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Bill Gates now promoting renewables (? not nuclear)

Bill Gates Provides Boost To Renewable Energy Storage Company Aquion Energy April 3, 2013  Clean Technica Nicholas Brown

Bill Gates, the well known co-founder of Microsoft, has decided to provide a financial boost to renewable energy storage research and development (R&D). He is one member of a group of high-profile investors who are investing $35 million into Aquion energy.

The company is creating a water-based battery system intended to be cheap and environmentally friendly. Aquion’s energy storage technology is reportedly being developed for large- and small-scale energy storage projects, and the company is delivering pre-production energy storage units throughout this year, with the intention to ramp up production at a high-volume manufacturing plant in Pennsylvania by the end of 2013. http://cleantechnica.com/2013/04/03/bill-gates-provides-boost-to-renewable-energy-storage/#XErorPJRkTq1fT8b.99

 

April 4, 2013 Posted by | business and costs, renewable | Leave a comment

UK – MI5 dirty tricks against pensioner foiled! More to follow?

…Nevertheless, the judgement does not generally prohibit the processing of personal data of innocent people. The Court mentioned that in general data retention of activists serves the public interest in a “sufficiently important way“. In the case at hand, information held by Mr. Catt was of no use. What we are missing is a clear message urging the creation of a legal framework which narrows down the possibilities in which data of peaceful protesters can be retained…..

Peaceful Protester’s personal data removed from extremism database

By:
on:
27-Mar-2013

“This judgment exposes the widespread and sinister nature of police surveillance of ordinary members of the public in this country. It also acts as a safeguard against the creeping criminalisation of peaceful protest. The Association of Police Officers and Metropolitan Police Commissioner have sanctioned this unlawful conduct for almost a decade and must be made accountable”. 1

Last week three of the country’s most senior judges in the Court of Appeal found that the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) and the Metropolitan Police Commissioner violated John Catt’s human rights.

The case concerns the 88-year old activist John Catt, a frequent participant in protests and public demonstrations, including most recently that organized by a group called “Smash EDO” which campaigns against the weapon manufacturer EDO Defence Systems.

Although some of the core supporters of that group are prone to violence and criminal behaviour, Catt has never been convicted of criminal conduct in connections to the demonstrations he attended. Nonetheless, Catt’s personal information was held on the National Domestic Extremism Database that is maintained by the National Public Order Intelligence Unit. The information held on him included his name, age, description of his appearance and his history of attending political demonstrations. The police had retained a photograph of Mr Catt but it had been destroyed since it was deemed to be unnecessary. The information was accessible to members of the police who engage in investigations on “Smash EDO”.

In the ruling the Court of Appeal departs from earlier judgments by mentioning that the “reasonable expectation of privacy” is not the only factor  to take into account in determining whether an individual’s Article 8 (1) right has been infringed. In surveying ECtHR case law, the Court noted that it is also important to check whether personal data has been subjected to systematic processing and if it is entered in a database. The rationale to include consideration of the latter two categories is that in this way authorities can recover information by reference to a particular person. Therefore, “the processing and retention of even publicly available information may involve an interference with the subject’s article 8 rights.” 2. Since in the case of Catt, personal data was retained and ready to be processed, the Court found a violation of Article 8 (1) that requires justification.3.

The Court considered that a violation of Article 8 (1) which is compliant with Article 8 (2) needs to pursue a legitimate aim and it needs to be proportionate. In regard to the former, it is not disputed that the database was maintained in order to detect and prevent crime. In regard to proportionality, the Court of Appeal stated that the aim of retaining Catt’s data was to obtain a better understanding of how Smash EDO is organised and to be in a position to forecast the place and nature of its next protest. The Court found that “[i]t is not easy to understand how the information currently held on Mr. Catt can provide any assistance in relation to any of those matters.” 4. The Court continued by stating, “the systematic collection, processing and retention on a searchable database of personal information, even of a relatively routine kind, involves a significant interference with the right to respect for private life. It can be justified by showing that it serves the public interest in a sufficiently important way, but in this case the respondent has not in our view shown that the value of the information is sufficient to justify its continued retention.” 5.

This judgment illustrates the positive impact of the European Convention on Human Rights on the privacy and data protection framework of the UK. Hitherto, UK courts primarily analysed whether an individual has a “reasonable expectation” to privacy when determining whether Article 8 had been engaged 6. By referring to ECtHR case law, the Court of Appeal added in the Catt case the analysis of whether “systematic processing” and “entry into a database” took place. Nevertheless, the judgment does not generally prohibit the processing of personal data of innocent people. The Court mentioned that in general data retention of activists serves the public interest in a “sufficiently important way”. In the case at hand, information held by Mr. Catt was of no use. What we are missing is a clear message urging the creation of a legal framework which narrows down the possibilities in which data of peaceful protesters can be retained.

