Again, you knew what I meant.

The naivety of 99% of the people here. Orwell was a genius.

It's not going to help, surrendering our rights to privacy won't help us put an end to terrorism. They're just using the ol' T word to scare people into agreeing to give up their rights.

Sure was, prophetic.

I agree that it certainly can lead to us surrendering our privacy. I also think that linking terrorists in with paedophiles is very dodgy and trying to grab public support.


It may be we need better methods of detection, but that should be evaluated if we are actually subjected to further attacks in the future, where proper lessons can be learned. At the moment, i don't see a need for it.

Cameron linked those same words last year when he gave a speech about exciting the European Court of Human rights. In April 2014, the Court of Human Rights told the EU that its directive was illegal and a breach of human rights.

He's just repeating now what he said last year but this time he's doing so by proxy.

Again, I agree.

This is something where once the door is opened to it, then it will be almost impossible to close again.

I'm not in favour of it at all.

I really don't think they would be interested in me of mine Dezzy, we are too boring.
I can understand younger people worrying about it, civil liberties and all that, but if just doesn't bother me as an indvidual.:shrug:

The problem is not particularly one piece of information on its own. Its the combination of data that they collect from a now huge resource pool and the fact that it can be used for purposes outside that which it was intended. Also, as no data is safe and secure, it can be fraudulently manipulated meaning that if someone in power decides they want to target an individual, they make the data match the offence they want you to have committed.

My biggest worry is all the ruddy spam emails I get, no doubt due to people sharing my data.

..anyways, I don't really know how I feel about the 'more surveillance powers' that MI5 would like to have, I understand both stances and feel that that they're both extremely valid..it's that thing between privacy being invaded and the very real threats to all of us, both in this country and others...and many of these threats we're informed have only remained threats and not actions because of things like surveillance...it would be interesting to know the opinions of families/friends etc who are suffering the very real pain of losing loved ones ...if it could have been prevented/if more surveillance measures for all of us could have prevented it and your real life not be the pain it is now...I suspect though, they may still be quite conflicted but interesting anyway...

First of all Red - I cannot believe that you, or anyone else who loves debating, would restrict their research to only 'non-Right Wing' material (if there is such a thing). Surely, one cannot 'engage' if one is not as comprehensively versed as possible in knowledge of the subject?

Secondly, I feel that you are overlooking the fact that you do not feel 'in danger' in this country purely BECAUSE of the sterling work being carried out 24/7 by our Security Services. If our Security Services were not so efficient then I believe you would be seeing a very different picture of life in the UK as far as terrorist bombings and murders are concerned.

I also feel that you are misperceiving the concerns that those of us on here have about any possible links between immigrants and terrorism, because no one is stupid enough to believe that they should fear walking past a Muslim on Kensington High Street or that they will be poisoned by the staff in a 'Middle Eastern' restaurant - that is hysterical and simply not the case.

I don't think that any of us who have concerns about the terrorist threat to the UK are stupid - far from it - but neither are the terrorists who have made no secret of their ultimate aim to 'Islamify' the world and 'reclaim' it for Allah,and they will stop at NOTHING to achieve that goal -- as the well documented events world-wide will attest, and to me personally, it is those among us who deny this very real threat who are stupid.

The trouble is, that I, for one, will NEVER sit back apathetically and allow the stupid among us to decree the Security Policies of the country which I was born in, live in, love and appreciate. I will not allow them to hazard my childrens future or accelerate the demise of the relative freedoms and safety which we enjoy and which some of us take for granted.

Relative freedoms and safety, which again, we continue to enjoy BECAUSE of the tireless work being carried out every second of every day by our Security Services.

We are actually on 'Red Alert' regarding our security status and if our Security Services say that extra powers are now needed to enable them to adequately deal with an increase in the terrorist threat to this country, then
I really cannot see what the problem is.

All this infantile Orwellian B.S. about 'Big Brother' and a prying State is hysterical nonsense - and this hails from the very people who try to ridicule the concerns we have as 'hysterical'.

