioned "the extent to which legislation can realistically be used to address active choices being made by (predominantly young) people".

The UK Drug Policy Commission (UKDPC) was also unimpressed, and noted that simply adding to the long list of substances already banned "won't make much difference".

As I have noted many times on this site before, Nanny's drugs' laws and policies are a mess and are failing:

"Nanny's reasoning is a tad "wobbly", here's a few reasons why:

1 She assumes that drug taking equates to addiction, ignoring the fact that there are thousands who use drugs in clubs every Friday and Saturday who are not addicted, nor will ever become addicted.

2 Nanny also ignores the fact that caffeine, fags and booze are also addictive and potentially dangerous drugs; yet they are legal.

3 Nanny is worried that legalisation would "confuse" her healthy living message.

4 I note with a degree of disbelief, that Nanny feels it may be difficult to tax drugs. Since when has the complexity of tax legislation ever stopped her before from taxing something?

5 There is an undercurrent of wishful thinking in Nanny's note that she would very much like to ban booze and fags as well.

6 Nanny states that legalisation would lead to a substantial increase in use. On what empirical evidence is this assertion based?

7 Nanny is worried that if other countries don't follow suit, in legalising drugs, then this country would become a shopping paradise for drugs dealers. Is that not for the customs officials of other countries to worry about?

Is it not ironic that the leader of the "free world" and, allegedly, the leader and chancellor plus others in another country have used class A drugs yet continue to deny others the right to abuse their bodies in the same way?

Drugs were banned in the early 20th century because the "morality movement" managed to gain the upper hand in the legislative process. Had events continued in their favour booze would have also been banned here, as it was in the USA.

We have this hypocritical duality of legislation (legal drugs vs illegal ones) because a single issue pressure group got their way, and the government has not got the political interest nor guts to reverse the situation (bad laws once enacted are very difficult to overturn).

Be warned, if Nanny had her way she would ban booze and fags as well!

This policy is failing and will continue to fail."

However, Nanny is not listening as it is far easier to ban things than to have an open and rationale discussion about banned drugs as opposed to unbanned drugs (eg alcohol, caffeine, nicotine).

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Pussycat Doll's DNA Database

I see that our pussycat loving Home Secretary, Theresa May, is in disagreement with the Joint Committee on Human Rights (JCHR) over DNA stored by the police.

Pussycat May wants the police to be able to store indefinitely the DNA of adults convicted/cautioned, whilst those charged but later cleared (ie "not guilty" in the eyes of the law) would have their DNA stored for up to five years. Plus, in the event of a "perceived" threat to national security, DNA could also be stored by the police.

The Shambles of Nanny's Drugs' Policy - Told You!

As those of you with long memories will recall, last year I noted that Nanny's ban of the then legal high of "Miaow Miaow" would backfire and that Nanny's drugs' policy was/is a shambles.

I wrote a number of articles, and even sent a letter to Theresa May in May 2010, about this.

Can you guess what has happened now children?

Yes, that's right, the ban on Miaow Miaow appears to have done more harm than good.

Below I reproduce the full, and unedited, article from the Telegraph (no less!) about the failure of the ban.

Well, I did warn Nanny that this was destined to fail!

"The ban on designer party drug miaow miaow has failed to reduce its availability and may even have driven some users to harder drugs, according to a new report.

A survey by the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs has revealed that users have noticed little difference in their ability to get hold of mephedrone, which is nicknamed miaow miaow, since it was banned.

The report, the key findings of which are to be published this week and is the first authoritative survey of mephedrone users since the government added the drug to the list of banned substances in April 2010, reveals that more than half of those questioned had noticed no change in the availability of the drug in their area.

It also shows that 44 per cent of those who have used mephedrone said the ban made them more likely to use the Class A party drug ecstasy instead.

Professor David Nutt, a leading psychopahrmacologist who chairs the committee and has been an outspoken critic of the Home Office's approach to tackling recreational drugs which led to him being sacked as head of the government's official drug advisory council, said banning mephedrone did not appear to have been effective.

He warned that the move, which came after mephedrone had been linked to a number of deaths which were later found not to be attributable to the drug, could be driving demand for other new drugs.

It comes after recent research revealed that 40 new synthetic drugs have flooded into the UK during the past year.

Professor Nutt said: "It is not at all clear that the ban on mephedrone has helped to reduce harm.

"The ban has not greatly affected the availability of mephedrone because people were stockpiling before the ban came in but also because it has been very difficult to stop it from coming into the country.

"The government will look at this survey and say that not everyone will continue to use it and some people have been put off, so the ban is working, but we are also seeing people who did use mephedrone using other things like ecstasy and cocaine.

"One of the dangers of the approach that has been taken is that if we ban every new drug without a balanced view, then people will keep making more new drugs to replace them and eventually they will make something that is extremely toxic which, when kids take it, they will die.

"So we could be provoking harm by the way we are handling these new drugs."

Mephedrone was added to the list of banned substances by the Labour Government in April 2010 and was classified as Class B alongside cannabis and amphetamines.

Possession of mephedrone now carries a maximum sentence of five years while supplying the drug can lead to 14 year imprisonment.

There was intense pressure to ban mephedrone after it was linked to a number of deaths around the country.

On Thursday a coroner warned against taking the drug after two young men discovered hanging in woodland in Northumberland were found to have taken it.

But Professor Nutt insists that compared to other illicit substances, mephedrone is hard to overdose on and in the majority of cases where it has been linked to deaths the drug was subsequently not found to have been implicated.

The new survey, which questioned 1,500 drug users in an online questionnaire, found that 58 per cent of the respondents said they were less likely to use mephedrone since the ban, but 45 per cent said they would still try to get hold of it despite the ban and 51 per cent said the ban had not affected availability of the drug.

A fifth of those who responded said they had experienced a negative reaction to mephedrone after taking it but the drug was ranked eighth in a list of 13 harmful drugs with alcohol, tobacco, heroin and cocaine ahead of it.

Professor Nutt is now calling for the Home Office's Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) to review the ban on mephedrone and said future classifications of new drugs needed to be informed by scientific evidence on the effects and harm that the drugs can cause.

He said: "We need to learn lessons from the knee jerk reaction of a new drug that led to mephedrone being banned. What we have done now is to move users into contact with users and that is potentially very deleterious.

"There is the risk that dealers will encourage users onto other drugs.

"Comparatively, mephedrone is not a potent drug. We don't know if a healthy young person can die from an average dose and you would have to take an awful lot to overdose. There are drugs out there on which it is possible to overdose on 100mg."

The Home Office failed to respond to requests for a comment."

Isn't it "ironic" that leading politicians on both sides of the Atlantic have smoked and snorted things that they seek to deny their own voters from using?

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Nanny Says No!

Back in May I dropped Theresa May a note suggesting that drugs be legalised (referring her to an article I published here).

"Dear Theresa

I refer you to an article that I have written today for my Nanny Knows Best site, on the subject of our failed drugs policy:

http://nannyknowsbest.blogspot.com/2010/05/pussycat-pussycat-v-ding-dong-dell.html

"....I say again, without any lack of clarity or fudging of the issue, drugs should be legalised.

Once legalised, they can be taxed and the public properly educated as to their effects.

The legalisation will bring about the end of the stranglehold that the criminal gangs currently have on many of the run down estates in this country. The ending of their supply of easy money will remove their power, kudos and "bling"; their power over others will end.

That surely is a good thing?

Is it not ironic that those who would most strongly resist the legalisation of drugs are those who currently make money of them?...."

Given that I am a middle aged accountant and company director, hardly a criminal or revolutionary, if I can see that the current situation is a shambles and am explicitly calling for the legalisation of drugs why is it that our elected representatives (some of who have taken/continue to take drugs) continue to pursue the same failed policies?

Kind regards

Ken Frost MA FCA FIPFM"

Here is the reply I received today from Richard Mullins (who recently was in a tiz over legal highs being used at music festivals such as Glastonbury).

As can be seen, Nanny has stated very firmly that she will not legalise drugs; stating in a patronising manner "there is good reason" for her actions. I might almost suggest that there is a tone of "shut and and go away" in the reply:)

Funny that, as a voter I thought that I was allowed to express an opinion and ask a question of my elected representatives?

I would note that whenever a politician says "never" in such "final" manner, and states that they have "no intention", then you know that they know that they are on intellectually, factual and morally very shaky ground.

Anyhoo, Nanny's reasoning is a tad "wobbly", here's a few reasons why:

1 She assumes that drug taking equates to addiction, ignoring the fact that there are thousands who use drugs in clubs every Friday and Saturday who are not addicted, nor will ever become addicted.

2 Nanny also ignores the fact that caffeine, fags and booze are also addictive and potentially dangerous drugs; yet they are legal.

3 Nanny is worried that legalisation would "confuse" her healthy living message.

4 I note with a degree of disbelief, that Nanny feels it may be difficult to tax drugs. Since when has the complexity of tax legislation ever stopped her before from taxing something?

5 There is an undercurrent of wishful thinking in Nanny's note that she would very much like to ban booze and fags as well.

6 Nanny states that legalisation would lead to a substantial increase in use. On what empirical evidence is this assertion based?

7 Nanny is worried that if other countries don't follow suit, in legalising drugs, then this country would become a shopping paradise for drugs dealers. Is that not for the customs officials of other countries to worry about?

Is it not ironic that the leader of the "free world" and, allegedly, the leader and chancellor plus others in another country have used class A drugs yet continue to deny others the right to abuse their bodies in the same way?

Drugs were banned in the early 20th century because the "morality movement" managed to gain the upper hand in the legislative process. Had events continued in their favour booze would have also been banned here, as it was in the USA.

We have this hypocritical duality of legislation (legal drugs vs illegal ones) because a single issue pressure group got their way, and the government has not got the political interest nor guts to reverse the situation (bad laws once enacted are very difficult to overturn).

Be warned, if Nanny had her way she would ban booze and fags as well!

This policy is failing and will continue to fail.

"Mr Ken Frost MA FCA FIPFM

Reference: T9577/10 28 June 2010



Dear Mr Frost,

Thank you for your email of 29 May to the Home Secretary about the legalisation of controlled drugs. Your email has been passed to the Drug Strategy Unit and I have been asked to reply.

The Government has no intention of legalising the recreational use of any currently controlled drug. Its view is that the drugs subject to our misuse of drugs legislation are controlled for good reasons. Many – like heroin and crack cocaine – are clearly addictive and harmful to health and there is no prospect of the Government authorising their production, supply and possession for that reason. They are and will remain illegal.

Legalisation of currently illegal drugs would also run counter to the Government’s health and education messages. The Government’s educational message – to young people in particular – is that all illegal drugs are harmful and that no one should take them. To legalise their supply for personal consumption would send the wrong message to the majority of young people who do not take drugs on a regular basis, if at all, with the potential risk of increased drug use and abuse.

The Government’s objective is to reduce the use of all illegal drugs substantially. If such drugs were to become legally available they would become easier to access and levels of supply and use, as well as the resultant harms and cost to individuals and society, would expand significantly. While our drugs laws cannot be expected to eliminate drug use, they do help to limit supply and use and deter experimentation.

Those who advocate legalisation suggest that this would reduce a range of harms associated with the illicit control and supply of drugs. But this view tends to take no account of the consequences of the significant increase in use that would follow legalisation; and only takes account of the acquisitive crime that feeds some drug habits, not the crimes committed under the influence of drugs or the drawbacks to a lawful, regulated market. Also, the legalisation of drugs would not eliminate the crime committed by organised career criminals. Such criminals would simply seek new sources of illicit revenue through crime.

A regulated market for drugs through controlled outlets (e.g. licensed pharmacies) would certainly provide the opportunity for tax revenue. But establishing the level of taxation would be difficult. Setting the price too high would open the door for the illegal markets, while setting it too low could feed that same market. Regulation also carries its own administrative and enforcement costs which can be substantial and are usually borne by the taxpayer, who needs to be persuaded that the tax is just. Unless drugs were freely available to everyone, it would not be possible to stop the illicit market operating at the margins of any regulated system, as alcohol and tobacco smuggling demonstrate.

Also, it is not clear how such increased access would reduce the incidence of drug taking, if at all. On the contrary, government backing in the form of making controlled drugs readily available might exacerbate the problems and the temptations rather than reduce them. Meanwhile, unilateral action on this or any other government's part would undoubtedly encourage unwanted drug tourism to the country concerned, not least from drug dealers, in the event that there were no similar move to legalise internationally.

The Government understands the arguments for legalising controlled drugs in a regulated way and considers that the disadvantages would outweigh the benefits. At a time when it is doing much to try to reduce the use of tobacco and misuse of alcohol due to ever greater concerns about their safety, it would be perverse to take the huge gamble with public health that would be involved in legalising currently illegal drugs.

Whilst there will always be calls to legalise, this will not deflect the Government from continuing to focus on its existing multi-faceted approach to drug control. It is committed to reducing drug use and drug harms through targeted actions which have the most impact. In the Government’s view, prevention, education, early intervention, enforcement, treatment and reintegration achieve the best results in addressing the problems of drug addiction, its causes and its impact on crime.

Yours sincerely,

Richard Mullins

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