Why were social services, local council, schools, police or hospitals unable to prevent the torture and horrific death of Victoria Climbie from the Ivory Coast? Government cut backs to public services and privatisation for profit of all these services must be directly responsible. An innocent child died in agony as a result of government policy. That makes Tony Blair and Jack Straw as guilty as though they carried out this abuse with their own blood-stained hands. The buck stops there--every time! That includes those who have died on underfunded railways while fat-cats cream off the profits. Our system is governed by child-abusers and murderers, our lives are so cheap to these criminals, their corruption must be exposed and they must be held accountable, for all our children's sake.

In all the furore about encryption and internet surveillance, there's one fact that keeps getting glossed over - there is NO EVIDENCE that the terrorists involved in the recent attacks were using any electronic communications, never mind encrytped email. The analyses I've read all indicate that low-tech security was used - pre-agreed code phrases and human couriers.

However, increased surveillance and government backdoors in commercial encryption products would greatly enhance economic espionage of the type that the FBI has already admitted they engage in. Next they'll be outlawing sending mail in sealed envelopes (which is what the encryption restrictions amount to).

There have been many false claims by the intelligence ‘community’ of late. In the US the FBI claimed that because the law forbade them from following suspects who’d not committed any crime, they could not act. Crap. Earth First! activists had been under surveillance for years without legal means. The law has never curtailed the intelligence ‘community’ before. Judi Bari, an Earth First! organiser claimed that the FBI’s insistence that Earth First! were behind the Unabomber attacks means that the real culprit’s clues were never followed up due to sloppy investigation and prejudice. I wonder how much real terrorism was allowed to flourish because the intelligence ‘community’ were busy following anti-capitalist protesters round from Seattle to Prague and so on?

It's obvious people like Blair, Bush, Straw and co will use terrorism as an excuse to take away what few freedoms we have left, if they can. After all how else are we to defend the freedoms we cherish in our 'superior' western civilization other than by depriving our citizens of them?

As far as its been reported the terrorists used hotmail accounts (accessed from public places such as Libraries)and pay-as-you-go cellphones both of which were frequently changed to avoid detection. Therefore by Straw's logic Bill Gate's is an accessory to murder, libraries a threat tp national security and cellphones tools of terrorism.

You can also assume it won't be long before the 'intelligence community' start spreading rumours along the lines of "the reason we didn't see this coming was anti-captalist movement, we had to devote so many resources to countering the threat of further violence from this quarter after Genoa, the terrorists slipped through the net..."

i think Richard is quite right there - people like Blair Bush Straw quite literally used terrorism to achieve these ends.

tommorows world featured a new liquid spray from america which can make paper transparent, allowing for the authorities to read your mail without ever opening the envelope. And when it dries, the paper becomes opaque as before.

the reason they gave for this was that apparently plastic explosives can be rolled paper-thin, which i thought was a shit excuse at the time. but don't worry, only law enforcement agencies will be able to purchase the spray.