We have genuine reasons for our concerns, the 'Orwellian' brigade have not.

Do you really believe that IF the state WANTED to pry and gather any information on any or all of us, that they would not just go right on and COLLATE such data WITHOUT 'asking' for 'permission' and without making it public knowledge?

Finally Red, when you ask; "Why are they dangerous times? " - I could give the answer in two simple letters; 'IS', but better to feast your eyes on this:


2000 1 June: Real IRA bomb on Hammersmith Bridge, London
2000 20 September: Real IRA fired an RPG-22 at the MI6 HQ in London SIS Building
2001 4 March: The Real IRA detonated a car bomb outside the BBC's main news centre in London. One London Underground worker suffered deep cuts to his eye from flying glass and some damage was caused to the front of the building.[22] (See 2001 BBC bombing)
2001 16 April: Hendon post office bombed by the Real IRA.
2001 6 May: The Real IRA detonated a bomb in a London postal sorting office. One person was injured.[23]
2001 3 August: A Real IRA Bomb in Britain explodes in Ealing, West London, injuring seven people.[24] (See 2001 Ealing bombing)
2001 4 November: Real IRA car bomb in Birmingham[25]
2005 7 July: The 7 July 2005 London bombings conducted by four separate Islamist extremist suicide bombers, killing 56 people and injuring 700.
2007 January - February: The 2007 United Kingdom letter bombs
2007 30 June: 2007 Glasgow International Airport attack perpetrated by Islamist extremists.
2008 22 May: 2008 Exeter attempted bombing by an Islamist extremist, injuring only the perpetrator.
2010-present[edit]
2013 Pavlo Lapshyn attacks. On 29 April, Lapshyn, a Ukrainian student, stabbed Mohammed Saleem, a Birmingham resident to death. He later admitted to police that he wished to start a "race war".[26] Lapshyn later detonated a home-made bomb outside a mosque in Walsall on 21 June. 150 homes were evacuated but no person was injured.[26] On 28 May Lapshyn detonated a second home-made bomb near a mosque in Wolverhampton, and attacked a mosque in Tipton with an improvised explosive device containing nails on 12 July. Friday prayers were delayed that day, and so his intended victims were still inside. Laphsyn was later sentenced to serve a minimum of 40 years.[27][28][29]
2013 22 May: A British soldier, Lee Rigby, was murdered in an attack in Woolwich by Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale, two Islamist extremists armed with a handgun and a number of bladed implements. Both men were sentenced to life imprisonment, with Adebolajo given a whole life order and Adebowale ordered to serve at least 45 years.[30]

Prevented, failed or aborted attacks

These are attacks which could have constituted a threat to life had they worked or been large enough. Does not include attacks that were merely at a talking stage and were not actually in operation.

1985: Police found 10 grenades, seven petrol bombs and two detonators at the home of former Group Development Director for the British National Party Tony Lecomber after he was injured by a nailbomb that he was carrying to the offices of the Workers' Revolutionary Party. Convicted under the Explosive Substances Act 1883.
1993 23 October: In Reading, Berkshire, an IRA bomb exploded at a signal post near the railway station, some hours after 5 lb (2 kg) of Semtex was found in the toilets of the station. The resulting closure of the railway line and evacuation of the station caused travel chaos for several hours, but no-one was injured.
2000 1 June: Real IRA suspected of planting a high-explosive device attached to a girder under the south side of Hammersmith Bridge which detonated at 4.30am.[31]
2000 17 November: Police arrested Moinul Abedin. His Birmingham house contained bomb-making instructions, equipment, and traces of the explosive HTMD. A nearby lock-up rented by Abedin contained 100 kg of the chemical components of HTMD.[32]
2005 21 July: The 21 July 2005 London bombings, also conducted by four would-be suicide bombers on the public transport, whose bombs failed to detonate.
2006 28 September: Talbot Street bomb-making haul
2007 1 February: The 2007 Plot to behead a British Muslim soldier
2007 29 June: 2007 London car bombs.
2008 27 February: British police thwarted a suspected plot to kill Abdullah of Saudi Arabia during a state visit to Britain in the year 2007 a senior officer said.
2012 June: Five Muslims plotted to bomb an English Defence League rally in Dewsbury but arrived late and were arrested when returning to Birmingham. A sixth was also convicted.[33]
2013 April: As part of Operation Pitsford 11 Muslims are jailed for a plotting terror attack involving suicide Bombers.[34]
Given the nature of counter-terrorism, successes in preventing terrorist attacks in the UK will not always come to light, or not be as heavily promoted as intelligence failures. However, during the Police advocacy of 90 day detention during the Terrorism Act 2006 they produced documents listing all the cases about which they could not go into details.[35]

