UK security chief: How 'bout a tax for tech firms that are 'uncooperative' on terror content? Tech firms are indirectly costing the UK government millions in "human surveillance" of extremist content and should have a windfall tax levied against them to make up for it, according to security minister Ben Wallace. Wallace said that inaction from internet giants means the cost of tackling terror content is "heaped on law …
just to point out, this is all about using a TAX to stifle an activity.
I have to wonder if ANY kind of tax would "stifle activity". Logically concludes into an argument in favor of supply side economics (which I'll spare you from). If 'a' equals 'b', then 'b' should equal 'a', right?
Just sayin'.
Coffee houses were notorious fora for believers in dangerous ideas - like free speech - to get together and, um, radicalise.
I seem to remember that at least one ruler of the Ottoman Empire banned coffee shops and turned a blind eye to shops selling alcohol for exactly that reason.
I think he meant to say "alleged terror content".
Certainly there is content out there that promotes terrorism, and some of it may even be blatantly obvious, but once you throw "trivia" like due process out the window, suddenly anything the establishment doesn't like becomes arbitrarily designated as "terrorism", and can be intercepted, monitored, logged, blocked, censored and generally used to persecute you, with complete impunity.
Frankly there's more "radicalisation" coming from Westminster than anywhere else, given the brazen propaganda it spreads implying that companies are somehow aiding and abetting terrorism merely by refusing to violate civil and human rights.
So it turns out that fighting crime costs money?
Good, it's supposed to. I'd rather my taxes were spent on fighting crime than persecuting people who simply dare to disagree with the government.
NB: It's worth remembering that the original definition of "terrorism" was "state rule by terror", before the actual terrorists "radicalised" people into believing otherwise.
"Wallace said that inaction from internet giants means the cost of tackling terror content is "heaped on law enforcement agencies" – and the state should be able to recoup that in some way."
Just imagine the work and money they would've saved themselves if they hadn't gone in all guns blazing on various countries in the middle east.
To be fair, while there's much to blame British governments for, much of it is historic. You can't blame the botched establishment of what is now Israel on today's politicians. Nor the overthrow of a popular elected government in 1950s Iran and the imposition of a despotic Shah, leading to the 1979 Islamic revolution.
"Wallace said that inaction from internet giants means the cost of tackling terror content is "heaped on law enforcement agencies" – and the state should be able to recoup that in some way."
Strangely, perhaps, it was my belief that the law enforcement agencies were paid to enforce the law already, that's their job.
If various internet companies didn't already help them out with traffic capture and analysis, the law enforcement agencies would be much worse off than they are now.
Essentially it is this:
"Please Mrs May, I've made lots and lots of noise to get big nasty Google to pay some more money, so that you can spend more money on illegally bailing out the East Coast Line. If you give me a much more important job then I can attack Apple and Facebook and extort bribe fine them for some more cash as well"
They aren't acted on because there's insufficient resource to do so. And because we have laws preventing harassment of people without any evidence there's a limit to how much investigation can go on anyway. Much of what could happen would be monitoring of communication and contacts. What were you asking for again?
"Today way have big data systems that monitor vast amount of facebook, twitter and keep a record of which web sites every UK citizen visits. A slightly different scale funding to a few policemen checking a facebook page or two each year"
This is a beautiful demonstration that you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.
If you want to educate yourself find out how many suspected terrorists there are, what methods are used to monitor them and how many contacts those people might have. Those details are available from the newspapers and the BBC. And then try to come up with a basic budget. You don't have to know details to get within a couple of orders of magnitude, you can even assume 24/7 covert surveillance is practical with one person and a travelcard if you want. Then add in everyone "dobbed in" and do the sums again.
"for the police to investigate when terrorists get dobbed in by the neighbours"
Bad idea. I mean: why are we paying taxes for? Isn't that exactly to get jobs like this done from the government in the first place?
Also... remember the last suicide bomber in London? No? Good, because that's the best way to punish them: forgetting about the people who did it and only remember the incident itself.
But anyway: several people from his surroundings, including people from the mosque he visited, had warned the authorities several times. And the police did little more than putting the person on a list.
If that's how our government responds to reported terrorist threats, then I think that money is the least of their issues.
More incentive for tech companies to move the operational elements, and the related jobs outside of HMG's jurisdiction....This government via the Investigatory powers act and other nonsense has effectively ensured that no-one with a brain is going to set up an IT service organisation in the UK and those already here have a huge incentive to skedaddle. They've likely caused vastly more economic damage than ISIS ever could....
I've only got personal experience to go on, but I know a motorbiker died last year in the six hours it took an ambulance to get to him and I know someone got stabbed over Christmas because the nearest Police officer available to respond to the call was 30 miles away.
Neither of those events would have happened 10 years ago.
