We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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A favour for a friend in the database state The writer of this Times story: Pensioner died in attack on his home after parking space row, has, perhaps understandably, concentrated on what exactly Mark, Zoe and Steven Forbes did to the late Bernard Gilbert and whether “We’ll smash his car to bits and then his hire car and then whatever he gets after that until he dies” constituted a considered plan.
However that may be, there is an aspect of the story that deserves a story – and a trial – of its own:
Mrs Forbes was upset and called her husband Mark, who told her to note down Mr Gilbert’s numberplate. He then asked a policeman friend to check Mr Gilbert’s address on the police national computer, using the car registration number.
The innocent have nothing to fear – so long as they have not annoyed anyone who knows a copper who can be persuaded to look up an address.
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I bet she did nick his space an’ all.
This policeman friend. He’s going to face charges, yes? I mean, he’s broken the law, right?
Yeah, shouldn’t that be ‘former police officer and fellow defendant’?
It’s just like the old story of the Kremlin secretary who always fancied her neighbour’s flat. One day she added her name to the list of deportees. She got the flat.
In the same vein, courtesy of the fine folks at fark.com
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23167492-2,00.html
to summarize:
* Officers taunt man over girlfriend’s past (as a man)
* Man goes home and beats the crap out of her
* Officers charged with breaching privacy laws
More improper use(Link) of access (and the consequences) in NZ.
Both the police officer and the friend who asked him should be tried as accomplices to murder. That would be in a moral justice system, of course. I’m sure he will be sternly reprimanded, though.
Oh, no!
Not a stern reprimand. Not that, please.
We had a similar case here, except without the murder.
In our election campaign for governor in 2006, the allegation was made that Democrat Bill Ritter was soft on illegal aliens. Someone[1] found evidence that Ritter allowed one to plead to a chickensh*t little charge[2] while already on probation for something else. The problem was, the only easy way to find this out was by checking the defendant in NCIC and searching on aliases.
An Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent is currently charged criminally with unauthorized NCIC access and is on admin leave pending with ICE.[3]
[1] It’s a little unclear who, and how, and so on.
[2] Felonies involving violence, drugs, or “moral turpitude” can attract ICE’ attention and result in illegal aliens being deported. Other felonies don’t. Ritter, when he was DA in Denver, had a policy of allowing illegal aliens charged with drug felonies to plead to Second Degree Criminal Trespass, which is a felony when it occurs on land which the county has zoned as being for agriculture. This is laughable, as there is no agriculture to speak of in the Shitty and County of Denver unless you count marijuana grow lights in bedroom closets. However, “Ag Trespass” didn’t attract ICE attention and allowed Ritter to claim that he was getting felony convictions. And somehow, this stroke became our governor. 🙁
[3] Basically, that means that they’ve all but decided to fire him, and are just waiting for the criminal trial to be over so that it doesn’t look like a witchhunt. It’s the Federal personnel system: like the other side of the freaking looking glass.
Personally in this instance I’m more worried about the existence of people with this mentality than the databases – people this fucked up would have just followed the guy home if the DB wasn’t available.
I think ‘ferality’ needs to be added as a crime.
I’m not sure I agree with the charge of manslaughter, there is no way that the suspects could possibly have known that the man had a heart condition or that their actions could reasonably lead to a corronary. Hell, from the article it wasn’t clear that they even knew that the victim was home, even if the cars were in the garage. Aggravated criminal damage is the maximum that they are guilty of. The suspects are scum, but they are not guilty of manslaughter.
The illegal database access is most alarming, however without assistance from the suspects, it is unlikely that the police friend could ever be held account.
And that’s why I only nick parking spaces in Waitrose.
Forgive my ignorance, but isn’t that a clear statement of an intent to commit murder? Why were these odious people simply charged with manslaughter?
No, just a plan for a ridiculously long campaign of harassment and vandalism.
I’d agree with Andy: the smashing the cars to bits is not intended to CAUSE the death – the death merely marks the end of the intended duration of harassment and vandalism.
There might be a “conspiracy” charge in there somewhere though. 🙂
Sorry – I should clarify that. There is no clear causal/physical connection between the smashing of the cars and the heart attack.
There is no physiological connection, so you cannot convict on that basis.
