INVENT-10N: GOOGLE GLASS THE FIRST STEP TOWARDS A NICENIK SOCIETY

GOOGLE GLASS: THE FIRST STEP TOWARDS A NICENIK SOCIETY

An interesting article in this week’s The Economist’s entitled ‘Ubiquitous Cameras’ (http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21589863-it-getting-ever-easier-record-anything-or-everything-you-see-opens) which discussed the implications of the widespread use of Google’s Glass headset.

Google Glass is a wearable computer with an optical head-mounted display which can also take pictures.

Now most of the debate about Glass has centred around ‘oh, won’t it be terrible all these Glass-equipped people going around taking surreptitious photographs of us and invading out privacy’ this countered by the inevitable, ‘if people don’t want their business archived in a photo, don’t do guilty things in public’.

To me what Glass exemplifies is the increasingly rapid miniaturisation of surveillance equipment and the thought that in a few short years it won’t just be photographs the Glass-of-the-future is taking but videos (and probably constant-stream videos at that, then we’ll all be ‘life loggers’). And once this is teamed up with facial recognition we will truly be in a PanOpticon society, where everyone will be able to see what we were doing at any moment in our public life.

The result will be a radical change in how we disport ourselves in public. Since the Rialto police in the USA began using body cameras to record incidents in February 2012 public complaints against police officers fell a staggering 88% and the use of force by officers by 60%. Body cameras, it seems, incentivise people to conduct themselves in a more civilised manner … nobody wants to see themselves looking and acting like a total prick on YouTube.

But (and I think it’s a pretty big but) what this will provoke is a massive experiment in social re-engineering with people being obliged to act in a more censured way. They will know they are being watched and will act accordingly. A good thing, you might suggest, but the upshot will be that life, I suspect, will become even more boring than it is today.

As Jenni-Fur says in Invent-10n:

I am fed up enduring the claustrophobic, cossetted tyranny of the nice.

Fuck nice.

NICE

 

SURROGATE SURVEILLANCE

THE RISE OF SURROGATE SURVEILLANCE

The recent appearance of the heads of MI5, MI6 and GCHQ on television has centred everyone’s attention on the scope and the dangers of State surveillance, but what commentators have forgotten is that surveillance conducted by those not belonging to the Secret Service community is much more ubiquitous and, in many ways, much more disturbing.

And the reason for this is simple: we are willing participants in this Surrogate Surveillance.

Take, for instance, the loyalty card phenomenon. At first glance the reason why Tesco and all the other big stores provide loyalty cards is simply to reward those who shop regularly at their stores and by doing so to encourage them to keep coming back. But there is another reason why these stores are so keen on promoting their loyalty cards: the vast quantities of information they acquire about their customers enables them to profile them. A shopping cart reveals a great deal of information about you: whether you have children or live alone; whether you drink (and how much); whether you have a pet; how clean you are; whether you are environmentally conscious; and (from the papers you buy) what your political views are likely to be. All these data are stored (for how long?), analysed and used to develop a portrait of you useful in tailoring adverts directed at you. Bespoke promotion … you can see it on the side of your Facebook page.

Not that the stores are stopping there. The news that Tesco will be installing face-recognition equipment in its petrol stations (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/10435521/Facial-recognition-inevitable-but-will-shoppers-approve.html) is just the next step: Tesco aims to put faces to data. I’m guessing that soon we’ll be in a ‘Minority Report’ type world where adverts are tailor-made for each potential customer passing them by. Of course, it will also enable Tesco to refuse entry to known shop-lifters and serial-complainers but that’s by-the-by (unless you happen to have the misfortune to look like a shop-lifter!).

What is important about this development is the vast amount of data that Tesco have to store and process in order to make their face-recognition initiative work. This is just a STORE when all said and done, not GCHQ or the NSA.

Which brings me back to my central point. Around the country (and on-line, Amazon must be awash with data) there are hundreds of stores doing pretty much the same thing as Tesco and warehousing copious amounts of data. And these databases are supplemented by those holding the information hoovered up by official surveillance devices operated by the police and local authorities, and the information held by the Inland Revenue, local GPs, the rating authorities, the police, by the Congestion Charging centre in London, by the DVLA in Swansea and, of course, by the banks. Moreover if Tesco is using facial recognition you can bet your bottom dollar that the police and GCHQ are way ahead of them. Even the Inland Revenue is using Google Earth (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2494152/Now-taxman-spying-home-using-Google-Earth-Satellite-images-clues-wealth-lifestyle-youre-paying-enough.html).

This is what I call Surrogate Surveillance.

The Snowden brouhaha focussed attention on how the internet and cell phone service providers co-operated (or didn’t co-operate, depending on who you believe) with the GCHQ/NSA to facilitate their tapping into our e-communications but what was forgotten was that there is this mass of Surrogate Surveillance data collected quite openly that could provide very interesting information about us. Nobody seems interested in it.

