Sunday, December 03, 2017

As an assault on individual privacy, we compare the on-off targeting of Declan's relatively new £600 laptop with the removal of our flat door in 2012 (WITH UPDATE 8/12/2017)

Re: Blocks on public access to our Church and State website since 26 July 2016

From my newer blog post's Update 8 December (8.11am):

"And it's not just Facebook blocks, blocks on public access to our Church and State website and the daily targeting to fluctuating degrees of category pages throughout the site. Since 26 May Declan has been dealing with Internet cuts to boot; see my blog post of 21 June, Internet cuts: We pay £65 per month for BT Infinity but feel we are in a race against time to stay online (WITH UPDATE 8/12/2017 RE: 172nd Internet cut since 26 May 2017). Perhaps it's the fact that last month Church and State topped more than 3 million hits over the past year."

8 December (8.16am): 906 blocks on public access to our Church and State website since 26 July 2016.* See my blog post of 16 January, The blocks on public access to our Church and State website continue unabated (WITH UPDATE 8/12/2017 RE: 906th block since 26 July 2016). 109 blocks during the last two months that included 7 blocks on 19 October; 52 blocks last month; 20 blocks this month; 16 blocks this week; 4 blocks yesterday; no blocks since midnight today (as of 8 December at 8.16am).

1. 810th 19 October 2017, 6.40am
2. 811th 19 October 2017, 12.14pm
3. 812th 19 October 2017, 2.03pm
4. 813th 19 October 2017, 5.13pm
5. 814th 19 October 2017, 7.18pm
6. 815th 19 October 2017, 8.22pm
7. 816th 19 October 2017, 10.54pm
-------------------------------------------
94. 903rd 7 December 2017, 5.03am
95. 904th 7 December 2017, 1.02pm
96. 905th 7 December 2017, 4.10pm
97. 906th 7 December 2017, 5.29pm

* An unprecedented escalation of 52 blocks in one week at the end of April 2017 that kicked off with our focus on the Danish Cartoon Crisis.

The War on Free Expression


Declan's relatively new £600 laptop has been rendered entirely useless twice in two months; see my blog post of 22 November, For the second time in two months Declan's relatively new £600 laptop is rendered entirely useless. And we have written off a brand new British Telecom TV set-top box as a waste of our time and money (WITH UPDATE 2/12/2017). Our other three laptops have been and continue to be working fine with the usual good connection speed for which we pay British Telecom £65 per month. The first attack on the internet speeds on Declan's primary laptop lasted 3 weeks, and the second attack lasted 2 weeks. It kicked off with these wipeout internet speeds on 10 September:



These are the normal internet speeds Declan has been getting on his laptop since yesterday morning (up from a download speed of 0Mbps and an upload speed of 10.5Mbps on 22 November):



As an assault on individual privacy, we compare this on-off targeting of Declan's primary laptop with the removal of our flat door in 2012. It was the Independent Police Complaints Commission's finding on that occasion that since our then live-in landlady had subsequently signed an undertaking to the County Court promising not to harass us, there was no requirement for the Metropolitan Police to take further action.



UPDATE 8 December (8.21am): All four of our laptops have been functioning fine since last Saturday. But again I ask, for how long? British Telecom (BT) is one of the world's leading communications services companies. They have already established that we have a perfectly functioning TV and aerial. Nonetheless, it only took 24 hours last September for our brand new BT TV set-top box to go the way of the old one with no signal quality or strength; see my blog post of 5 September, British Telecom: Tonight Declan complains to BT about our latest 1/2 hour removal from the internet plus the almost total shutdown of our BT TV service (WITH UPDATE 8/9/2017). We have written off this latest BT offering rather than waste more time and money on our BT Infinity 2 service, for which we already pay them handsomely.




Re: Investigatory Powers Tribunal

The Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) dismissed Declan's complaint against the secret services on papers in less than three weeks, on 1 September 2011, stating that it was "obviously unsustainable". This is paragraph 11 of Declan's updated complaint to the United Nations under Article 19 (freedom of expression) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

11. The IPT was created in October 2000 by the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act and given the power to investigate any complaints against GCHQ, MI5 or MI6, as well as complaints about surveillance operations mounted by the police or any other public bodies. On 5 March 2014 the Guardian reported that the tribunal, which claims to be completely independent of the UK Government, is secretly operating from a base within the Home Office, by which it is funded. The newspaper found that the IPT had investigated about 1,500 complaints, and upheld only 10; five of these concerned members of one family who had all lodged complaints about surveillance by their local council. No complaint against any of the intelligence agencies had ever been upheld. The discovery that the IPT is lodged within a Whitehall department fuelled criticisms of the tribunal that had been levelled by rights groups, lawyers and complainants. The IPT's critics complain that the secrecy is excessive and that its procedures are stacked so heavily in favour of the government and against complainants that it is fundamentally unfair. According to the Guardian, some senior lawyers have described the IPT as "Kafkaesque", while one eminent barrister has dismissed it as "a kangaroo court". The newspaper also reports that as a consequence of the secrecy surrounding the tribunal and the perception that it is unfair, many would-be complainants spurn it.

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From My Picks:

8 May 2018: Threat to life: Updated complaint to the United Nations under Article 19 (freedom of expression) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Today we are cut off the internet for a half an hour

'Let me recommend an important web site churchandstate.org.uk. Operating out of London this well-designed and exciting web site covers church-state, population, climate change and other issues. Check it out.' Edd Doerr, President, Americans for Religious Liberty