It's not good enough to be a law-abiding citizen any more. Now you have to prove your innocence, rather than the state having to prove your guilt.

It's almost here! It's almost 1984 again.

What is the procedure there? Did the police have to obtain a search warrant?

Can I claim one, I am sure one of them belongs to me but seem to have lost receipt.

Phantom -

The Telegraph link merely hints that the police had legal advice, likewise with the BBC and most other news sources. I wouldn't be surprised if, among the torrent of Euro-derived legislation we've had tipped on us over the last 11 years without parliamentary scrutiny, a sub-clause doing away with the need for a warrant to enter premises has sneaked through. Maybe it was one of our many new 'anti-terrorist' laws.

Who knows? Either way, it's unconstitutional, given that innocent owners looking to retrieve their property must prove first that they are the owners. Our hoary old Bill of Rights puts this practice beyond the reach of the state, but then I've long given up hope of anyone in Britain understanding constitutional history.

We read that 'over 300' paramilitaries took part in the raids. If anyone doubts that they're paramilitaries, look at the Telegraph photo of them, with their combat trousers, webbing, kevlar vests and Glocks(?) That is the uniform and bearing of a two-bob foreign paramilitary force, not a British constabulary.

Since we had all the fireworks then to steal property from security deposit boxes, I suspect it was ordered by our new, foreign inspired Serious Organised Crime Agency. It talked itself up as a 'British FBI' when it was launched a few years ago and has flopped hugely. It's come under heavy criticism for a lack of results and for being a great waste of money. So it smells to me like a PR exercise to me: shine the guns boys, look tough and make sure the snappers get a good view.

The (possible) lack of a warrant would be problematic...

among the other concerns discussed, esp when so many boxes are opened, in an operation that will last awhile, I'd be afraid of an officer or someone else pilfering something. Would not be the first time thats happened.

As Pete says - just another photo op! and one more step to complete totalitarinism. Have they been taking hints from the Burmese Generals, or maybe Ebagum!

You would think that they would at least give the owners the opportunity to be present when boxes are opened. At least that would prevent any hint or suspicion of 'Bobby's sticky finger' syndrome.

Impatience is always a sign of theatrical amateurism...and what a missed opportunity for a 'sting operation'.

The crucial question, to my mind, seems to be "what was the suspicion"?
After all, the police can arrest any one of us "on suspicion" of something, and they have been able to do this for a long time, it's nothing new.
While I do understand and agree in principle with the point about privacy, all the same, it's a game of two halves. For example, Should the police not be able to carry out raids on terror suspects, even though they have reasonable grounds for suspicion that laws are being broken?
As long as we can all agree that (a) the laws themselves are just, and that (b) the grounds for suspicion are adhered to meticulously, then we have to allow the police to carry out their job.

Of course that would be the ideal situation, - but - and there is always a 'but' somewhere, it isn't so much that we distrust the police, that is a given, it's those damned politicians that are the real problem.

Everyone needs a little positive reinforcement, and few have more important jobs than they do.

Tom Tyler -

No one disputes that the police must be allowed to act (in this case, intrude on private property and confiscate private property) on reasonable suspicions, but we must know a few things.

We must know that they have acted under an independent judicial warrant. We must know also that they're not being sloppy (that's how cases are thrown out of court) and that they want to search the security deposit boxes only of named individuals instead of blanket bombing the whole damned lot. If you believe it's reasonable for the indiscriminate confiscation of all boxes regardless, you can have no philosophical objection to the police booting in your front door at 3am in a general sweep for a couple of villains who live on your street, but they can't be bothered to find out exactly where.

I'll admit I have a dog in this race. My brother has (or had) one of those Park Lane boxes. It contains cash, jewellery, passports, keys and legal documents. He lives in Poland but will now have to fly back here and prove to the police these belongings are his in order to reclaim them. Welcome to Britain, the newest member of the Third World club of nations.

Pete, I accept your point.
But hang on a moment, these safety boxes, were they held by Barclays Bank (for example)? Something about the original report (ie, they were located under a concrete vault?) makes me think that perhaps their location was meant to be kept secret and outside of normal banking arrangements...? Banks have a legal duty these days to report anything which might fall foul of the Money Laundering regulations. Did your relative's deposits meet the legal requirements? Or were these safe boxes held outside of the ML laws? If so, the police had a duty to investigate and its unfair to blame them for just doing their job.

I don't like or agree with the current "anti money laundering" regulations any more than you do. But still, it has to be said, as ever, if your transactions are within the law, then you've got nothing to fear. If your transactions and/or deposits are outside the law, then at least try and be smart enough not to get caught by the law, because if you are caught, then you've only yourself to blame.

Tom Tyler -

I salute your community-minded attitude to the state's intrusion on our private, money-laundering activities!

I've visited the vault to deposit or take out items as a proxy for my brother. It's not 'secret' but is unobtrusive and very secure, but then it's in Park Lane, some very wealthy individuals are clients and discretion is valued. However, it's not a secret facility of any kind, just secure and discrete.

But still, it has to be said, as ever, if your transactions are within the law, then you've got nothing to fear.

I'm not so sure this applies in Britain today. My brother had a couple of thousand dollars in the box, all honestly earned. If he's not questioned about them when he tries to reteieve his property my gob will be smacked, yet his having a couple of thousand dollars in a secure facility is not the state's business.

Although his possessions were honestly gained, they were still seized by the state. He must now prove to the state that he is the owner, otherwise they are forfeit. This is the practice of banana republics. If the state had no suspicion of his activities then it has no business trespassing on his property.

Pete, I'm not at all asking you to explain this to me, indeed, you'd be quite right to tell me to F-off if I did, but just speaking hypothetically, surely the Police are within their rights to question, why, if someone has earned a couple of thousand $USD legitimately, why don't they simply stick it in a normal bank account? Why the need to deposit it in some weird safe boxes?
I keep my money in my bank account. It's all transparent, and I know the bank statement details are available to the authorities, and my accounts are up-to-date and the taxman can verify where I got those funds from and who they're from. I simply cannot conceive of the need to deposit cash in safe boxes under 20ft of concrete.
I'm not for one moment asking you to explain your brother's personal finances to me, I'd be a total shitter to even ask such a thing. All I'm saying is that you must see that the Police must retain the right to be at least mildly suspicious of such unusual banking arrangements, on the face of it. And if he's done nothing wrong, as I'm sure he hasn't, then he cannot be charged with any offence.

I agree with Tom. Sorry about your brother Pete, it is a real pain but I think Tom's points still stand. And given what was at stake Im pleased to live in a country that takes pursuing those particular criminals to the ends of the earth properly. It also does say they had to go through proper legal channels to do this.

As an aside: I attended an interesting forum on piracy today in the entertainment industry - and i can tell you now that the stuff ISPs hold on you and what they do with it already means privacy went out the window yonks ago. It was incredible and it is, by all accounts, set to get more invasive. The problems they faced (businesses) in getting the government to assist them in yielding on privacy issues proved to me that it isn't the government you need to worry about! When the government stops them they find other means to get your details. Amazing stuff, wish i could share more...

p. If anyone is using bitTorrent i strongly advise you think twice!

What's bitTorrent Alison?

Tom Tyler -

No probs, I don't mind you asking. For my brother it;s just a convenience thing. He lives in Poland, has a flat in Mayfair and does business in Poland, London, the US and Dubai. Dropping a couple of thousand bucks into the box around the corner from his flat is more convenient than going to the bank, since he'll be back in a few weeks and will pick it up again before flying off. Next week it could be 100 hundred bucks in there, in August maybe 3000 bucks, that kind of thing.

Alison -

Presumably then, you too will have no problem with the police kicking in your front door and taking away your goods before requiring you to prove your ownership of them. You know, just in case ....

Daphne: It's a peer-to-peer file sharing (P2P) thing. People use it to illegally download movies etc...pretty popular but they are going after end users now instead of just the platform. It was the technology they are coming up with to find out all about us that is incredible. The things they hold on us. I realise that ISPs will share data with the police to find end users of child porn but I had no idea just how much information they do hold and could potentially share with anyone! I cannot remember what they called it now...'deep something technology'.

Pete: No not really. Unless they were just kicking down my door and taking stuff away for the sheer hell of it of course!

You are only of interest to any of these spies if you are downloading at either considerable levels or using it regularly or using up a lot of the ISPs bandwidth! They haven't quite struck all the legal deals they want yet either. Except in America and in France.

They have really hammered America on this, privacy down the toilet. Now all the piracy has moved to Europe they are looking at hammering us.

Interestingly when i asked why they were going to each member state independtly to get government intervention and not via the EU, the guy said because the EU does not have the control over member states governments that people think it does and we would wind up with an EU mandate and 20+ member amendments to it!

hahahahaha! :o

So much for the EU being the big superpower!

also i never knew about all those chinese youtube equivalents where you can still get a whole bunch of stuff that they have removed from youtube - you know movie clips, music clips etc. So behind with the times!!