Nobody, I suspect, apart from GCHQ.

Now with all this data lying around neatly warehoused I would have thought it beyond belief that GCHQ wouldn’t be accessing it. After all it has been acquired quite legally (and often with the surveillee’s co-operation) so no one can criticise GCHQ for using it. Now I’ve never made a bomb but I suspect that the ingredients are pretty standard and need to be bought by any would-be bomber. Analysing data held in a store’s databases would reveal who was buying this stuff (presumably terrorists have credit cards) and hence who was worth MI5 taking a closer interest in.

Forget Tempora and worry about Surrogate Surveillance ...

BREAKING NEWS: SPIES SAVAGED BY TOOTHLESS DOG

On Thursday  7th November I invested ninety minutes of my life watching the Intelligence and Security Committee grill (if that’s the word) the Heads of GCHQ, MI5 and MI6 for the first time in public. Now I had no great hopes for this televised interrogation (any Committee that includes Hazel Blears has no right to use the word ‘Intelligence’ in its title) and it lived down to my low expectations. The three being interrogated (Andrew Parker of MI5; John Sawers of MI6 and Iain Lobban of GCHQ) were obviously well-rehearsed and had been provided with a selection of sound-bites to recite. Worse, the questions posed by the Committee were anodyne in the extreme.

The Independent 7th November, 2013

 

For example: there was no question as to why the existence of the Tempora system (which taps into the transatlantic fibre-optic cables) had been kept from the Committee; there was no question as to why GCHQ had to monitor e-communications in Germany; and there was no question regarding the extent of the monitoring of e-communications here in the UK. And there was most certainly no questioning of if (oh yeah) GCHQ co-operates with the NSA to circumvent UK law.

So pretty much a waste of time but there were some points of interest.

 

1. The body language of Iain Loggan (Head of GCHQ) was that of a man under EXTREME pressure. Not a poker player methinks: he was just one mass of twitches and tics.



The Times 8th November 2013

2.       Lobban used the analogy that GCHQ’s task was akin to finding a needle in a haystack. What he failed to mention was that to build the haystack ALL the hay (or e-communications in normal speak) has to be gathered. His claim that GDHQ does not spend its time listening to calls made by the majority of the British population is simultaneous accurate but evasive.

 

The Guardian 7th November 2013

 

3.       Andrew Parker’s admission that most of the terrorist threats MI5 have dealt with since 7/7 in 2005 had been domestically organised should have generated more interest from the Committee. Surely the corollary of this is that GCHQ’s would be directing more of their resources towards surveilling the UK and its citizens. None of the Committee seemed able to join up these dots.

4.       I can only hope the questioning during the Close-Door sessions  is more determined than what was seen today otherwise we’re in big trouble.

INVENT-10N: MAYBE ANGELA MERKEL SHOULD TAKE UP POKER

SURVEILLANCE: AGELA MERKEL DOESN’T PLAY POKER

John Rhys-Davies (who played Gimli in The Lord of the Rings trilogy) once opined that:

‘Spying is like chess: sometimes you have to withdraw, sometimes you have to sacrifice one of your pieces to win – preferably a knight rather than a king or a queen.’

Unfortunately Rhys-Davies was wrong on two counts. The first is mechanistic: you can’t sacrifice your king in chess. But the second is more philosophical.

When you sit down to play chess you can see ALL the pieces – those belonging to yourself and those controlled by your opponent – and, moreover, you both know the rules governing the playing of the game. This was not the case in the topsy-turvy world of espionage. Here each side does its damnedest to hide its pieces from the opposition and the breaking of rules was not only expected but positively encouraged. Further, in espionage there is never only one opponent: a nation’s  enemies are numerous and even those who evince friendship might, if push comes to shove, reveal themselves as in league with the bad guys.

Espionage is a game of bluff and counter-bluff.

Thus espionage is more akin to poker than to chess with every player desperately trying to keep his opponents from having a peek at the cards he or she is holding.

Of course, as in real-life  poker, everyone is trying to get an advantage (fair or otherwise) and religiously searches their opponents for ‘tells’,  the signals regarding the strength or weakness of a player’s hand that are sent by the player’s body language or by changes to their physiological condition. How a player holds himself, how he stacks and plays with his chips, the way his hands move, his facial expressions  …  all these and many, many others can give clues as to the player’s state of mind and what their intention is vis à vis their hand.

I suspect that the reason why in the last twenty years we’ve seen such a blanding out of our politicians (in Britain, post-Thatcher, all the leaders of our political parties have been youngish, white, sport a full head of hair but no beards or moustaches, have an athletic frame, are neatly if conservatively dressed, have a family life of yawning conventionality and speak in a neutered, indeterminate accent. Only one deviated from that template, Brown, and look what happened to him!). The reason isn’t wholly to do with this being the ‘image’ of a leader opinion polls tell the party gurus will best secure victory in an election but also because it is indicative of a person who is willing to sublimate his personality to the political process  … a person who can maintain an impassive poker face.