Footnotes

  • 1. Mr. John Catt’s solicitor Mr. Shamik Dutta of Bhatt Murphy
  • 2. paragraph 30, [2013] EWCA Civ 192
  • 3. paragraph 31
  • 4. paragraph 44
  • 5. paragraph 44
  • 6. paragraph 30
Related project(s):
Countries:
If you want to request a data protection request from MI5 they have a useful page
Screenshot from 2013-04-04 05:19:34
Peaceful protesters are well defined..

For the most part the actions of domestic extremists pose a threat to public order, but not to national security. They are normally investigated by the police, not the Security Service.

To meet the threat of domestic extremism, the National Extremism Tactical Coordination Unit (NETCU) new window was created in 2004. It merged in 2011 with the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU) and the National Domestic Extremism Team (NDET) to form the National Domestic Extremism Unit (NDEU). For more information, see the Association of Chief Police Officers website new window.

I am so looking forward to suing these chaps…. activist looking for a class action bashing of these law breakers… to apply for the data protection request we need an address to apply for.. none are supplied..
I do hope the new boss of MI5 is more of a democracy sort of guy.. Will the outgoing head of MI5 go into the insurance underwriting/finance industry like his predecessor ??
UPDATE TO SHENANIGANS
THIS IS THE SCREENSHOT OF THE MI5 WEBSITE TODAY.. AS SNOWDONS NEWS LEAKS OUT MI5 HOPW TO BLAME THE POLICE FOR THE DOMESTIC EXTREMIST DATABASE…
THEY HAVE REMOVED THE WEB PAGE FOR THIS SHADOWY ORGANISATION AND THE SCREEN SHOT I GOT JUST NOW IS BELOW
Screenshot from 2013-06-26 03:39:26
I HAVE NOTIFIED NETPOL VIA FACEBOOK AND TALKED TO A SOLICITOR AND AM AWAITING A RESPONSE FROM THEM..

April 4, 2013 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Bradley Manning & The Deepwater Horizon mystery – Greg Pallast reports

…..Had Manning’s memos come out just a few months earlier, the truth about BP’s deadly drilling methods would have been revealed, and there’s little doubt BP would have had to change its ways. Those eleven men could well have been alive today.  ….

By Greg Palast for  Vice Magazine
Wednesday, 3. April 2013

Three years ago this month, on the 20th of April, 2010, the BP Deepwater Horizon drilling rig blew itself to kingdom come.  

Soon thereafter, a message came in to our office’s chief of investigations, Ms Badpenny, from a person I dare not name, who was floating somewhere in the Caspian Sea along the coast of Baku, Central Asia.  

The source was in mortal fear he’d be identified – and with good reason. Once we agreed on a safe method of communication, he revealed this: 17 months before BP’s Deepwater Horizon blew out and exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, another BP rig suffered an identical blow-out in the Caspian Sea.  

Crucially, both the Gulf and Caspian Sea blow-outs had the same identical cause: the failure of the cement “plug”.  

To prevent blow-outs, drilled wells must be capped with cement. BP insisted on lacing its cement with nitrogen gas – the same stuff used in laughing gas – because it speeds up drying.

Time is money, and mixing some nitrogen gas into the cement saves a lot of money.  

However, because BP’s penny-pinching method is so damn dangerous, they are nearly alone in using it in deep, high-pressure offshore wells.  

The reason: nitrogen gas can create gaps in the cement, allow methane gas to go up the borehole, fill the drilling platform with explosive gas – and boom, you’re dead.

So, when its Caspian Sea rig blew out in 2008, rather than change its ways, BP simply covered it up.

Our investigators discovered that the company hid the information from its own shareholders, from British regulators and from the US Securities Exchange Commission. The Vice-President of BP USA, David Rainey, withheld the information from the US Senate in a testimony he gave six months before the Gulf deaths. (Rainey was later charged with obstruction of justice on a spill-related matter.)  

Britain’s Channel 4 agreed to send me to the benighted nation of Azerbaijan, whose waters the earlier BP blow-out occurred in, to locate witnesses who would be willing to talk to me without getting “disappeared”. (They didn’t talk, but they still disappeared.)  

And I was arrested. Some rat had tipped off the Security Ministry (the official name of the Department of Torture here in this Islamic Republic of BP). I knew I’d get out quick, because throwing a reporter of Her Majesty’s Empire into a dungeon would embarrass both BP and the Azeri oil-o-crats.  

Continue reading

April 4, 2013 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Obama – Unfit For Nobel Prize, DC’s Revolving Door, Pig in the Pipeline

breakingtheset

Published on 3 Apr 2013

Abby Martin Breaks the Set on Unworthy Nobel Prize Winners, Washington’s Revolving Door, & The Deceitful Oil Industry

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EPISODE BREAKDOWN: On this episode of Breaking the Set, Abby Martin talks to Norman Solomon, co-founder of rootsaction.org, about the growing campaign to revoke Obama’s Nobel peace prize and the media facilitating war. Abby then talks to RT producer, Rachel Kurzius, about the revolving door between the public and private sectors and how they intersect in Washington, DC. BTS wraps up the show with a look at the recent Exxon Mobil oil spill in central Arkansas, and highlights some surprising findings about the oil industry’s most deceitful practices.

April 4, 2013 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment