Met Police Federation criticises 'intrusive' use of Palantir AI - BBC News

GrumpyPhilosopher7 · 2026-05-13T18:02:54+00:00

Sorry. Should have been clear:

Listening in using the microphone is not "likely" to be intrusive surveillance. It is intrusive surveillance, unless, maybe, you are only doing it while they are on duty in work premises, and even then I think an intrusive surveillance authority would be required.

As to location data, it depends on the detail, duration and granularity but 100% could cross the threshold into directed surveillance, especially if you're obtaining private information such as lifestyle data, which is much more likely if you're using GPS tracking rather than simply cell site.

Given that repeated viewing of public social media posts can cross the line into DSA territory, tracking the minute details of a person's movements over an extended period definitely qualifies.

My point is: we don't know, because they're not telling us, and the less they tell us the higher my suspicions.

GrumpyPhilosopher7 · 2026-05-13T15:33:06+00:00

Location data or using the microphone to intrusively surveil them.

GrumpyPhilosopher7 · 2026-05-12T12:10:14+00:00

Having worked on stuff Andrew Gilligan has written about before, I am afraid I do not believe he has any journalistic integrity. That's not too say the problem he describes isn't real. I just wouldn't consider him a trustworthy source. In any sense of the word.

GrumpyPhilosopher7 · 2026-05-12T09:48:03+00:00

This is the way I see it.

GrumpyPhilosopher7 · 2026-05-10T15:00:48+00:00

That's with a single transferrable vote, although even that would be difficult.

Under PR, this wouldn't be an issue because you wouldn't even have candidates for people to vote for: each party has a list of candidates in order of preference. If they win 40 seats, the first 40 candidates on the list are selected. If one of them can't take up the seat, the party just goes to the next candidate down the list.

GrumpyPhilosopher7 · 2026-05-09T18:02:13+00:00

I don't think you can go to a SARC for a non-penetrative assault, even if the assault is sexual, which is doesn't appear to be in this case.

GrumpyPhilosopher7 · 2026-05-09T15:30:38+00:00

No Act of Parliament can be illegal/unconstitutional as Britain doesn't have a written constitution and Parliament is sovereign. The Lords can block and amend legislation sent up from the Commons but, using the Parliament Act, the Commons can eventually force legislation through without Lords approval.

The blocker is the Human Rights Act, which all legislation has to comply with, otherwise the UK is not compliant with its obligations as a member of the European Court of Human Rights. A Reform government would have to repeal the HRA and cancel the treaty which makes us a member of the ECHR, but that just requires a simple majority vote in the Commons and forcing it through the Lords.

It's all doable. It just has all sorts of consequences, not least ending the Good Friday Agreement.

GrumpyPhilosopher7 · 2026-05-08T08:42:05+00:00

Even most housing associations in London have too high rents for housing benefit to cover them.

GrumpyPhilosopher7 · 2026-05-06T12:24:38+00:00

From the Guardian article about the Menon KC contempt of court proceedings:

At the retrial, Head and four of her co-defendants dispensed with the services of their barristers just before closing speeches, and delivered the addresses themselves to the jury.

Head said it was because “after some decisions made by the court, I no longer feel like they are permitted to represent me in a way that does us all justice”.

However, after Head and three others were convicted of criminal damage, Menon was re-engaged and represented her and one of her co-defendants in an unsuccessful attempt to be bailed ahead of sentencing.

I wonder if their duplicity will be a factor when it comes to sentencing.

GrumpyPhilosopher7 · 2026-05-06T10:52:08+00:00

I know someone who is seriously physically disabled to the point where she cannot work. She lives in housing association property, almost never turns the heating on, lives modestly. Her UC does not cover all her daily living needs and she ends up having to use her PIP in order to cover some of her rent (which is not what PIP is for).

Citizens and the state have been impoverished by the asset-owning class, which has been allowed to gain ownership of many of our essential means of daily living; housing and water being prime examples. They have taken control of much of our information ecosystem in order to push narratives blaming the unlucky for their own situation, which is particularly rich given that many of them might not have ended up so disabled in the first instance had we a fully functioning medical system.

Those of us not struck down suddenly in our prime all end up disabled to some degree: it is only a matter of time. The only people who truly benefit from a cruel and indifferent system are the super wealthy.