But there is another aspect of poker playing which has a wider relevance to the espionage world-at-large: card counting. Card counters in poker keep a mental record of all the high and low valued cards played and this allows them to assess the probability of a high or low value card being played next (for anyone interested I recommend Bringing Down the House by Ben Mezrich).  

Surveillance is card counting writ large, the means by which espionage agencies seek to tip the cards in their favour. The problem is that to do this surveillance must be directed at ALL the players, friendly and unfriendly alike, because their actions are intertwined and what one player does influences what other players do and so on. Thus it is no surprise that America’s NSA and Britain’s GCHQ have been eavesdropping on the German government. Germany is a powerful nation and what it does has major international political and economic repercussions, therefore for Angela Merkel to say (following the disclosure that the NSA had accessed her ‘phone records) ‘Spying on friends is not on at all’ is breathtakingly naïve.

For her to say she didn’t know what was  going on is pure bullshit. Back in 1998 the European Parliament’s Civil Liberties Committee commissioned a report which advised ‘The European Parliament should reject proposals from the United States for making private messages via the global communications network assessable to US intelligence agencies’. The report urged the NSA’s activities in Europe be scaled back or be made more transparent. They did neither, so for Merkel to pronounce ignorance is hokum.

The report also castigated Britain’s involvement in this snooping. Just as NSA and GCHQ have circumvented domestic controls by indulging in reciprocal surveillance in order that they can monitor (all?) their country’s citizens (‘Hi there GCHQ!) so they have done the same thing in Germany (and Spain and Italy …).

Methinks that Merkel’s outrage wasn’t triggered by moral indignation but rather by the thought that she wasn’t one of the Watchers but one of the Watched.

Welcome to the club, Angela. Maybe you should take up poker?

INVENT-10N: THE INVERSE-FLYNN EFFECT

INVENT-10N: DUMB AND DUMBER OR THE REVERSE-FLYNN EFFECT

One of my protagonists in Invent-10n, Anna Nitko, is of the opinion that the citizens of the Western world are less intelligent than their forebears. The reason she cites for this diminution in intelligence is the triviality of much of the Net’s content causing a general erosion in the cognitive abilities of humankind, this signalled by a reduction in attention span and the facility for deductive reasoning. According to Anna, netizens – denizens of the Internet – have evolved a butterfly mentality, flitting from idea to idea, only able to think of the here and now and not of the future. According to her the Net hasn’t sponsored the emergence of what Pierre Levy called ‘a collective intelligence’ – the development of a well-informed world of netizens – but rather a ‘collective stupidity’ where people are driven to believe nonsense by the pressure exerted by social e-networks. They had come to fulfil Galton’s prediction that humanity would regress towards mediocrity.

Further, Anna contends that without the constant – but demanding – striving of humankind to improve itself intellectually the process of discovery had stalled and with it the development of the new technologies and ideas which fuel productivity growth. Her proposition is that this IQ-regression is the real cause of Solow’s productivity paradox (the observation made by US economist Robert Solow that the computer can be seen everywhere but in the productivity statistics, this intimating that the Digital Revolution had failed to provide the positive impact on economic growth and productivity experts had expected). Her proposition was that the so-called Flynn Effect – the long-term improvement in humanity’s IQ – had gone into reverse.

Pure fiction, of course, and I have to admit that I wrote it somewhat tongue-in-cheek. Sure I was aghast by how ill-informed my daughters’ generation was but this I put down to the rotten state of British schools. Then, early in October, the OECD released its report on adult literacy, numeracy and problem-solving skills where English 16-24 year-olds performed so abysmally (ranked 22^nd out of the 24 countries tested).

Consider first that FOR THE FIRST TIME the 16-24 year-old cohort performed worse than the 55-64 year-old cohort (the younger generation had ALWAYS out-performed the old). Consider second that the 16-24 year-old group is the most e-savvy and the most e-obsessed.

Could these two be linked? There has been some speculation that the Flynn Effect was running out of steam but I never thought it would have this sort of impact or have it so quickly.

Maybe Anna Nitko was right!

INVENT-10N: A FUNNY OLD WEEK FOR THE SURVEILLANCE DEBATE IN THE UK

Funny old week for the surveillance debate in the UK.

Sir Andrew Parker, the new Head of MI5, gave his first public speech and used it to rail against the nerve The Guardian newspaper had to release details contained in the US intelligence files pinched by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The nub of what The Guardian revealed was that GCHQ (the UK’s surveillance centre) was operating a system known as Tempora, a secret electronic surveillance program accessing data carried on transatlantic fibre-optic cables. Apparently the data collected is immense (21 petabytes a day) this being stored for three days (though related metadata is stored for thirty days). According to Snowden Tempora had made the UK into a ‘surveillance superpower’.

