GCHQ Weighs In On Tackling “Dark Net” Child Abuse Images

Intelligence experts and organised crime specialists will join forces to scrub away child abuse images spreading on the “dark net”.

According to British Prime Minister David Cameron, a joint GCHQ and National Crime Agency unit will hunt online paedophiles with the same effort they use to track down potential national terrorists.

He said online child exploitation existed on an “almost industrial scale” worldwide.

A new law which would stop adults from sending children “sexual” messages was also unveiled during his talk at a London summit. 

The term “dark net” refers to the hidden parts of the internet that could only be accessed with special software. The GCHQ-NCA joint operations are capable of analysing huge volumes of images.

Cameron said that "The dark net is the next side of the problem, where paedophiles and perverts are sharing images, not using the normal parts of the internet that we all use.

"What we are doing there is setting GCHQ, our world class intelligence agency, together with the National Crime Agency and we are going to go after these people with every bit of effort that we go after terrorists and other international criminals."

"One gang in the Philippines was arranging the sexual abuse of children, filming it and then live streaming it to paying customers across the world," he said. 

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Mexico Still Having Troubles Enforcing the Law

The disappearance of 43 university students from the custody of local police in Mexico and the allegations of federal corruption in the awarding of public infrastructure contracts test the administration of Mexico President Pena Nieto.

His political party, the Institutional Revolutionary, could get sunk because of the crises. Pena has promised a massive reform for Mexico. 

However, confidence in his administration had worsened following the disappearance of the 43 detained students.

According to an official report from the Mexican Embassy in Washington, the missing students were political activists where they forcefully “borrowed” two private buses in Iguala in Guerrero to travel to Mexico City for demonstrations. Police opened fire against the students and then were handed to a local crime cartel, who confessed they killed the young protesters and burned their bodies.

The governor of Guerrero had resigned and the Mayor of Iguala, 36 municipal police officers and 35 other individuals are under arrest post-investigation.

Despite the protest against Former Mayor of Mexico City Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who is trying to link the disappearance of the students to force destabilisation of the Mexican government, people are focused on resolving the issue rather than joining Lopez Obrador’s campaign.

It also shows that criminals have so much power in Mexico.

Chimpanzees as “Legal Persons.” Do You Agree?

A 26-year old former circus chimp is fighting for its right to remain outside the cage and released into a Florida primate sanctuary against the New York High Courts. This groundbreaking case could indicate chimpanzees as “legal persons.” 

According to defending lawyer and Nonhuman Rights Project President Steven Wise, Tommy is an autonomous creature who spends time watching television and enjoying activities that he should freely have. However, local New York law advises that all pets and animals be caged in the state.

Wise said that the case will prove that chimpanzees are “legal persons,” but he made it clear that he was not fighting for Tommy’s human rights. Instead, he made it clear that he was fighting for “chimpanzee rights.”

It may sound like a joke to you, but studies really show that chimpanzees are closer to human behaviour and understanding. Wise is trying to establish the fact that chimpanzees also deserve special rights, and Tommy should be given his own autonomy in the manner he wants to live.

Many will think this is ridiculous, but I for one think that it isn’t totally bonkers. In reality, humans didn’t have to restrict nature to have himself dominate the entire world. He should have left nature alone, have only taken what he could from his surroundings and let the rest live as free as they should be.

But for now, we have this system, and most animals are decimated because of this human system.

 

Three Easy Ways to Avoid Legal Troubles when Working

All problems start when one person’s freedom pushes against another person, denying him or her rights given naturally to any born citizen of a country. At work, the stress and tension makes thinking a bit less and acting a bit more, which can cause legal trouble. Here are three simple ways you could avoid it, based on my experience.