Off-topic, (but it's that time of night!) YouTube is a crock of crap these days. Where has "LonelyGirl 15" gone? She was actually a very good actress. I enjoyed her strange serial. Her style reminded me of Jean Marsh in many ways. Hope she's doing OK. I admired her for using the YouTube format to try and get a break for herself.

BitTorrent is just a platform and it has legal as well as illegal uses. For example, BBC iplayer uses it, or something very similar. It is also used to distribute CD and DVD images for software, both legally and illegally.

This is another example of the problem that Pete alludes to. All of a sudden because somebody downloads a copy of the latest Indy movie using bittorrent, bittorrent itself becomes 'suspicious behaviour'. So even if you are using bittorrent to distribute a movie that YOU made, and the anti 'piracy' police snoop on you doing it, YOU have to explain yourself when actually it should be them. Similarly with the safe deposit boxes.

Though in the case of the 'piracy' laws, it's a particularly questionable tradeoff. Copying movies is nothing like piracy, which involves things like kidnapping, theft, assault and murder. Anytime I see one of those DVD trailers that they force you to watch - you know the ones that say 'you wouldn't steal a car, you wouldn't steal a handbag, don't steal movies' - I think 'well actually I might well steal a car if I could download a copy of one over the Internet'.

Static businesses have always railed against any technological developments since time immemorial and they always fail and end up having to come to terms with the new reality. You only have to go back to the medieval days and the Church's reaction to the invention of the printing press (affected the Monks handwritten monopolies) . Businesses will have to find ways of utilising P2P and download technology commercially (as i tunes has done) rather than trying to defeat it.

That was the other thing - the company i work for has removed around 300,000 unauthorised clips off youtube in the last 6 months rendering it totally boring - as have other major companies. They are going after the Chinese youttube equivalents now.

Frank i think the ads against piracy are a big waste of time and money. They are going to be chucking a whole lot of money into technology in the future..to get the users and distributors, camcorder people etc etc. They had a successful bust of a distributor in Australia recently but when the guy was up in court he got off lightly...

Not from what i heard today Colm - they are the ones putting monies into new technologies to circumvent the piracy technology all of which will make an impact -and by the looks of it they are succeeding in a lot of areas with youtube and licence abuse simply by clubbing together.

Anyone who knows me knows that I am a fascist, and have no qualms about saying it, well saying it anonymously on ATW anyway, but I will be God damned if the pigs think they can bust me for illegally ownloading intellectual property, that is where I draw the line.

Alison

They may win short term battles, but ultimately they will lose the war - or concede a defeat but turn it into a victory. Remember when Napster the first P2P was crushed. It only spawned dozens of imitators and didn't negatively impact on downloading at all. You can't turn back the technological clock. They will have to embrace it in the end.

Colm - they are embracing it, thats my point. They are not as stupid or unadvanced as you think.

Alison

Oh yes I'm sure that's the case. They didn't get where they are today by not being what they are, if you know what I mean :)

AC1 - hope you're using a good proxy site for everything.

This is the best bit.

Home Office officials have discussed the option[s] ... for a data communications Bill to be in November’s Queen’s Speech. But the plan has not been sent to ministers yet.

The bare naked truth of the unaccountable state, IN YOUR FACE. Doesnt matter what party is in power, unelected 'officials' set the most important policies.

I just wish more people would see that terrorism and such external threats are a boon to state power and that its purpose is to turn that power on its own people and not to serve or protect. why? because the people are the greatest threat to state power !

its an age old crisis that is certain to destroy more than it protects.

DT

Yes, probably great truth, but its true also that there needs to be vastly increased intelligence gathering in an age of terrorism that is not going to end anytime soon.

An especially grave concern in Britain with some of its populations that are friendly seas for bad fish to swim in.

I cannot think of any solution that will not involve increased intel gathering, including that of native born "British" such as those who committed the terrorist acts on the London underground.

needs to be vastly increased intelligence gathering in an age of terrorism that is not going to end anytime soon.

i think thats the last thing we need. especially considering there is no "age of terrorism".

Phantom,

"Yes, probably great truth, but its true also that there needs to be vastly increased intelligence gathering in an age of terrorism that is not going to end anytime soon"

Have to say I'm with Daytripper on this one. I'm on record here as supporting initiatives such as compulsory fingerprinting and DNA sampling of the entire population. In theory this would make crime solving easier.

But I've changed my mind—hey, break out the shampoo, someone's changed his mind on ATA!—and now take the opposite view. Nowadays I'm very, very careful how much personal info I divulge to anybody. If they ask for any item I ask them why they need it. Very often they don't. Nobody's going to rob me of my right to be an individual.