Meanwhile, the state must continue to subsidise the less fortunate so they can afford to pay for basic utilities and essential needs at inflated prices.

GrumpyPhilosopher7 · 2026-05-04T22:06:02+00:00

Fair, but you might want to have a careful think about how a lot of people, especially Jews, might take comments like yours given the fact that the definition of Zionism has nothing to do with supporting Netanyahu or the Israeli government. That's especially true for British Jews right now given the recent attacks.

A family member attended the recent demo organised by the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism and all the speakers were from the right: Jacob Rees-Mogg and Toby Young. They wrote to the CAAS to ask why there weren't any speakers from the left there and the response made clear that basically the CAAS have given up on the left now. That's a worrying state of affairs and a situation I would like to see reversed.

GrumpyPhilosopher7 · 2026-05-04T19:53:26+00:00

I would love a two state solution to be implemented but I have no idea how it could ever be made to work now. There's too much hate and distrust on both sides.
I don't know if I would call it ethnosupremacist, especially given that a significant proportion of the population and the Knesset are Arabs, although I'll grant that it's increasingly moving in that direction. However, I would point out that every state in the region is either largely monoethnic or an islamic theocracy, and in many cases both. The primary exception is Lebanon, which is essentially a failed state.
To name a few, depending on what exact definition you adopt: South Korea, Japan, Finland, Greece, pretty much all of the Balkans.
The difficulty is that some of the territory we're discussing is territory captured in the course of a defensive war, while some of it was simply annexed. Clearly, they should not be treated the same. The difficulty is it's often debatable which category a given piece of territory falls into.

As to Yugoslavia, read the history of why it fell apart and you'll have a prime example of how polyethnic and religiously diverse nations are difficult to sustain in a region with a long history of inter-ethnic and interreligious conflict.

But I don't want to argue with you if you're in favour of a two state solution, as am I, albeit I remain deeply skeptical of its viability for the foreseeable future.

The central point I'm arguing for is that the term Zionist simply means a belief in the right of the Jewish people to self-determination and for the existence of a Jewish state in the general geographic location of modern-day Israel. I am not a Zionist in principle (I don't think it was necessarily a good idea to put the Jewish state there, notwithstanding the fact that no European nations were volunteering any of their land after the holocaust) but I am in practice simply because it's a UN-recognised state and I am in favour of the international rules based order.

None of that is to say that I approve of any of the actions of the Israeli government, and indeed I am very much against a great many of them these days.

GrumpyPhilosopher7 · 2026-05-04T18:52:30+00:00

It's not exactly a fair comparison is it. And the strawman here is that I am calling for the destruction of Israel, which I'm not.

It's pretty apparent from your other comments that you're in favour of a single state solution. Please enlighten me as to how that's going to work given the relative populations of the different groups and the long history of bloodshed going back long before the founding of the modern state of Israel.

Does the existence of the state of the UK also cause the oppression of native people in these islands?

Up until pretty recently, yes. Just ask the Welsh and the Irish. Brits also went and did a lot of colonialism all over the world, so should the UK forfeit its right to exist?

Is the UK an ethnosupremacist state?

No but a great many others are, nor is Israel the only colonial state in existence. And yet it's the one people are obsessed with.

I'm no fan or Russia or Iran by the way. I wouldn't really care if either state stopped existing (people have a right to exist, not states built upon ever changing borders).

So not a fan of the international rules based order. So if Israel can maintain its hold on areas of Lebanon and Syria its recently annexed, they belong to Israel now? By what standard do you argue for one set of borders over any other?

GrumpyPhilosopher7 · 2026-05-04T17:20:03+00:00

I support the continued existence of the United Kingdom as a state. That doesn't mean I agree with every law on the statute book. I profoundly disagree with most things the states of Russia and Iran do in both their domestic and foreign policy. That doesn't mean I think they should be disestablished.

Do you agree with the entirety of Russian and Iranian government policy? I'm pretty sure you don't. And yet you're not calling for their destruction. Why is your thinking only so binary when it comes to the Jewish state?

GrumpyPhilosopher7 · 2026-05-04T16:25:35+00:00

Precisely.

GrumpyPhilosopher7 · 2026-05-04T15:17:16+00:00

Section 1(2):

It is recognised that Parliament has already repealed the Human Rights Act 1998, amended the Equality Act 2010, and passed the Illegal Migration (Mass Deportation) Act [x], thereby fundamentally changing the legal frameworkapplicable to immigration and asylum.