Thumping someone on the head who then has a heart attack is a different matter. Unless these scrotes touched the person, the prosecution is going to have a tough time proving beyond reasonable doubt – and we damned well hope he would have to do so – that the damage to the cars led inevitably to the heart attack and that the defendants intention was to cause harm to his PERSON as opposed to his property.
The degradation of personal behaviour, and contempt for basic human morality and propriety in relationships, brought about deliberately by socialism, is astounding. I’m sure something like this has happened to more than one of us here, and….being human beings, whet did we do, for the sake of a quiet life? walk away. Say nothing. Tomorrow is another day.
It’s better to be like that now, than like what this poor old man tried to do.
He was, in his mind’s eye, living in another age and another country, where people did not behave like Zoe Forbes and her unspeakable husband. I don’t know about all you youngies on here, but I can’t remember that the 50s and 60s were like that.
No, not even the 70s and the 80s, although I did get thumped in Bloomsbury in 1980, one night, for complaining to a van driver that he’d zipped the opposite way into my parking meter space (remember those?) just as I was sliding into it after signalling clearly.
Perhaps the British are uncontrollable thugs after all, and we maybe deserve our growing international reputation. it took 12 centuries and a painful process of socialisation and growing liberalism to expunge this, and 11 years of corrozive Blairism and Labour-Misrule to expose it again.
Cleanthes:
Forgive me if I’m superimposing US definitions onto UK legal terms. However…
AIUI, a specific intent to cause death is an essential element of the crime of first-degree murder or whatever it’s called there. It’s utterly irrelevant to the crime of manslaughter, which is where a defendant recklessly causes the death of any other person.
“Reckless” meaning, with a wanton and willful disregard of a known risk that a proscribed result may occur because of the defendant’s conduct.
In other words, they didn’t have to intend anything. All that they needed to do was be aware that there was a risk of death, and go ahead and harass him anyway.
I have my doubts about murder one in this case. However, unless English law is markedly different I’d probably actually let a manslaughter case go to the jury.
Of course, it’s also a doctrine here that criminals have to take their victims as they find them. In other words, if I commit an assault by punching you in the nose, and you experience a massive stroke and die, I would properly be charged with murder. The legal reasoning being, I chose to commit a criminally violent act towards you, and therefore am accountable for any harm resulting.
And as I said, this is written in near-total ignorance of English or UK law. I’m just trying to relate the facts to a legal framework that I already know, and would welcome correction.
In my anecdote about Gov. Ritter and the ICE agent, it may be relevant to point out that Ritter was, at the time, District Attorney for Denver and as such had considerable discretion as to how people were charged and what plea agreements were offered in that district.
FWIW. Not that it directly affects this thread, but I didn’t want to introduce a head-scratcher just yet.
“He was, in his mind’s eye, living in another age and another country, where people did not behave like Zoe Forbes and her unspeakable husband.”
Hmm. I think that in the golden age you’re imagining, a man wouldn’t have “blown his stack” in an “over-the-top, abusive and insulting” fashion at a woman who parked somewhere he wanted to park (both quotes from the prosecuting counsel, FWIW).
The Forbeses and their policeman friend are appalling, and all thoroughly deserve jail. But don’t try and pretend that Mr Gilbert was some kind of campaigner for decency and morality, rather than a lairy bullying thug with a few more years under his belt than the others…
David Davis:
Amen………….The Septic Isle
Ah, parking.
Features very high on my list of reasons why I never intend to permanently return to the UK.
I was shocked but not surprised last time I was over to see cars parked in the turning lanes for side roads.
Rich
You don’t need a bent copper to access the DVLA database. For £2.50 they will supply details on any number plate to any shaven headed thug who sets up a clamping company. Checks and balances? None. Mr State forces us to give him this information, and then flogs it for fifty bob to any scumbag who wants to know. That’s why in recent years you may have noticed that the numberplates on the cars of people in the news on TV are pixellated. It didn’t used to be necessary when the state actually treated confidential information as confidential rather than an income stream.
Natalie,
What do you suggest ?
Are you opposing any car registration system ? Do you propose that cars be unregistered, and have no plates ?
Because, once they are registered, any registration system is liable to have leaks.
