Inquisition 21
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Mechanisms of repression
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Mechanisms of repression
More Big Brother building blocks in place
They have nerve – that’s for sure. But in the face of mounting criticsm and suspicion about their real agendas, the UK’s National Crime Squad and the National Society for the Protection of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) are joining up with other interested parties, as part of the the Serious and Organised Crime Agency (SOCA), the UK’s new FBI-type body, to create yet another organization, which will be called either ‘The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre’ or ‘The UK Internet Safety Centre’, staffed by 100 people.
And despite the criticism about him and the fact that the NCS has just reluctantly acepted a complaint against him over his behavouir in Operation Ore, Jim Gamble, head of the NCS, is using it for more public pronouncements, such as: “It will identify children who've already been abused. This centre will be something you've never seen before. When you walk in the door you'll not be able to tell who the police officer is and who is from charity." That will not be new to anyone studying Operation Ore’s dawn raids where both the media and social services were part of the police gang.
Both the scope and techniques and the full corporate make up of the new body are interesting. The staff will work on policing chat rooms and ‘launching online paedophile awareness campaigns in schools, and will look to teach parents how to collect evidence if they suspect something is wrong’. This means more US type stings as police offer child porn and lure men into agreeing to meet ‘minors’. It also means an even bigger advertising and propaganda programme to convince parents and children of the ‘dangers from paedophiles’ and provision to the media of more lurid material.
Here is Gamble again: "We'll collect information from all areas. We'll capture it in the chat rooms - you will know we are there. We will also put up a most-wanted list.” (We shall fight them on the beaches.)
He went on: "We'll work to make the internet safer by having people who work undercover. If a paedophile turns up at a station to meet a child, they'll be met by a policeman with a set of handcuffs. There's an opportunity in the creation of this centre for business to participate too. And we'll inform potential victims of the dangers."
He also claimed that the international police will participate in the organization. His main interest here is that he is chairman of the Virtual Global Task Force, an international police organisation.
In another interesting and revealing remark he advised companies that wanted to participate in the scheme to contact the existing Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), which works with UK servers to monitor for child porn. The IWF presents itself as independent, but was set up by police and ex-police.
What other interests are behind this scheme?
The main players are both commercial with much to gain from a continuing child porn moral panic. They are of course the National Crime Squad (and SOCA itself) and the National Society for the Protection of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC). Barnardos and other child rights groups are also likely to be involved.
Note that the IWF offers the carrot that 'UK Government has a close interest in the funding and sponsorship arrangements of IWF'. So support for IWF gives a company or individual access to government. It also claims that IWF has potential ‘to influence industry, government and police’. So you can buy influence.
Note also that the IWF is applying for charity status. It clearly has the remit for political campaigning, promoting the National Crime Squad, and it is a commercial entity. Charity status would make it exempt from tax.
But now let’s look deeper at both the existing sponsors of the IWF and probable participating companies in the new monitoring and surveillance organization.
Amongst them are:
WebtraffIQ. This describes itself as an accurate real-time visitor behaviour tracking and analysis product and service that enables you to understand your customer. WebtraffIQ allows the visualisation of website, Intranet and email activity simply, deriving critical financial, business and marketing intelligence to harness off and online business activities. WebtraffIQ are proud to support the IWF by further developing their services to help minimise the availability of potentially illegal Internet content.
In other words, WebtraffIQ can be employed to spy on how citizens use the Internet.
ClickThrough. This is an international search engine marketing and web analytics consultancy. ClickMetrix is ‘a powerful real time website traffic analysis solution that is used by the some of the world’s leading companies. Services include - - - web traffic analysis, pay per click management.
Pay per click? Does this embrace pay per view?
APACS. The Association for Payment Clearing Services. This is the UK trade association for payments. It provides the forum for the UK's financial institutions to come together on non-competitive issues, to develop banking systems for the future and to provide innovation and developments in payments. It is also the banking industry voice on payments issues such as plastic cards, card fraud, cheques and electronic payments.
Will it be our credit card usage monitor? If not why is it a sponsor?
7Safe Information Security. This ‘provides a diverse portfolio of services including security training and certification, penetration testing (aka Ethical hacking - sic), computer forensic investigation and risk management.
Ethical hacking? Language of a brave new world.
Others include Computer Associates, Macromedia, Adobe, and Dataracks. And finally, the Big Brother of the sponsors of the Big Brother society, Microsoft itself.
But the most serious step - WebtraffIQ.
That is what they call adware, or stealthware, or spyware and it’s what adaware gets rid of. It tracks your Internet usage and sends the information to a server where it is logged. The original reason was for marketing: for example, if they find that you are visiting a lot of sites featuring say football or pornography you will begin to receive 'exclusive offers' for football or pornography in your email.
These people are predatory as they steal information about you and then sell it on to others, but now it looks like they are getting government approval (via the IWF) to snoop on us, which is a bonanza for them. It means in effect they can't be prosecuted for theft or failing to conform to the data protection act. These people are one very small step away from being hackers and now they are legitimized. This puts another powerful temptation to engage in more organized crime into the hands of the already corrupt police.
Mechanisms of repression
One click and you’re out - Pervcheck
Free speech in Britain under threat
The US lurches to the right
Sarah’s story
Kafkaesque from the National Crime Squad
More Big Brother building blocks in place
How porn is being used to quash dissent
Book burning in Canada given Royal Assent
And the net draws tighter.
Response to AOL
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