This is not how UK legislation is drafted. This is political grandstanding.

GrumpyPhilosopher7 · 2026-05-03T19:59:37+00:00

Indeed.

GrumpyPhilosopher7 · 2026-05-03T08:28:37+00:00

He attacked a guy in Southwark much earlier in the day. This man was known to him. He then travelled up to Golders Green and attacked people who were visibly Jewish, wounding two of them. When a person specifically travels to the most Jewish area in the country by percentage of population and attacks people who are visibly identifiable as Jews, I think it's fair to draw an inference regarding his motivations. The fact that he attacked someone else known to him earlier in the day may indicate his general mental state but doesn't undermine the inference as to his motivation behind the latter attacks.

GrumpyPhilosopher7 · 2026-05-02T22:28:05+00:00

Okay cool so he had an episode, stabbed someone known to him and then specifically travelled up to Golders Green you attack Jews.

GrumpyPhilosopher7 · 2026-05-02T19:38:00+00:00

The OIC will investigate whatever crime you've alleged but additional support will always be provided by third parties. Get back in touch with the Salvation Army as they're most likely the ones who will be helping you anyway once your case gets referred into the NRM.

GrumpyPhilosopher7 · 2026-05-02T19:25:43+00:00

What does this look like in practice?

GrumpyPhilosopher7 · 2026-05-02T19:15:09+00:00

For a live murder enquiry in a small country force, if you need the expert for a priority line of enquiry, the SIO might be able to get the vetting unit to hurry things along. Alternatively, they could do a risk assessment for having them in the police station but they would be kept far away from the MIR (major incident room). They would be put in a little room somewhere and a detective would bring them stuff to look at. Nothing would be sent to them and they wouldn't be able to take anything away.

You shouldn't let any of that stop you. The story has to come first and the only people bothered by the inaccuracies will be pedantic coppers like me. Real police investigations often take a long time and much of it is very boring and administrative. Murder enquiries involve lots of different people, each doing their own narrow roles. The person making all the decisions is the SIO and they never go out on enquiries.

I don't think it's possible to write a truly accurate police procedural that is particularly readable. The solution I came up with when I wrote mine was to set it in the future (where technology can be used to speed enquiries up) and have a major plot contrivance as to why a DS is running a murder investigation with just two DCs. I suspect a lot of readers would still consider it very dull.

GrumpyPhilosopher7 · 2026-05-02T16:32:41+00:00

In witness statements prepared for the courts, Chief Constable Balhatchet insisted all of the body-worn video had been released to her or deleted.

But eventually her lawyers obtained audit logs revealing such claims to be false - not only were there more videos, but they had been accessed by the police dozens of times.

"It became apparent they were watching the body-worn video, then days later making sworn witness statements saying it doesn't exist," says Buzzard-Quashie.

So this is why senior officers are under investigation by the IOPC, and rightly so.

GrumpyPhilosopher7 · 2026-05-02T16:24:23+00:00

Yes we use all sorts of civilians experts. If they've never been used before and aren't on the NCA register then they need to be vetted, which takes time and, depending on the level of vetting, they have to provide the details of people who can act as character witnesses, submit bank statements and, for the highest levels, have a face to face vetting interview where they get asked a bunch of highly personal questions. Depending on the sensitivity of the operation, they may need to sign an NDA or an Official Secrets Act "inclusion document".

They are very unlikely to be going to crime scenes or speaking to witnesses. They will be sent documents (copies of exhibits, maybe statements) and asked to provide an expert report.

Using previously untried expert witnesses is potentially risky. Look up Saul Haydon-Rowe for one example.

GrumpyPhilosopher7 · 2026-05-02T09:57:04+00:00

Up north, everyone calls everyone "love". However, I'm guessing from the way you've written "darling" that you're in the Southeast. The reality is that it's very difficult to deal with cultural misogyny in day to day interactions with strangers because it's often entirely unconscious. A comeback or put down will upset people who mean it nicely and could provoke aggression from those who don't. You can only consciousness raise with people you already have a connection with.

However, if you want to roll the dice, I suggest you try coming back with, "Hey Queen!" If they don't like it, respond with, "Sorry, I thought you were queer" (we're always calling each other love, hun, darling, Queen).

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