There may be some leaks but if access to the database was only for pursuing serious crimes, each requiring proper justification by those requesting the information, that would be a lot easier to control. Of course, that would require the government to stop viewing the car owner as a source of easy revenue to be stopped, harassed and fined for trivia.
“..don’t try and pretend that Mr Gilbert was some kind of campaigner for decency and morality, rather than a lairy bullying thug with a few more years under his belt than the others…”
Didn’t see anyone here claiming any such thing, but interesting to see which side you yourself are favouring. Had a few problems with uppity elderly people in car parks, have you..?
Yeah, they need sorting out, don’t they (with your brother’s help, plus a bent copper – can’t be too careful, it might get hairy!)? That’s the measure of a real man, alright.
Err, David Davis (presumably not the Tory MP) was claiming precisely that in his comment dated 1:35pm today.
I don’t think that giving someone a tirade of abuse because you don’t like the way that they park is a very nice thing to do – it’s not so much a brave stand against barbarism, as an act of barbarism.
Pretty obviously, enlisting the help of your husband, his brother and a bent copper to scare a not-very-nice old man to death is an act of barbarism, and a far worse one – hence why I think and have stated that the four of them thoroughly deserve jail.
John b,
Isn’t your fearless speaker of unpalatable truths schtick getting a bit old? We don’t have enough information to make any judgement of Mr Gilbert’s character. He may have been a habitual bully. Or he may have lost his temper in an uncharacteristic way after having a really bad day. She may have provoked him to shout at her – I’ve known people who could drive anyone to a fury with a triumphant smirk after doing something like nick a parking space.. Who knows? Not me. Not you.
In fact the main point I wanted to make was about the means by which the accused found him. This is only going to get more common as these databases proliferate.
Jacob – I hadn’t thought about abolishing registration, no. But I will. Something so contrary to the spirit of the age has immediate appeal.
I have to go now, but I’m going to try and google a similar case about some animal rights activist who used his position at DVLA to arrange for relatives of someone they were targeting to have their cars vandalised.
“John b Isn’t your fearless speaker of unpalatable truths schtick getting a bit old?”
Nope, he’s just refining it. Last month, he managed to deploy the ‘let’s not be hasty, she might’ve had it coming’ argument about a young girl raped and burned with acid to remove DNA evidence:
http://pubphilosopher.blogs.com/pub_philosopher/2008/01/running-away-fr.html#comment-97533500
So I guess a lippy pensioner is quite an easy target.
“I’m going to try and google a similar case about some animal rights activist who used his position at DVLA to arrange for relatives of someone they were targeting to have their cars vandalised. “
That’d be this one:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/staffordshire/3951945.stm
He got 5 months (doubt if he served that long). Hopefully, this police accomplice will get longer.
You despicable little guttersnipe, JuliaM.
As I recall correctly, you were the one indulging in the whipping up of the same old tired right wing hysteria.
“As I recall correctly…”
The link is there for all to see who was arguing what particular point of view.
We’ll let the readers decide, eh?
Less invective please or it is clearing out time.
JuliaM / john b – I’m just quietly backing away here.
John K – “You don’t need a bent copper to access the DVLA database. For £2.50 they will supply details on any number plate to any shaven headed thug who sets up a clamping company.” – Blimey, I knew that but had quite forgotten it. An excellent point, unfortunately.
JuliaM only – Yes, that was the case. Only five months? i.e. a week and a bit really. Shows how seriously they take it.
john b only – Or maybe the row just escalated. I reiterate my point that we can’t judge and it’s a side issue anyway.
Jacob – Short of getting rid of car registration, my starter suggestions (would do far more if I could) would include that the government cease selling the DVLA information to third parties and give those who leak it far stricter penalties. I would not add to the number of such government databases. I would vastly decrease the numbers of bodies who can access the information on those we have.
There is a loosely related article here in which the privacy commissioner laments that the number of agencies authorized to intercept phone calls has gone up from 9 to 795.
A scenario I find quite plausible, having worked in local government, is terrorist infiltration in order to carry out identity theft. They don’t do a full CRB check on filing clerks and data entry clerks, you know, and even if they did – Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Then there are the endless possibilities for acts of private malice. Imagine from how many angles a victim could be hounded when the DVLA and the CRB and the Social Services and the tax records are all interlinked. Safeguards won’t last long against the human tendency to do favours for friends.
Of course, there’s this wonderful bit from the article, too:
As long as JuliaM gets the heave-ho as well that is fine by me. After all she has also been bringing the ‘invective’ – there was no reason for her to post that link other than petty triumphalism which I would hope the good people at Samizdata would not support. I would love nothing more than for a smug right wing reactionary who approves of violent vigilante behaviour to get a well deserved kick in the teeth.
Natalie says:
In the US, it’s already happened. Okay, the organizations were “ordinary” criminal gangs rather than terrorists. Girlfriends of members of biker gangs trying to get jobs as police records clerks and dispatchers are the most common version, although there’s one large midwestern city that has a serious problem of actual gang members slipping through the background investigation and being commissioned as cops.
I imagine that ID theft has happened, but the real killer is just access to sensitive information. There’s a lot of damage that can be done by someone using an NCIC terminal for evil. Fake arrest warrants being entered, stolen property records being tampered with, etc.
John B – Is JuliaM really “a smug right wing reactionary who approves of violent vigilante behaviour”? I presume you have some evidence for that.
Sticking to the topic, though, I remember two civilian staff in East London being sacked by the Met for passing on information to their criminal friends. I can’t find a link to the story but I’ll keep trying.
These databases will leak like sieves. The ContactPointchild database with its 3300 users will be almost impossible to secure – which is why the children of MPs and other ‘important’ folk will be left off it.
It’s a Quxotic sentiment.
We live in the age of databases. The technology was not available before, but it is now. Times have changed. Trying to ban databases sounds luddite to me. You can’t ban technological advances, and they’re overhelmingly beneficial, and I would not want to ban them.
Then databases are going to leak. No way arround that.
We must adapt to the new world.
By the way: it’s not government data-bases alone. Everyone has data-bases – banks, phone companies, utilities, health care providers, insurers, airlines, supermarkets. All those data-bases are potentially leaky. (I haven’t mentioned Google yet, who can find any info that ever passed through the web….).
This is the new world.
Jacob – yes, everyone does have databases and we need protection against the abuse of data by private companies as much as we do against the state.
I didn’t say we should ban them and I don’t think anyone else did either.
But the argument that this is just the way things are going (which, I think, is what you are saying) doesn’t mean we shouldn’t question their use. Why, for example, does the goverment need a database of all the children in the country? Would that have stopped Victoria Climbie from being abused? I doubt it – yet it was her case which led to the development of this system. A massive over-reaction to one tragic story.
I don’t think that governments composed of career politicians ought to be allowed near database programs, while unsupervised by old ladies who run charity shops, or retired majors.
Zoe Forbes is “26” and seems to have nicked a parking space under the nose of an old-guy. She’s obviously a socialist-synthesised-chavette – nobody else would do a despicable thing like that. I dont – you lot don’t (or you wouldn’t be here.) Why couldn’t the slag just bite her lip, back away, and go to another? Our teachers in the 50s used to call it having “officer-like grip”.
The old-guy probably had had a “bad day” already – OK that does not excuse him for remonstrating (I don’t think he could have managed more anyway, if his heart was in the condition the prosecution said it was.)
The presence of these leaky guvmint “data bases” just gives the slairs with their friends in the Enemy Class another shiny-lever to pull, to show how “big” they are.
Star counting the personalised numberplates starting “B16” or “B10” or “BG”-something or other, with names or initials after them. Like “B16 ROB”. He lives in Formby.
“Posted by john b at February 6, 2008 08:11 PM”
“Posted by john b at February 7, 2008 05:16 AM”
These comments weren’t from me – I kept out of this one after Natalie’s warning. It’d be interesting to see whether they match the IP address of anyone else involved in the discussion…
“It’d be interesting to see whether they match the IP address of anyone else involved in the discussion…”
Meaning mine..? Nope, wrong again. A check of IP adresses will show that to the blog owners very quickl, I’d assume.
I merely drew everyone’s attention to your own, admitted, words on another thread. I have no need to invent comments and attribute them to you, when your own show your leanings so well.
So I’d echo your call to not fake comments (if that is what’s happened here).
Different IP addresses, so yes, the comments were bogus. Not used by any other poster.
Thanks Perry. Apologies to anyone who felt I was getting at them.