Arrests, detentions, and other incidents related to the Terrorism Acts[edit]
These are cases where either the Terrorism Acts were invoked, or which the authorities alleged were terrorist in nature at the time. It includes plots that were foiled at an early stage before any materials were actually assembled as well as totally innocent suspects.

2003 5 January: Wood Green ricin plot, where police arrested six Algerian men accused of manufacturing ricin to use for a poison attack on the London underground. No poison was found,[36][37] and all men were acquitted of all terror charges, except for Kamel Bourgass who stabbed four police officers during his arrest in Manchester several days later. He was convicted of the murder of the officer he killed (the others he stabbed survived). He was also convicted of plotting to poison members of the public with ricin and other poisons. Two of the suspects in the plot were subsequently convicted of possessing false passports.[38]
2003 October: Andrew Rowe arrested in Dover after being detained as he entered the Channel Tunnel in France.[39] Convicted as a "global terrorist" and sentenced to 15 years in prison on 23 September 2005 on the basis of traces of explosives on a pair of socks and a code translation book.[40]
2004 30 March: Seven men arrested in West Sussex in possession of 600 kg of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, as part of Operation Crevice.
2004 3 August: Fourteen men arrested, but only eight charged in relation to the 2004 Financial buildings plot following the leak of the identity of an Al-Qaeda double-agent. The men possessed detailed plans for attacking financial buildings in the US, but no actual bomb-making equipment. Their leader, Dhiren Barot, pleaded guilty at his trial on 12 October 2006, and was imprisoned for life.
2004 24 September: Four men arrested in the Holiday Inn in Brent Cross trying to buy red mercury, a mythical substance which could purportedly be used to construct a nuclear bomb, from a newspaper reporter.[41] One man was released three days later,[42] while the other three were cleared at their trial on 25 July 2006,[43] during which the jury was told that "whether red mercury does or does not exist is irrelevant".[44]
2005 22 July: The Metropolitan Police killed Jean Charles de Menezes, shooting him seven times in the head at close range on a train over fears of increasingly suspicious behaviour as part of counter-terrorism measure Operation Kratos.
2005 28 July: David Mery arrested at Southwark tube station on suspicion of terrorism for wearing a jacket "too warm for the season" and carrying a bulky rucksack. All charges were dropped on 31 August.[45] It took four more years for the police to apologise for the "unlawful arrest, detention and search of [his] home".[46]
2005 28 September: Walter Wolfgang, who had been ejected from the Labour Party Conference, was briefly held under Terrorism Act 2000 powers when he attempted to go back in.
2005 22 December: Abu Bakr Mansha, described by his barrister as an "utter incompetent", was accused of planning to murder a British soldier who had served in the Iraq War, and convicted under the Terrorism Act for possessing a document that was "likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism". He was sentenced to 6 years.
2006 2 June: The 2 June 2006 Forest Gate raid (on a house in Forest Gate) saw the arrest of two suspects, one who was shot in the shoulder, on charges of conspiring to release a chemical weapon in the form of suicide vest. The suspects were cleared of suspicion and released days later.
2006 10 August: The 2006 transatlantic aircraft plot to blow up 10 planes flying from Heathrow saw the arrest of 24 people from their homes in Britain, chaos at the airports as security measures were put in place and numerous high-level statements from US and UK officials. 8 people were put on trial, and 3 found guilty of conspiracy to murder. It was shown at their trial how bottles of liquid could be made into effective bombs. Since this incident, carriage of liquids in hand luggage on aircraft has been restricted to very small amounts. Rashid Rauf, suspected to have been the link between the UK plotters and Pakistan, escaped to Pakistan where he was arrested, but escaped again on his way to an extradition hearing. It was reported that he was killed in a US airstrike in North Waziristan in November 2008.[47]
