Church and State blog: British Telecom: A record-breaking 18 internet cuts in the last two days, 16 of them today. What is Declan doing? Having broken into the San Francisco elite, he is now fully focused on AI and brain-computer interfaces

Sunday, June 06, 2021

British Telecom: A record-breaking 18 internet cuts in the last two days, 16 of them today. What is Declan doing? Having broken into the San Francisco elite, he is now fully focused on AI and brain-computer interfaces

Our Church and State website has no less than 63 Nobel Laureates on it despite the never-ending assault on our email; see paragraph 2 under "Church and State" on this blog's sidebar (updated today).

Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms formulates what is the core of free speech. "Everyone has the right to freedom of expression." In an important interpretation of this article, the European Court of Human Rights in Handyside v. UK (1976) indicated that this "freedom of expression" should be construed as follows. It "is applicable not only to 'information' or 'ideas' that are favourably received, or regarded as inoffensive, or as a matter of indifference, but also to those that offend, shock or disturb the State or any sector of the population". Such are the demands of that pluralism, tolerance and broadmindedness without which there is no "democratic society" (see Cliteur, 2010).

It has gotten to the stage where if I want to increase my chances of getting through to new people an email seeking permission to republish an article on Church and State, I must wait until I have at least three high quality permission emails to send. A success rate of one in five Church and State emails has become the norm for Declan.

Declan and I pay British Telecom £900 a year for broadband and TV. We have had 42 internet cuts in the last four weeks for up to 20 minutes a time, including a record-breaking 16 of them today. Today is also the 26th day since February with our second BT TV YouView box at 0% Signal Quality. When this happens, we have the option of switching back to our aerial for a perfect reception on free view channels. We have had three BT engineers in our flat to date to no avail. No equipment, phone line or aerial fault detected; in fact, quite the opposite. The individual targeting of our four operational laptops also continues unabated. Today is one of the few days since last December that Declan's primary laptop is functioning at the proper speed of above 70 Mbps. Individual laptop speeds of a fraction of 1 Mbps have not been uncommon this year (see footnote 2 in the block below). And it has not stopped with excessive broadband and TV interference. Twice today our Church and State website has been inaccessible with a new block citing "too many open files". We are recording this as some sort of a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack that we are unfamiliar with. Our traffic has been curtailed by over 2.5K blocks on access to Church and State since 26 July 2016, including what we are now counting as 31 DDoS attacks since 17 May 2019 that have lasted for as long as 54 hours at a time.

First readout above: "2021-06-07 03:50:16 UTC ... cache can't open /home/customer/www/churchandstate.org.uk/ ... - Too many open files...." Constantly repeated.

New backup Church and State blog

This Church and State blog was temporarily blocked on 14 May 2021. The following categories in my (paid for) backup blog at WordPress are up and running:

British Telecom
Email Interception
Equality Commission
Facebook[1]
Financial Ombudsman
Housing Ombudsman
Investigatory Powers Tribunal
Parliamentary Ombudsman[2]
Peabody Trust[3]
Pixsy
St Mungo's
Vandalisation of property

All links go to my new backup blog at Wordpress.

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[1] The lead post in this category reveals that we have had 10.7 million hits in the past three years on Facebook and despite the company's unfair practices.

[2] Posted on 14 May, the lead blog post in this category includes a section on internet cuts and individual laptop interference and a section on TV interference.

[3] Peabody Trust's appalling new terms of tenancy have been added to this category. We live in a Mayor of London Rough Sleepers Initiative designated property.

Mayor of London Sadiq Khan

The Investigatory Powers Tribunal has carefully considered your complaint and Human Rights Act claim, and has concluded that it is obviously unsustainable, and thus falls within the provisions of Rule 13(3)(a) of the Investigatory Powers Tribunal Rules 2000, such that, pursuant to s67(4) of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, the Tribunal has resolved to dismiss the claim.

The Investigatory Powers Tribunal was created in October 2000 by the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act and given the power to investigate any complaints against the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), MI5 or MI6, as well as complaints about surveillance operations mounted by the police or any other public bodies. The Guardian reported in 2014 that the tribunal, which claims to be completely independent of the UK Government, is secretly operating from a base within the Home Office, by which it is funded. The newspaper found that the IPT had investigated about 1,500 complaints and upheld only 10, five of which concerned members of one family who had all lodged complaints about surveillance by their local council. No complaint against any of the intelligence agencies had ever been upheld. The discovery that the IPT is lodged within a Whitehall department has fuelled criticisms of the tribunal that has been levelled by rights groups, lawyers and complainants. The IPT's critics complain that the secrecy is excessive and that its procedures are stacked so heavily in favour of the government and against complainants that it is fundamentally unfair. According to The Guardian, some senior lawyers have described the IPT as "Kafkaesque", while one eminent barrister dismissed it as a "kangaroo court". The newspaper also reveals that because of the perception that the tribunal is unfair, many would-be complainants spurn it.

'Independent' court scrutinising MI5 is located inside Home Office http://t.co/ZezpDipCPx via @guardian
— Ian Cobain (@IanCobain) March 5, 2014

From My Picks:

An American perspective: "I thought the UK was a civilized democracy!" In reference to the following blog post:

28 May: Eviction back to the streets a third time from a Mayor of London Rough Sleepers Initiative property is a massive assault on me. Not only am I likely to lose Declan to his health condition, but I am also likely to be left crippled following a torn meniscus that has had me using a crutch for months (regularly updated)

Our list of 303 Honorary Associates includes 20 Nobel Prize laureates, 18 US National Medal laureates and 13 knighted professors notwithstanding the excessive targeting of these categories of emails in particular. (In April Declan had the honour of adding the 20th Nobel laureate to the list, having had an average of 85% of his emails blocked for over a week.)

http://churchandstate.org.uk/honorary-associates/

"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 (1930-2020), (then) President, Americans for Religious Liberty

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

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[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

Sunday, June 06, 2021

British Telecom: A record-breaking 18 internet cuts in the last two days, 16 of them today. What is Declan doing? Having broken into the San Francisco elite, he is now fully focused on AI and brain-computer interfaces

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