Weekly Newsletter

Welcome to the Big Brother Watch Newsletter!

With the 2011 census having formally taken place on Sunday night, it was a busy week at BBW Towers. As you'll notice in the 'Blogs of the Week' section below, it didn't take long for the state-sponsored snooping exercise to descend into farce, with 555,00 already having contacted the helpline designed to assist people with problems filling the document in.

In other news, Stockport Council has been taking concrete steps to limit your personal salt intake, BP has lost the details of 13,000 victims of the Gulf oil spill, Lancashire Police have had to sack 13 of their staff for breaking data protection laws and the sleepy Hertfordshire town of Royston is soon to become the first town to be entirely covered by ANPR cameras. All these stories - and more - are covered below...

As always, if we can ever be of any assistance, please do get in touch with us. We can be reached by e-mail at info@bigbrotherwatch.org.uk.

Blogs of the Week

Census descends into farce

The 2011 Census descended further into farce today as it was revealed that more than 555,000 people have rung the census helpline after having difficulties understanding the form. A large proportion of the complaints related to the website, which times-out after 10 minutes of inactivity meaning all unsaved answers are lost. An ONS spokesman said:

“Apparently what has been happening is people are filling in the form online and they are going away to make a cup of tea or going to the loo but when they do, they are not pressing the 'save and come back later' button.”

Hide the salt!

Following on from the decision to ban cigarette displays in newsagents and supermarkets, the busybodies of Stockport Council have come up with a health drive to hide salt in restaurants and takeaways. Proprietors have been asked to remove salt shakers from counters and table-tops, and only supply them to customers if they specifically ask for it.

Lancashire Police officers dismissed for breaching data laws

The residents of Lancashire, like most people in Britain, hope that the police are there to protect them. So they will be shocked and disappointed today to find out that dozens of police have been using police equipment to spy on their partners and neighbours for the last three years. There were a total of 84 beaches of data protection laws, which have led to 13 dismissals, 7 resignations and numerous final warnings.

BP loses the data of 13,000 oil spill victims

As if the oil spill which hit the US's Gulf Coast last year causing significant environmental damage and economic hardship for home and business owners wasn't bad enough, it has today been revealed that the details of 13,000 of the victims of the disaster have been lost by BP.

Britain’s first town with nowhere to hide

The town of Royston in Hertfordshire is to become Britain’s first ‘ring of steel’ town, with hidden Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras installed on every single road in and out of the town by next month. Town bosses rolled out the usual platitudes to explain the introduction of this nefarious system:“…make Royston the safest town in Hertfordshire”

Media Highlights

Daniel Hamilton on BBC News 24 discussing the 2011 Census.

Daniel Hamilton on the Steven Nolan Show on BBC Radio 5 Live discussing the 2011 Census.

Daniel Hamilton on BBC Humberside discussing a North Lincolnshire council's decision to blanket a housing estate with CCTV cameras.

Daniel Hamilton on Colourful Radio discussing Police stop and search powers, RIPA and ID cards.

The Telegraph - Census: website that logs you off for taking a tea-break

Daniel Hamilton, director of campaign group Big Brother Watch, said the £480 million census was “a monumental waste of money”, and condemned the online time-out problems as "farcical".

“A large number of the questions duplicate data already held by the authorities on databases such as the electoral register, school records, tax returns and GP information,” he said.

Morning Star - Census refuseniks not alone [not available online]

Daniel Hamilton, director of the Big Brother Watch campaign which is opposed to the census, described the exercise as "a monumental waste of time and money."

Independent - It's Census deadline day: Fill out your form

Daniel Hamilton, director of Big Brother Watch, the civil liberties group opposed to the census, said: 'Everyone knows the census is a monumental waste of time and money.

'A large number of the questions duplicate data already held by the authorities on databases such as the electoral register, school records, tax returns and GP information.”

BBC News - Scunthorpe housing estates to get hidden CCTV cameras

Daniel Hamilton, director of Big Brother Watch, an organisation that campaigns on the issue of privacy, said the money could be better spent on increasing police patrols and lighting, rather than on cameras.

"It's obviously important that people feel safe in their communities. But, I think what is far better is people are actually safe and that anti-social behaviour is actually genuinely driven out.”

Metro - Balaclava ban for cuts protest yobs

Daniel Hamilton, of the civil liberties group Big Brother Watch, said fear of violence should not be used as an excuse to infringe freedoms.

Scunthorpe Telegraph - Census to have big say on the future

Privacy campaign group Big Brother Watch has labelled the census as "a monumental waste of time and money".

Its director, Daniel Hamilton, said: "Last time, 390,000 people declared their religion as Jedi and 7,000 people said they were witches.

"There's no reason to think people will take the census any more seriously this year.”

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