Church and State blog: Declan reports Facebook to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal

Thursday, August 18, 2011

Declan reports Facebook to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal

In our About page statement, I added last night that within one week of Declan’s application to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) above regarding the interception of our communications and directed surveillance, our live-in landlady, human rights activist Belinda McKenzie, served us with backdated notice to vacate our home by the end of January (see previous blog). In fact, within that week Facebook disabled my account without warning or cause and SiteGround blocked my IP address, the latter of which prevented me from accessing our website for the first time since the web host began hosting the site back in December 2010. Although my IP address is now unblocked, Facebook has yet to get back to me or restore my account. We also have no idea who or what is next in the queue; but whomever or whatever it is, this afternoon Declan opened up a fast track to the IPT with Facebook:

Click to enlarge

Perhaps our jobcentre, Highgate Jobcentre Plus (of the Department for Work and Pensions), will be next. They have lined us up for a one-hour interview next Thursday to take a shot at our jobseekers agreements with the DWP, which we always far exceed. It is scheduled to take place prior to our 'sign on', a prerequisite to our receipt the following Tuesday of £211, the money we receive for the both of us every two weeks. We smell trouble. After all, it was the DWP that forced us to sleep rough on the streets of London for more than 2 1/2 years, from 3 November 2006 and 13 July 2009, because Declan didn’t 'sign on' TWO DAYS BEFORE he was due to do so on 29 September 2006 (see paragraph 10 of the application to the IPT above; paragraphs 2 and 3 give a bit of our background).

It still baffles me that Belinda didn’t say anything to us about vacating our flat until three weeks after our one-year tenancy agreement ran out on 26 July, despite us emailing her twice for a new agreement (we have been here since July 2009); then she leaves an undated notice for us in the hall together with a new six-month agreement backdated to 26 July. Declan’s application to the IPT on 10 August includes two stunning photographs of MI5 whistleblower David Shayler, who lived for a couple of years in one of the rooms below us, until 2007 more or less. According to the BBC, Shayler "caused the biggest crisis of official secrecy since the spy catcher affair". By around 2007, he had been successfully neutralised: he changed his name to Delores Kane, declared himself to be Jesus, and became a squatter. A New Statesman article dated 11 September 2006 featuring Belinda and Shayler gives no indication that he believed he was the Messiah at that time.

Human rights activist Belinda McKenzie speaking at the UK Rally against child abuse, 4 June 2011, Trafalgar Square

We assume Belinda knows that come the end of January it is likely to be freezing cold, if not actually snowing!

Church and State

MAYOR OF LONDON RSI PROPERTY
DAY 406 IN A WEEKLY PERIODIC TENANCY
SUBJECT TO A SECTION 21 NOTICE

(SEE PARA. 3 BELOW)

1. Our 308 Honorary Associates include 20 Nobel Prize laureates. Declan and I are engaged in a project that deals with the publication of issues significant to social policy in a number of key areas, e.g., climate change, population, futurism, atheism, and free speech. Established as Network for Church Monitoring, a non-profit company limited by guarantee, our main publication, found at the website, Church and State, calls attention to subjects, not the least which have been critical of the interaction between religious and secular institutions. We have been the target of numerous threats and actions, e.g., the former resulting in threats to Declan's life, and the latter, which have led to vandalism. The various incidents are on record with the police and other official agencies.

2. There are no less than 63 Nobel Prize laureates on the Church and State website from 20 Honorary Associates, eight articles, nine book excerpts and 33 petition signatories. (For example, one Nobel laureate signed our Nobel petition in support of human embryonic stem cell research and gave us permission to excerpt from one of his books.) Our list of associates also includes 18 US National Medal laureates, and six Turing Award laureates (the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in computer science). We have published one article and excerpted from the books of seven members of the British House of Lords. And there are 31 knighted professors on the site from 13 Honorary Associates, one book excerpt and 21 petition signatories. These figures are despite the never-ending assault on our email (this link reveals the targeting of our emails to, among others, a close colleague in Washington, DC as well as space advocates and Nobel laureates).

3. This is Day 406 for us living under the threat to life of a 'no fault' eviction by Peabody Trust.[1] We live in a Mayor of London's Rough Sleepers Initiative (RSI) property. Peabody's appalling new terms of tenancy have forced us into an unstable weekly periodic tenancy that poses a threat to Declan's life and inhibits our ability to exercise our rights. Declan accumulated quite a history with the Housing Ombudsman Service before he received the Ombudsman's decision not to investigate a referral from Lyn Brown MP on jurisdictional grounds. The Ombudsman was asked to consider whether or not our tenancy has been renewed like for like; and whether, if not, it should be in light of the landlord having accused us of not signing a like-for-like agreement. The Equality and Human Rights Commission will not accept a referral of discrimination from Ms Brown, the Commission's helpline (EASS) having grossly distorted the complaint against Peabody. We no longer have pro se access to the courts (see next paragraph).

4. This eviction matter came before District Judge Ruth Fine at the Central London County Court on 30 June 2020, when both counsel for St Mungo's (the charity in effective control of our tenancy) and Declan presented their positions. Declan lost the case and was ordered to pay £1,850 in costs. A publishing colleague in America cleared these costs within 24 hours of my blog post about this hearing for strike out on a related issue that was the essence of the claim, i.e., that St Mungo's would take a phone call to confirm that we are clients of the Mayor of London's RSI programme. Within a week of the hearing, St Mungo's had agreed to take this phone call for us both, the Court having ruled that they were not obliged to do so despite our circumstances. This time we escaped bankruptcy (counsel for St Mungo's asked for £3,407.50 in costs), but consider that to seek pro se access to justice in the courts has become far too dangerous for us. Declan currently has before the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman the decision of the Information Commissioner that allows St Mungo's to continue processing coercive support plans without our knowledge or consent and that also poses a threat to his life.

5. When it comes to traffic, we have had 10.7 million hits in the past three years on Facebook; however, I left the platform on 13 March 2021 for one year rather than risk being banned for life. It is indisputable that with any sort of level playing field Church and State would have far exceeded 2.5 million hits last year. In addition to a large variety of blocks without explanation, Facebook had so severely restricted our Page's distribution by October 2020 that it was almost as good as an unpublished page.[2] Currently, we are up to their 85th block since 1 December 2015, and as usual without an explanation. This block records as one half of their 3rd double block in the first five weeks of this year that lasted 60 days. Our traffic has also been curtailed by over 2.5K blocks on access to Church and State since 26 July 2016, including 29 full distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks since 17 May 2019 that have lasted for as long as 54 hours at a time.[3] About 70% of our hits are from Americans.

"This is precisely the hard hitting kind of response needed to clarify the unfair way Facebook is treating your highly reputable site." Don Collins, Founder, International Services Assistance Fund, Washington DC

Last updated: 26/06/21

_________________________

[1] Once a fixed term has elapsed, the landlord has the option to seek eviction even if the tenant has upheld their obligations in full (though of course the landlord must still apply for and obtain a county court order).

[2] 17/10/20: We have permission to publish this ISAF letter of 30 September to Facebook COO Sheryl Samberg. Facebook has so severely restricted our Page's distribution since 4 September that it's almost as good as an unpublished page

[3] Since October 2019, we have been defining a full DDoS attack as having such a high volume of up to 4-minute blocks on access to Church and State that we don't bother recording them all.

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Thursday, August 18, 2011

Declan reports Facebook to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal

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