Policing London No 13 July/August Includes 6 pages on the miners, which compliments GLC report (see below); two page summary of recent police harassment of gays; summary of changes to date in Police and Criminal Evidence Bill. Still the best thing of its kind extant. £1 per issue: from Police Committee Support Unit (DG/PCS/602) County … Read more
Just ten years ago the issues were so simple, the arguments so clean. The concept of hackers was cute and quaint, best understood through Hollywood thrillers like ‘War Games.’ The major media had yet to use the word ‘cyberspace,’ a term just then created by William Gibson in Neuromancer, his first masterpiece in a strange … Read more
Kim Besly Kim Besly died in July. A brief notice appeared in the Guardian on 30 July 1996. Besly was one of the pioneers in this country in the campaign to alert people to the dangers of electromagnetic technology. I met Besly only once but Harlan Girard knew her better and, in response to her … Read more
Police use of computers Unreported in the daily papers in this country, Merseyside County Council recently decided to refuse the funding for Merseyside Police’s criminal intelligence computer. (Detailed account in Computing 13th September 1984) This is the most significant step to date in the struggle to get some kind of control established over policing methods. … Read more
[…] to drive…'(33) However, neither he nor Wingfield – despite sitting next to Henri Paul in the Ritz – realised that Henri Paul was under the influence of drugs and alcohol. ‘There was absolutely nothing at all in behaviour, in his speech. He was behaving exactly the same as he had that morning.'(34) Rees-Jones has […]
Colin Crawford. London: Pluto Press, 2003, £14.99, p/back When World-in-Action and Tribune journalist David Boulton published his excellent book, The UVF, 1966-73, (Torc Books, 1974) he bemoaned a near absence of valuable books and journal articles on Loyalism. In contrast to their Republican counterparts, Loyalists do not have a substantive support base overseas; nor … Read more
[…] her allegations link to British involvement. Unfortunately even this is not simple: for Edmonds’ case touches not only on the nuclear black market, but also on the drugs and money laundering trades, aspects which also have British dimensions. The official response to Edmonds has been to put her under a gag order (under the […]
[…] major difference which seems to emerge between the Soviet armed forces and those of the United States is the US soldier’s access to a wider variety of drugs. His Soviet counterpart seems stuck with alcohol and its substitutes such as boot polish. Maybe the occupation of Afghanistan will introduce hashish to a wider section […]
Thanks again to Terry Hanstock and David Turner for contributions. Although all URLs are checked shortly before publication, occasionally websites unaccountably disappear. Contributions, comments and info welcome – my email address is Secrecy, censorship FOI and released records Freedom of Information Draft Bill http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/foi/dfoibill.htm Link to the draft FOI Bill (May 1999) and FOI … Read more
[…] handling of the trial, transformed into a veritable rodomontade by the D.A.’s claims that he had solved the mystery and counter-allegations that witnesses were subject to truth drugs and hypnosis, as well as by one amazing blunder which effectively sunk the whole case. This blunder concerned one Charles Spiesel, who was exposed in court […]