2006 23 August: The 2006 Cheetham Hill terrorism arrests, where four men were arrested in the Manchester vicinity over the course of a month, and charged with financing terrorism.
2006 1 September: The Jameah Islameah School in Sussex was cordoned off for over three weeks and searched by a hundred police officers. Twelve men were arrested as part of the operation as they ate in a Chinese restaurant in London.
2007 1 November: Police searching for indecent images of children arrested British People's Party local organiser Martyn Gilleard in Goole, East Riding of Yorkshire under the Terrorism Act, over explosives found in his home. He was subsequently charged with possession of material for terrorist purposes and collection of information useful to a terrorist, and also pleaded guilty to possessing 39,000 indecent images. He was jailed for 16 years.[48][49][49][50][51]
2008 14 May: The Nottingham Two were arrested and detained for six days under the Terrorism Act 2000. A postgraduate student had downloaded a 140-page English translation of an Al-Qaeda document from the United States Department of Justice website for his PhD research on militant Islam. He sent it to a friend in the Modern Language department, for printing. Both were cleared of terrorism-related offences, but the friend was immediately re-arrested on immigration grounds.[52][53][54][55]
2008 14 September: Oxford graduate Stephen Clarke arrested after someone thought they saw him taking a photograph of a sealed man-hole cover outside the central public library in Manchester. He was arrested under section 41 of the Terrorism Act 2000, held for 36 hours while his house and computer were searched, and then released without charge. No photographs of man-hole covers were found.[56]
2009 13 February: 9 men arrested on the M65 motorway under section 40 of the Terrorism Act 2000. 6 were kept hand-cuffed in the back of a van for seven hours. The remaining 3 were detained for six days. No one was charged. [7]
On 19 September 2011 West Midlands Police arrested a woman who lived in the Alum Rock area of Birmingham. Salma Kabal, 22, appeared in court on 16 November 2011 accused of failing to inform police that her husband, Ashik Ali, planned to kill himself. The official charge was that she “knew or believed might be of material assistance in securing the apprehension, prosecution or conviction of another person for an offence involving the commission, preparation or instigation of an act of terrorism".[57]
On 15 November 2011 West Midlands Counter Terrorism Unit arrested four people at their homes who were from Sparkhill Birmingham, on suspicion of conducting terrorist offences. The four men appeared in court in Westminster London on 19 November 2011 charged with terrorism offences. They were named as Khobaib Hussain, Ishaaq Hussain and Shahid Kasam Khan, all 19, and Naweed Mahmood Ali, 24. They were charged with fundraising for terrorist purposes and for travelling to Pakistan for terrorist training.[58]
2012 28 June: The two men, aged 18 and 32, were arrested at separate residential addresses in east London, by officers from the Metropolitan Police Counter-Terrorism Command, at 7am on Thursday. It was believed the men were involved in a bomb plot concerning the London 2012 Summer Olympic Games. A Scotland Yard spokesman said: "At approximately 07:00 hrs today, Thursday June 28, officers from the counter-terrorism command arrested two men under the Terrorism Act 2000 on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism. The men were arrested at separate residential addresses in east London. Both addresses are currently being searched under the Terrorism Act 2000".[59]

Dangerous times? Thank God for our Security Services.

:joker::joker::joker: Please stop with the hysterics and hyperbole T.S. -- 'Slaves'?

I have no manacles or shackles. I can go where I want, do what I want. Eat and drink what I want.

