Church and State blog: British Telecom: We lose our Internet connection for the second time in two days, having not previously been disconnected from the Internet since our contract with BT commenced on 28 May 2014 (WITH UPDATE 17/6/2017 RE: 18th Internet cut since 26 May 2017)

Saturday, May 27, 2017

British Telecom: We lose our Internet connection for the second time in two days, having not previously been disconnected from the Internet since our contract with BT commenced on 28 May 2014 (WITH UPDATE 17/6/2017 RE: 18th Internet cut since 26 May 2017)

Re: Blocks on public access to our Church and State website since 26 July 2016

From my earlier blog post's Update 17 June (8.50am):

"I have updated my blog post of 16 January with last night's 499th block on public access to our Church and State website since 26 July 2016. The blog post also not only reveals a record-breaking 52 such blocks in one week at the end of April (an unprecedented escalation that kicked off with our focus on Denmark's cartoon crisis; 94 blocks last month), but it reveals the daily targeting to fluctuating degrees of category pages throughout the site which continues to this day."

An unprecedented ten blocks in one day on 7 May with our publication of Atheist Ireland republishes 25 blasphemous quotes in solidarity with Stephen Fry. 12 blocks last week; 15 blocks so far this week; four blocks yesterday; no blocks since midnight today (as of 17 June at 8.50am).

The War on Free Expression

We have a distinguished list of 121 Honorary Associates from around the world, including two Nobel Prize winners. Nonetheless (or perhaps as a result), we are now dealing not just with blocks on public access to our Church and State website and the daily targeting to fluctuating degrees of category pages throughout the site, but Internet cuts as well. British Telecom is one of the world's leading communications services companies. We pay BT £65.53 per month (£786.36 per year) for BT Infinity fibre optic broadband. We have had difficulties of late in our dealings with BT over intermittent TV reception through our BT YouView box, but these difficulties have had absolutely nothing to do with our internet connection which has remained connected since our contract with BT commenced on 28 May 2014: that is, until yesterday. I have filed these first two internet cuts since May 2014 in a folder I have created called "BT Internet Cuts", with the date and time part of the graphic for each cut:

1st Internet cut: 26 May 2017
2nd Internet cut: 27 May 2017 (graphic above)

UPDATE 17 June (8.22am): Presented at the end of this update is last night's 18th recorded internet cut since 26 May. On 2 June BT Executive Level Complaints (Consumer) emailed Declan the content of an engineer's report from his visit to our home on 24 May to investigate the intermittent TV reception we had been getting through our BT YouView box. See my blog post of 1 June, BT Executive Level Complaints (Consumer): Declan complains to BT Chairman Sir Michael Rake to no avail? (WITH TREBLE UPDATE - Day 12 2/6/2017). Declan copied Sir Michael Rake into this reply requesting BT's deadlock letter for the Telecommunications Ombudsman to investigate whether the home wiring relating to our TV aerial socket could have possibly been the problem (the fault was restricted to Freeview channels that are not dependent on a connection to the internet):

For the attention of Sir Michael Rake, Chairman, British Telecom

Miranda Bracey
Executive Level Complaints (Consumer)
British Telecom

Address removed for email

2 June 2017

Dear Ms Bracey,

Thank you for your email. I do not accept that the intermittent TV reception I had been experiencing of late through my BT YouView box may have been the result of my home wiring (hereinafter referred to as the "Complaint"). I therefore hereby request a letter of deadlock from BT that provides me with the company's full and final position on my Complaint and refers me to the ombudsman service.

Yours sincerely,

Declan Heavey

UPDATE 17 June (continued): Yesterday BT Executive Level Complaints conceded in a deadlock letter that our home wiring was not in any way causing problems with our BTTV service. It is however noteworthy that the internet cuts we had been experiencing increased dramatically after another BT engineer attended on 12 June; and this despite the fact that he not only provided us with a brand new phone socket but that he also could not find a problem with our line. Our concern since the second internet cut on 27 May has been whether we will have the internet to increase our connections across northern Europe, particularly in Denmark, Norway and the Netherlands. Last night we had a record-equalling four internet cuts in one night. The night before that, we had to suspend work on our Church and State website after exactly the same treatment. So I am concentrating my research on Denmark.

Denmark Ditches Blasphemy Laws

INTERNET CUTS

1st 26 May 2017, 1.39pm
2nd 27 May 2017, 12.32pm
3rd 3 June 2017, 8.45pm
4th 4 June 2017, 11.49am
5th 4 June 2017, 1.32pm
6th 9 June 2017, 10.50pm
7th 13 June 2017, 9.48am
8th 13 June 2017, 12.48pm
9th 15 June 2017, 6.50am
10th 15 June 2017, 8.01pm
11th 15 June 2017, 9.48pm
12th 15 June 2017, 10.18pm
13th 15 June 2017, 11.02pm
14th 16 June 2017, 12.22am
15th 16 June 2017, 7.22pm
16th 16 June 2017, 8.02pm
17th 16 June 2017, 10.49pm
18th 16 June 2017, 11.32pm

12 out of 18 internet cuts within the first four days of the BT engineer's visit on 12 June. Five cuts the day before yesterday; five cuts yesterday; no cuts since midnight today (as of 17 June at 8.22am).

Re: Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ)

Paragraph 12 of Declan's updated complaint to the United Nations under Article 19 (freedom of expression) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

12. It is important to underscore that the discriminatory surveillance suffered by the Applicant and his wife is not an isolated event. Rather, it is emblematic of a larger pattern of surveillance by law enforcement officials in the UK that has been well-documented by international and domestic human rights bodies. For example, GCHQ's Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG) specialises in the "4 D's": deny, disrupt, degrade, deceive. It has been branded by the press as the spy agency's "deception unit". Though its existence was secret until 2014, JTRIG has developed a distinctive profile in the public understanding, after documents from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that the unit had engaged in "dirty tricks" like deploying sexual "honey traps" designed to discredit targets, launching denial-of-service attacks to shut down Internet chat rooms, pushing veiled propaganda onto social networks and generally warping discourse online. Previous reporting on GCHQ established its focus on what it regards as political radicalism. Beyond JTRIG's targeting of Anonymous, other parts of GCHQ targeted political activists and groups deemed to be "radical", even monitoring human rights NGOs. The President of the London-based Privacy International, Simon Davies, asks: "If spying on human rights NGOs isn't off limits for GCHQ, then what is?"

Citizenfour Official Trailer 1 (2014) - Edward Snowden Documentary HD

JOIN THE CONVERSATION #CITIZENFOUR

From a fascinating excerpt from Glenn Greenwald's book "No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State":

All of the evidence highlights the implicit bargain that is offered to citizens: pose no challenge and you have nothing to worry about. Mind your own business, and support or at least tolerate what we do, and you'll be fine. Put differently, you must refrain from provoking the authority that wields surveillance powers if you wish to be deemed free of wrongdoing.

'Let me recommend an important web site churchandstate.org.uk. Operating out of London this well-designed and exciting web site covers church-state, population, climate change and other issues. Check it out.' - Edd Doerr, President, Americans for Religious Liberty

From My Picks:

20 February: The Central London County Court: District Judge Avent dismisses Declan's claim against the Greater London Authority-commissioned St Mungo's that alleged the falsification and fabrication of data against us (WITH UPDATE 16/3/2017)

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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.

Church and State blog

Saturday, May 27, 2017

British Telecom: We lose our Internet connection for the second time in two days, having not previously been disconnected from the Internet since our contract with BT commenced on 28 May 2014 (WITH UPDATE 17/6/2017 RE: 18th Internet cut since 26 May 2017)

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