There's been a reduction in the number of Police officers available to respond. There's been a reduction in Police civilian staff. There's been a cut in Police helicopter cover. There's been a halving of roads policing (i.e. traffic cops). There's been a cut in coroner cover. There's been a cut in search and rescue cover. The Navy and RAF are smaller. There's been a dramatic increase in ambulance wait times.
Maybe lots more people are getting injured. Maybe the money is being spent elsewhere. I don't know. But it is very, very bad right now and people are dying in circumstances where they wouldn't have ten years ago.
What I've also noticed is that both Ambulance and Police will refuse to attend if they're understaffed rather than risk making a mistake and being sued or prosecuted. Ambulance in particular will turn up with five crews and a specialist Hazardous Area Rescue Team now whereas before they'd use a stretcher and volunteers/firemen.
The 7/705 London bombings killed 59 people (including the terrorists and a Brazilan electrician
The Manchester bombing of 22/5/17 killed 23 (including the bomber).
So while those were personal tragedies for the victims families I think you're probably right.
This is the "I have spot on my nose, I'll just get a chain saw and remove it" school of logic.
True but HMG doesn't want to pay and the level of data they want is a lot more than just for targeted advertising.
A new business model then? Pay for targeted radicals.
On the other hand, the governments slurp everything anyway so they already have it. Maybe not slurp everything which is too much to sort through and only pay for what they want?
"sell our details to loans and soft-porn companies"
No no the government he's got it wrong. All web based porn companies who want to be accessible in the UK will have to have seen something to prove you're over 18 if you want to watch smut - your details. Otherwise you won't be able to see smut on these naughty sites officially............. you'll have to view it in one of the many other ways, or watch different porn on unregulated sites.
Surely tech firms are indirectly saving the UK government millions in "human surveillance" of extremist content by building and maintaining services that extremists use to communicate? All the security services need to do is follow due process and get a court order to obtain the communications records of the suspects. Unless the security services don't want to follow due process with judicial oversight, and the "suspects" are anyone who questions authority.
We're all extremists now...
..especially given that various governments are already embroiled in battles to get the businesses to pay what they still owe.
If the companies are breaking tax laws, then they should haul them before the courts. The problem is that the companies are not breaking any laws. They just happen to be using laws not in the manner intended when the laws were written.
If governments want these businesses to pay more tax, they have to change the tax rules.
"If governments want these businesses to pay more tax, they have to change the tax rules."
It's not that easy.
If you have a small indigenous economy you don't have that much to lose by inviting in multinationals by offering low taxation. What's more those indigenous businesses gain off the back of it by being lightly taxed. If you have a large economy the tax lost by taxing those lightly offsets the gains obtained by binging in those large multinationals. It's a trade-off. What you see happening is complaints about not being able to compete in what's in effect a free market in taxation of multinationals. Governments, as usual, wanting their cake and eating it.
If you have a small indigenous economy ....
But we don't. The UK is the fifth largest economy in the world. It is a hub of commerce, finance and law, of business services, and it has a very open market of over 60 million consumers. It has world class transport links, an innovative business sector, a host of world class engineering firms, reliable and safe energy (despite the government's best efforts so far), world class education and scientific research,
it has huge international respect and prestige. Not that you'd know any of that if the BBC or Graun are your usual news sources.
There's plenty of ways that the government could improve its tax take from tax dodging multi-nationals, and ways of making sure that if they don't want to pay the taxes, they don't do business here. Unfortunately, Westminster is infested by the hard of thinking, the timid, and the incompetent, so I'm not expecting much to change.
This post has been deleted by its author
How many of the world's 5 largest economies are in the EU?
Depending on who you ask, but generally accepted to be two. Extend the range to the top 10 and you can add another 2, sometimes 3 EU countries.
Unfortunately the UK's economy has no worthwhile foundations underpinning it and is rather too focussed around moving other people's money about and being a handy gateway between the US and the EU.
"How many of the world's 5 largest economies are in the EU?"
2: France and Germany
UK stopped being the 5th largest when we voted for Brexit and, when we implement Brexit, we will either go shooting back into the Top 5 or shooting downwards to irrelevance, depending on your personal Leave/Remain polarity.
Note that the 3 world economies bigger than Germany have much bigger populations: Japan 150%; China 1500%; USA 350%.
And it's about to flush all that down the toilet on March 29 next year.
Nonsense, it's just being redirected away from the nice quiet cul-de-sac the majority of voters want Britain to be.
Move all the hippies, east europeans, gypsies threatening the peas and quiet. Chalk another success like preventing air traffic going over the well-to-do neighbourhoods...
@ Ledswinger
"World class transport links"
Not within huge swathes of the UK we don't!
Where we have vaguely passable transport links teh prices are a joke (when its cheaper to fly from A to B (sometimes via C on the continent) than get a train its not world class.
And as for the road system .. most journeys are a pain (try E-W coast to coast journeys in many areas of UK and come back and say world class - - the x country links e.g. M62 are few and far between)
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
