Government to track your overseas movements
The (Labour) government is in the process of establishing yet another of their surveillance databases. This particular piece of technology is designed to track the movements of British nationals travel movements OVERSEAS and it is for this reason HU should be aware.
The database is in the unpublicised part of the government’s so-called “e-borders” programme, intended to count everyone who comes in and out of the country by 2014. The existence and location for the database was secret and accidentally revealed by the Home Secretary last week. At the moment the UK Border Agency is running a pilot which monitors the travel movements of passengers on “high-risk” routes (i.e. the kinds of places WE like to travel to) from a small number of airports, including Heathrow and Gatwick. Under the new scheme, once a person buys a ticket to travel to or from the UK by air, sea or rail, the carrier will deliver that person’s data to the agency. The computerised pattern of every individual’s travel history will be stored for up to 10 years. The database is also expected to monitor people’s travel companions so that over time, a "pattern of associations" can be established.
Located in Wythenshawe, near Manchester and staffed by 600 people, half of which are technicians the rest police, immigration, MI5 & MI6 officers. The data is also expected to be shared with foreign governments, agencies of foreign governments and if the practice of the DVLA is to be followed, sold to commercial entities. Surveiled UK citizens are not permitted to know to what use the information is to be put, which foreign governments or agencies of foreign governments the data is shared with and what data those entities supply in return to the UK agency - i.e. their movements in that country and places stayed, with whom they might associate in a foreign country.
It is unclear how you can be tracked on a bike except that “high-risk” routes as defined by this paranoid government and not using the kind of transport that can easily be tracked would immediately flag you up as “a person of interest” and in say Morocco, that might be open to interpretation and not a good thing to be.
One of my motivations for travelling is to escape the ID cards, CCTV and the sinister surveillance society the UK is sadly becoming but it seems the government is trying to find ways to keep me AND YOU under surveillance even when we are outside of our own country. Of course if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear. Do you.
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