Now when I read this I can’t say I was particularly surprised. To my mind it is obvious that as computers become more powerful, e-storage becomes cheaper and cheaper and the algorithms manipulating said data increasingly sophisticated that security services would become more-and-more addicted to the acquisition, warehousing and analysis of the information flying around the e-universe. And this would be especially the case in the UK: you have only to look at how enthusiastically Britain has embraced the CCTV camera (there’s one for every 14 people!) to see that ours is an e-surveillance paradise. We love being watched!

Which makes it all the more amusing when the week began with Chris Huhne, the disgraced former Liberal-Democrat MP, claiming that during his time in cabinet he was told nothing about GCHQ’s Tempora or the NSA’s PRISM or about their ‘extraordinary capability to vacuum up and store personal emails, voice contact, social network activity and even internet searches’. And worse, the National Security Council (attended by ministers and the heads of the security services and GCHQ) of which Huhne was a member was never briefed regarding Tempora. The answer to the question ‘who watches the watchers’ is ‘not Chris Huhne’.

Anyway, back to Sir Andrew Parker. One of the points he made in his speech was that, ‘We only apply intrusive tools and capabilities against terrorists and others threatening national security. The law requires we only collect and access information that we really need to perform our functions, in this case tackling the threat of terrorism’.

The weasel-words here are ‘only apply intrusive tools’.

Sir Andrew went on: ‘In some quarters there seems to be a vague notion that we monitor everyone and all their communications, browsing at will through people’s private lives for anything that looks interesting’. This is, he added ‘utter nonsense’.

So while GCHQ doesn’t monitor and apply intrusive tools to everyone’s communication there is no denial that they COLLECT such data and run it through their algorithms checking for any correlations with known badniks. And to make such correlations GCHQ has to collect (or have access to) ALL the data and that includes the data held by the banks (including that relating to debit/credit card transactions), Inland Revenue files, CCTV cameras, medical records (if the DoH can ever get the thing to work!) etc. etc.

So I think it’s a fair assumption to make that:

1)      GCHQ e-intelligence gathering goes far beyond Tempora;

2)      GCHQ will continue to develop its e-intelligence gathering capability;

3)      There ain’t nothing we can do to stop this happening, MI5 having that wonderful get-out of jail-free card called ‘national security interests’.

Now the big threat of this isn’t, as The Guardian and others fret about, the erosion of civil liberties and of privacy, those are abandoned every time you sign up to FaceBook or begin Tweeting. No, the real threat is that governments and the digerati (the people with access to the information held by GCHQ) will use it to begin manipulating the people of Britain.

As Jenni-Fur says in Invent-10n:

YESTERDAY THEY WERE SERVING YOU …

TODAY THEY’RE WATCHING YOU …

TOMORROW THEY’LL BE CONTROLLING YOU!

INVENT-10N: LIFE IMITATES FICTION 1

GREAT MINDS AND ALL THAT …

When I was first developing the surveillance-heavy world of 2030 that Jenni-Fur, my lead protagonist in Invent-10n, would be living in I spent a while musing on the various youth tribes that might be populate the Britain of seventeen years hence. And one of them was the Slappers, made up of those who were resolutely anti-surveillance.  

SLAPPERS

In Invent-10n Slappers are a disaffected and generally pretty inarticulate bunch, vehemently against PanOptika (the all-embracing surveillance system of the 2030 British government), Tête-à-Tête (don’t ask) and an ordered society. In order to frustrate PanOptika’s facial-recognition ability they favour wide-brimmed hats (to cover the face), unfurled umbrellas (even when it isn’t raining), ankle-length deconstructed plastic raincoats, hoodies by Dead in the Water and (of course) wobblers, shoes with a-symmetric heels which change the way a person walks and thus thwart Gait-ID systems. The picture  above is how Nigel Robinson, the guy who did the design work on Invent-10n, pictured my Slappers (and remember he drew this back in 2009!).

 

Of course, I did this tongue-in cheek, never suspecting that the real world would catch up with my fictional whimsy so quickly. So when I was trawling the web looking for magazines which might review Invent-10n I was amazed when I stumbled over this:

Presented by Primitive at Tank Magazine these are a series of ‘Anti-Drone’ Stealth Wear outfits by Adam Harvey (produced in collaboration with NYC designer Johanna Bloomfield) intended to thwart surveillance cameras. My Slappers would have LOVED them. The interesting thing for me was that these designs build on previous work by Adam Harvey – he calls it CV Dazzle – which is face camouflage aimed at negating face recognition. Now that I never thought of!

I think if Invent-10n ever goes into a reprint I’ll ask Mr Harvey if I can feature his CV Dazzle. My Slappers wearing CV Dazzle warpaint would be terrific.

INVENT-10N NEWSRUSH

I’m putting together the material that will go on the Invent-10n website and one idea was to do a news feed for the events in the six months leading up to the opening scene in the book (Jenni-Fur beginning the typing of her journal). It turned out to be a lot more difficult (and a lot more depressing) than I’d envisaged.

DigmStore e-News

NewsRush

08 SEPTEMBER 2029 09:18: RAINFALL IN LONDON FOR AUGUST 2029 WAS AN ALL-TIME RECORD OF 103 MM

08 SEPTEMBER 2029 12:54: STATISTICS RELEASED BY NATIONAL PROTECTION AGENCY NAME SCARBOROUGH ‘CRIME CAPITAL OF BRITAIN’

08 SEPTEMBER 2029 16:27: CRUDE OIL TOPS $425 PER BARREL +++ PRICE OF GAS TO RISE 30% ‘WITH IMMEDIATE EFFECT’

09 SEPTEMBER 2029 07:57: ANDREI LAZAREV HEAD OF RUSSIA’S MINISTERSTVO ENERGETIKI DENIES PRICE FIXING COLLUSION WITH OTHER OPEC STATES +++ RISE IN CRUDE PRICE ‘WHOLLY A CONSEQUENCE OF DESTRUCTION OF MIDDLE EAST OIL FIELDS IN ONE-DAY WAR’

09 SEPTEMBER 2029 15:47: PRIME MINISTER TELLS COMMONS ‘GEES RESPONSIBLE FOR ALMOST THREE-QUARTERS OF ALL RECORDED CRIME IN THE UK’

10 SEPTEMBER 2029 09:28: WILLIAM MORRISON HEAD OF NATIONAL PROTECTION AGENCY URGES ‘COMPULSORY USE OF TETE-A-TETE IMPLANTS AND REPATRIATION OF GEES’ AS SOLUTION TO THE SURGE IN UK CRIME

10 SEPTEMBER 2029 11:07: AA REPORTS THAT NUMBER OF CAR JOURNEYS AT A FIVE-YEAR LOW +++ ‘OUTRAGEOUS’ COST OF PETROL BLAMED

11 SEPTEMBER 2029 13:07: FOUR MEN ARRESTED FOR ‘GEE-BASHING RAMPAGE’ IN BLACKPOOL IN WHICH TWO GEE TEENAGERS KILLED

11 SEPTEMBER 2029 15:12: HENRY TOWNSEND LEADER OF REVISEDLABOUR PARTY CRITICISES PRIME MINISTER FOR HIS ‘CALLOUS, INHUMANE AND RACIST’ ATTITUDE TOWARDS GEES

11 SEPTEMBER 2029 15:36: PRIME MINISTER PETER ASHE BLAMES REVISEDLABOUR FOR PERMITTING ENTRY OF 5 MILLION REFUGEES FROM GREATER RUSSIA +++ ‘IT IS THE IRRESPONSIBLE AND IMBECILIC POLICIES OF THE PREVIOUS REVISEDLABOUR GOVERNMENT WHICH HAS CREATED THESE GEE-RIDDLED HAVENS OF CRIME AND VICIOUSNESS KNOWN AS THE GEEBURGS … AND IMPOVERISHED THE COUNTRY IN THE PROCESS’

12 SEPTEMBER 10:21: RED CROSS WARNS THAT 5 MILLION PENSIONERS AT RISK OF DYING THRU HYPOTHERMIA THIS WINTER AS A RESULT OF ‘OUT-OF-CONTROL’ ENERGY PRICES PREVENTING THEM HEATING THEIR HOMES

13 SEPTEMBER 2029 17:34: JENNI-FUR AND THE JOY POPPERS NAMED ‘NUBOP BAND OF THE YEAR’ IN OFF-BEAT E-MAGAZINE POLL +++ JENNI-FUR THANKS ‘CATS AND KITTENS WHO VOTED’

15 SEPTEMBER 2029 12:45: CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER SAMUEL TURNER ANNOUNCES THAT WITH IMMEDIATE EFFECT STERLING WILL NO LONGER BE FREELY CONVERTIBLE *** SUCH ACTION ‘VITAL TO AVOID MELT-DOWN OF UK ECONOMY’

17 SEPTEMBER 2029 13:09: FOOD RIOTS IN BIRMINGHAM +++ FIFTY INJURED AND TWO REPORTED DEAD

17 SEPTEMBER 2029 18:03: NATIONAL PROTECTION AGENCY TO ASSUME CONTROL OF BRITISH GEEBURGS – SCARBOROUGH, BLACKPOOL, CLACTON, CLEETHORPES AND SOUTHEND – IN ORDER TO MAINTAIN ORDER AND ‘TO MINIMISE INTER-RACIAL AND INTER-RELIGIOUS CONFLICT’

18 SEPTEMBER 2029 09:27: BRITREAD OPINION POLL SHOWS 78% OF BRITISH VOTERS SUPPORT COMPULSORY REPATRIATION OF GEES BACK TO RUSSIA

20 SEPTEMBER 2029 18:37: SLAPPERS/UNITE CONDEMNS PLANS TO EXTEND USE OF TETE-A-TETE IMPLANT AS ‘UNDEMOCRATIC’

23 SEPTEMBER 2029 23:39: SLAPPERS/UNITE LEADER CARL RUTHERFORD ARRESTED ON CHARGES OF ‘FERMENTING UNREST’ AND ‘SEDITIOUS ACTIVITIES AGAINST UK GOVERNMENT’

27 SEPTEMBER 2029 12:12: ‘BLACKPOOL FOUR’ RELEASED WITHOUT CHARGE +++ GEE LEADERS EXPRESS OUTRAGE AT ‘MISCARRIAGE OF JUSTICE’

27 SEPTEMBER 2029 14:45: LEADER OF BRITISH NATIONALIST PARTY, EDMUND SMALL, ADVISES THOSE GEES WHO DON’T LIKE BRITISH JUSTICE TO ‘GO BACK WHERE THEY CAME FROM’

01 OCTOBER 2029 18:57: TRAFALGAR SQUARE DEMONSTRATION IN PROTEST AGAINST RELEASE OF ‘BLACKPOOL FOUR’ DECLARED ILLEGAL +++ THREE HUNDRED ARRESTS MADE

02 OCTOBER 2029 19:42: CHINESE AND RUSSIAN TROOPS ARE IN A STAND-OFF IN THE ARCTIC AS BOTH COUNTRIES JOSTLE FOR OWNERSHIP OF MINERAL RIGHTS

03 OCTOBER 2029 07:13: INDIAN PRIME MINISTER VIKRAM GUPTA DEFENDS USE OF BATTLEFIELD NUCLEAR WEAPONS AGAINST ‘TSUNAMI’ OF BANGLADESHI REFUGEES FLEEING FLOODS AS NECESSARY FOR ‘NATIONAL SURVIVAL’

07 OCTOBER 2029 12:56: HOME OFFICE REPORTS USE OF CLASS A DRUG ‘PING’ HAS REACHED AN ALL-TIME HIGH

08 OCTOBER 2029 09:15: RAINFALL IN LONDON FOR SEPTEMBER 2029 WAS AN ALL-TIME RECORD OF 105 MM

09 OCTOBER 2029 09:08: CHERY HOLDINGS COMPLETES THE TAKEOVER OF GENERAL MOTORS THE LAST REMAINING INDEPENDENT US VOLUME CAR MANUFACTURER

11 OCTOBER 2029 10:37: THE MET OFFICE ANNOUNCES THAT THE RECENT FLASH FLOODS WHICH INUNDATED MUCH OF EAST ANGLIA WERE CAUSED BY A COMBINATION OF RISING SEA LEVELS AND CHANGES TO RAINFALL PATTERNS +++ SHADOW ENVIRONMENT SPOKESPERSON DEBORAH ARNOLD COMMENTED ‘NO KIDDING’

13 OCTOBER 2029 15:24: PROPOSAL BROUGHT BEFORE PARLIAMENT TO BAN THE USE OF OPAQUE UMBRELLAS ON THE GROUNDS THAT THEY ‘DISRUPT THE EFFECTIVE USE OF FACIAL RECOGNITION SURVEILLANCE EQUIPMENT’

15 OCTOBER 2029 09:18: ‘TAKE THAT’ ANNOUNCE PLANS TO REFORM FOR ANOTHER FAREWELL TOUR

17 OCTOBER 2029 14:10: HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH SEVERLY CRITICISES THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT FOR ITS TREATMENT OF REFUGEES FROM GREATER RUSSIA

19 OCTOBER 2029 20:34: PRIME MINISTER ASHE REJECTS CRITICISMS BY HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH ACCUSING THEM OF BEING ‘NAMBY-PAMBY DO-GOODERS ADRIFT IN SOME FANTASY LIBERAL UTOPIA AND HENCE UNABLE TO APPRECIATE THE CHALLENGES OF THE REAL WORLD BEING FACED BY GOVERNMENTS’

25 OCTOBER 2029 15:07: PRIME MINISTER ASHE ANNOUNCES PLANS TO HOLD A REFERENDUM ON 24^TH JUNE 2030 ON THE ADOPTION OF THE PATRIOT PROJECT WHICH WILL OBLIGE ALL UK RESIDENTS TO WEAR A TETE-A-TETE IMPLANT AND FOR ALL REFUGEES WHO ENTERED BRITAIN UNDER THE UNITED NATIONS EVACUATION PROGRAM TO RETURN TO THEIR COUNTRY OF ORIGIN

26 OCTOBER 2029 09:23: PATRIOT PROJECT CONDEMNED BY HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH AS ‘FASCIST IN INTENT’

26 OCTOBER 2029 10:54: PATRIOT PROJECT CONDEMNED BY UNITED NATIONS AS ‘UNFORTUNATE’

26 OCTOBER 2029 11:16: PATRIOT PROJECT CONDEMNED BY HENRY TOWNSEND LEADER OF REVISEDLABOUR PARTY AS ‘UNDEMOCRATIC AND UNBRITISH’

26 OCTOBER 2029 12:16: BRITREAD OPINION POLL CONDUCTED ON BEHALF OF THE E-MAIL SHOWS 86% OF BRITISH VOTERS SUPPORT THE PATRIOT PROJECT

27 OCTOBER 2029 18:57: RUSSIA SUSPENDS OIL EXPORTS TO CHINA IN RETALIATION FOR ITS ‘FLAGRANT, ILLEGAL AND BELLIGERANT’ OCCUPATION OF RUSSIAN-CLAIMED ARCTIC

28 OCTOBER 2029 23:19: HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH HAS BEEN CLASSIFIED AS A TERRORIST ORGANISATION BY UK GOVERNMENT AND ITS LONDON OFFICE CLOSED

29 OCTOBER 2029 08:27: ANNUAL REPORT OF GLOBAL CLIMATE CONSORTIUM STATES THAT THE 10 CM RISE IN SEA LEVELS AND THE 1.5⁰C RISE IN GLOBAL TEMPERATES OVER THE THIRTY YEAR PERIOD TO 2028 IS ‘A BLIP’

29 OCTOBER 2029 05:34: 101^ST ACADEMY AWARDS HELD IN BEIJING SAW SIR BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH WINS BEST ACTOR OSCAR FOR HIS ROLE IN CHARLIE FARADAY’S ROMANTIC COMEDY ‘SUICIDE IS A BLAST’

01 NOVEMBER 2029 20:43: TWITTER ANNOUNCES THAT SIR STEPHEN FRY IS THE FIRST CELEBRITY TO BOAST ONE BILLION FOLLOWERS

03 NOVEMBER 2029 11:25: HOME SECRETARY FRANCES PACKHARD REJECTS OPPOSITION AMENDMENT TO ‘SUS LAW’ CLAIMING THAT ‘STOP AND SHOT’ IS VITAL FOR THE EFFECTIVE POLICING OF BRITAIN

08 NOVEMBER 2029 09:11: RAINFALL IN LONDON FOR OCTOBER 2029 WAS AN ALL-TIME RECORD OF 125 MM

13 NOVEMBER 2029 19:18: INSURANCE CLAIMS RELATING TO THE APOPHIS ASTEROID NEAR-MISS IN APRIL 2029 TOPS TEN BILLION DOLLARS

14 NOVEMBER 2029 05:41: GLOBAL CLIMATE CONSORTIUM IS FORCED TO VACATE ITS NEW YORK OFFICES DUE TO FLOODING

17  NOVEMBER 2029 14:53: AT A PRESS CONFERENCE TODAY THE ALL-ENGLAND CLUB ANNOUNCED IT WILL ROOF IN ALL ITS COURTS BEFORE THE 2030 WIMBLEDON CHAMPIONSHIP AND SWITCH TO CLAY +++ THE LEVEL OF RAINFALL IN THE UK IS CITED AS THE REASON BEHIND THIS MOVE

23 NOVEMBER 2029 19:42: RUSSIAN PRESIDENT PETR SHOVIN CONFIRMS THAT ALL RETURNING GEES MUST CONVERT TO ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY +++ ‘WHILST RUSSIA REMAINS A LIBERAL, DEMOCRATIC AND TOLERANT COUNTRY IT CANNOT PERMIT THOSE HOLDING SUCH PERNICIOUS AND DELIQUENT BELIEFS TO RESIDE IN OUR COUNTRY. THIS WOULD VIOLATE THE CODE OF ONE NATION, ONE BLOOD AND ONE GOD WHICH GUIDES THE RUSSIAN GOVERNMENT’

08 DECEMBER 2029 09:19: RAINFALL IN LONDON FOR NOVEMBER 2029 WAS AN ALL-TIME RECORD OF 111 MM

11 DECEMBER 2029 20:45: RUSSIAN PRESIDENT PETR SHOVIN CONFIRMS THAT ALL JEWISH AND MUSLIM GEES RETURNING TO GREATER RUSSIA AS A RESULT OF THE UK ADOPTING THE PATRIOT PROJECT WILL INITIALLY BE HELD IN ‘RE-EDUCATION CENTRES’

14 DECEMBER 2029 08:14: AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL DESCRIBES THE LEVEL OF SUICIDES IN THE GEEBURGS – RUNNING AT FIVE-TIMES THE NATIONAL AVERAGE – AS A SCANDAL

17 DECEMBER 2029 11:00: BRITAIN HOLDS A THREE-MINUTE SILENCE TO COMMEMORATE THE TWO-HUNDRED THOUSAND WHO DIED IN THE DIRTY-BOMB ATTACK ON LIVERPOOL IN 2021

20 DECEMBER 2029 19:02: UK’S JESUS FACTION IN ITS XMAS MESSAGE DEMANDS THAT ALL RUSSIAN REFUGEES BE DEPORTED AND THAT THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT PURSUE A POLICY OF ‘SALVATION THROUGH RACIAL PURITY’

24 DECEMBER 2029 10:14: ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY ANNOUNCES THAT THOSE WHO PROTEST THE USE OF THE PANOPTIKA SURVEILLANCE SYSTEM ARE ‘MISGUIDED’ +++ ‘THE DESIRE FOR PRIVACY IS A SIN’

01 JANUARY 2030 13:18: AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL HAS BEEN CLASSIFIED AS A TERRORIST ORGANISATION BY UK GOVERNMENT AND ITS LONDON OFFICE CLOSED

05 JANUARY 2030 08:09: ON THE TENTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE ONE-DAY WAR WHICH DESTROYED MOST OF THE MIDDLE EAST IN A NUCLEAR CONFLAGRATION UN SECRETARY GENERAL MOSES OWOLOWO URGES WORLD LEADERS ‘TO LEARN THE LESSONS SO DEARLY BOUGHT AND TO TURN AWAY FROM WAR AS A MEANS OF SETTLING INTERNATIONAL DISPUTES’

06 JANUARY 2030 18:52: CHINA AMASSES TEN DIVISIONS ON THE SINO-RUSSIAN BORDER IN RETALIATION FOR SUSPENSION OF OIL DELIVERIES FROM RUSSIA

08 JANUARY 2030 09:15: RAINFALL IN LONDON FOR DECEMBER 2029 WAS AN ALL-TIME RECORD OF 101 MM

09 JANUARY 2030 08:21: MET OFFICE ANNOUNCES THAT 2029 WAS THE UK’S WETTEST YEAR ON RECORD

09 JANUARY 2030 07:12: US PRESIDENT KIM SAUNDERS OFFERS TO MEDIATE IN SINO-RUSSIAN ARCTIC DISPUTE

10 JANUARY 2030 03:53: US ARBITRATION OFFER REJECTED AS RUSSIA AND CHINA AGREE THAT ‘MINOR NATIONS’ SHOULD NOT BE INVOLVED IN THE DISCUSSION PROCESS

12 JANUARY 2030 05:47: UN SECRETARY GENERAL MOSES OWOLOWO AGREES TO CHAIR CONERENCE TO SETTLE SINO-RUSSIAN ARCTIC DISPUTE

18 JANUARY 2030 04:17: UK’S BID TO HOST THE 2038 WORLD CUP HAS BEEN REJECTED BECAUSE OF CONCERNS REGARDING ‘POLITICAL AND SOCIAL INSTABILITY’

24 JANUARY 2030 07:21: IN GENEVA RUSSIAN AND CHINESE NEGOTIATORS AGREE THE AREAS OF THE ARCTIC WHICH WILL FALL UNDER THEIR ‘ZONE OF INFLUENCE’ +++ PROTESTS BY THE US, NORWAY AND CANADA ARE DISMISSED AS ‘INCONSEQUENTIAL’

28 JANUARY 2030 10:47: WILLIAM MORRISON HEAD OF NATIONAL PROTECTION AGENCY ANNOUNCES UPGRADING OF GCHQ’S QUANPUTERS PLATFORMING PANOPTIKA SURVEILLANCE SYSTEM

01 FEBRUARY 2030 19:56: WWF ANNOUNCES THAT ‘POLAR BEAR EXTINCT IN THE WILD’

02 FEBRUARY 2030 05:13: UN SECRETARY GENERAL MOSES OWOLOWO ANNOUNCES THAT THE MALDIVES HAVE OFFICIALLY ‘CEASED TO EXIST’

04 FEBRUARY 2030 10:53: GENERAL MEDICAL COUNCIL CRITCISES GOVERNMENT FOR IGNORING UPSURGE IN CHILDREN PRESENTING WITH RICKETS +++ GMC DEMANDS RETURN OF FREE SCHOOL MILK AND VITAMIN SUPPLEMENTS

08 FEBRUARY 2030 09:12: RAINFALL IN LONDON FOR JANUARY 2030 WAS AN ALL-TIME RECORD OF 105 MM

08 FEBRUARY 2030 13:53: BAQTRAQ CYBERSYSTEMS UNVEILS THE ‘NEW IMPROVED’ VERSION OF ITS BEST-SELLING ‘EYEFLY’ NANODRONE.

09 FEBRUARY 2030 10:20: JENNI-FUR SITS DOWN TO WRITE HER JOURNAL TIPPY-TIP-TYPED MOST LABOURIOUSLY ON AN UNDERWOOD CHAMPION CIRCA PRE-GAS THIS TO ENSURE HER THOUGHTS ARE NOT ANALYSED IN THE MOST INTIMATE OF FASHION BY THOSE NATIONAL PROTECTION AGENCY SCUMBOIDS …