You need to look very, very closely at the many countries around this fractured world where THEIR Security Services and Governments were not as diligent or efficient as ours to see the REAL meaning of SLAVERY.

SLAVERY in its TRUE sense - a life SHACKLED by fear and trepidation. Not knowing if you will be beheaded today for simply being the wrong Nationality, Religion or Caste.

Not knowing if you will be kidnapped, raped, then sold off into real sex SLAVERY simply for being female.

Not knowing whether you are going to be thrown from the top of a high building simply because you are Gay.

Stop please T.S. - I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Yes you can. Do you know why? Because luckily for us, our forefathers believed strongly in civil liberties and fought hard, and fearlessly, to secure that freedom.

And now a few hundred years later, here we are, slowly selling those freedoms, accepting more and more government surveillance and control, in exchange for security and comfort. Like a bunch of big, fat, lazy labradors.

As has been mentioned, a big part of the Tory campaign 6 years ago was them hammering Labour for being a nanny state, for mollycoddling and nannying citizens. Remember the proposed mandatory citizen ID cards? Remember how much of a stink Cameron's Tory opposition made about those in the name of freedom? And yet here they are, merrily clawing away at exactly the same things.

It's not this one proposal. It's the slow, steady grinding effect of a proposal here and a proposal there, which will see this country - in a few relatively short decades - a sad little ant farm controlled entirely by fear.

..I do completely understand this as well, which is why also why my thoughts are not completely formed yet...but it's still though an extreme I think to think that we're all slaves and willing slaves for comfort because comfort doesn't come into it and 'slaves' doesn't come into it either...lives being lost is not comfort/potentially lives being saved is not comfort ..a deep fear from some people is nothing to do with comfort...whatever yours or my thoughts are/it's just not so black and white, type thing/virtually nothing is...and one extreme or the other...more surveillance for all and everyone..or none at all because of the privacy invasion and loss of freedom that has been fought for..

[QUOTE=Toy Soldier;8156278]Yes you can. Do you know why? Because luckily for us, our forefathers believed strongly in civil liberties and fought hard, and fearlessly, to secure that freedom.

/QUOTE]

And which wars were these then T.S of which you so surprisingly approve - in direct contrast to your normal stance on our deployment of troops?

Incidentally, I need no lecture on what our 'forefathers fought for' there being 6 generations of British Military Service in my family.

Well the US increased our surveillance after 9/11 and we haven't had any major terror attacks since, so it seems like it works.

The last one we had was boston, and only 4 people died, compared to 3,000 on 9/11 and hundreds in oaklahoma. The government seems to be doing a good job here.

So true Alex.

[QUOTE=kirklancaster;8156332]Says more about you that when I talk of our forefathers fighting for things, you automatically assume I mean "the military" and "in wars".

[QUOTE=Toy Soldier;8156335]Well perhaps you will indulge me then and expound?

I'm talking about normal people tirelessly and peacefully scraping those rights together over time, hundreds of years, and now stupid scared sheeple merrily waving them off down the river over mere decades because they are afraid. One of the goals of terrorism that has, tragically, already succeeded.

How did they scrape such rights over time?

And I for one, am not a 'stupid scared sheep', just because I am aware of the very real threat terrorist pose.

Name me ONE single country where the plague that is Islamic Extremism has been ALLOWED to become dominant which has now a more ordered, civilised, safe, liberal way of life.

The alarmist, hysterical 'Orwellian' protests from the Extremist Left Wing - yes Left Wing - are pure B.S and may NEVER happen and the only dystopian future DEFINITELY awaiting the UK if we are NOT vigilant, is that which other once relatively free countries now suffer at the hands of Islamic Extremist terrorists whose very imnhuman yoke they are now so unfortunately under.

You're one of the most fearful people I've ever encountered, kirk.

Then you do not know me T.S. Concern and Awareness are totally different from Fear and Hysteria.

Yes they are. And if it's not how you are, then you're not coming across as you intend. For example, you and Livia share many views on many things. Livia comes across as concerned and aware - you come across as scared, and angry because you are scared.