1.    Avoid the Social Flame

I was once working at a postal card creation service somewhere in 2009. A fellow employee, who was often rowdy, was fired mysteriously and the bosses never did explain what happened. In a formal statement, the bosses said that the employee was fired because of insubordination by posting about flames in social media. While many complained, a legal representative explained that going through the proper channels of complaints and not broadcasting the complaint openly in the web can stop the improper termination of contracts while having a say.

2.    Consider Yourself a Publisher

I often do an exercise where I think of myself as a celebrity. Aside from the vanity and ego, I also understood that each of my actions will have a significant backlash because of legalities. Today, social media, the internet and close-knit communities at work are areas where you publish your work. Obscene work could be considered propaganda in an office, so it is important to be careful about what one says, or rather in this context, publishes.

3.    Responsibilities

As stated in a contract, employees are bound by an amount of money, even if they are to stay in a company for a very long term. They have responsibilities that bind them with the contract, which they must fulfil or else they risk fighting off litigations and paying for penalties in breaking their contracts.

Should UK Be Next to Decriminalise Marijuana?

The United States had already approved the use of medical marijuana in their country and I couldn’t be happier enough for those living in Colorado and Washington. Maybe we in the UK should be next to decriminalise it, and for obvious reasons, the government will still want to keep marijuana in this country in check.

In the UK, marijuana is still classified as a class C type of drug. Anybody found possessing just a small ounce of cannabis could be pressed for fines, but not imprisonment. It seems that those supporting the anti-cannabis approval haven’t been properly informed.

Decriminalising marijuana also puts many things into an awkward position. Why would dangerous substances, such as alcohol and tobacco, be easier to approve than a plant that has no preservatives and dangerous chemicals? Companies all over the world work with governments to create profit. Also, many parts of the world have land fertile for growing tobacco leaves. Marijuana is yet to be tax-mapped, but many are growing their own illegally.

If the government cannot earn anything out of marijuana yet and the stigma remains there, the UK is powerless to have a decriminalised marijuana industry. Stigmas are everything, and no politician is willing to touch upon the public’s sentiment that marijuana and other drugs are dangerous substances.

The Possible Extent of the Modern Slavery Bill

Home Secretary Theresa May had recently proposed a Modern Slavery bill, which would protect those abused by their employers, victims of human trafficking, and those forced to engage in criminal activities, and according to analysts, its benefits may materialize for some time this year. However, their media description is most likely the ideal, because I know the local police and courts of justice will have different implementations of these new laws.

According to a recent speech by the Queen of England, the UK’s new legal bill will protect victims from traffickers, especially those forced to engage in criminal activity. The new bill, she said, will have them compensation from any of the assets seized from their traffickers. She added that the new bill will further strengthen the punishments for human traffickers.

Drug formulation and cannabis growth is illegal in many parts of Europe, and the United Kingdom is one of them. However, some European countries allow the consumption of cannabis. Many organised crime rings make use of foreign migrants, including women and children, to work in production, and most of them end up being associates or collaborators to the scheme when they were really victims.

Any law or bill that protects those whose stories are not told properly, especially confused collaborators, is welcome for me in the United Kingdom. However, it is important that UK officials, both on the domestic and national scale, will live up to the promise of benefits and rights the law indicates.

UK Still Has Slavery, Also Has Laws to Fight It

Home Office Secretary Theresa May recently passed a Modern Slavery bill that will allow victims of slavery to seek compensation and reparations from their traffickers, or employers, especially those who had had them work illicitly in improper occupations. 

I can’t believe that our country still has slavery. Sure, there are human traffickers, who sell people, including children, to brothels, black market companies and other organisations, but what I’m talking about is localized slavery. Yes, your dear neighbour.

I had a neighbour once, and their family had a domestic helper named Tina. She was from Morocco as I recall. Every day, the family will leave, but Tina was locked up from behind the door. She was told never to shout or cry for help outside. One time, I was walking beside her employer and she was following us. I could notice that she was malnourished.

I wanted to take it to authorities, but some colleagues said there was no law that protected domestic helpers. In the UK, it was always the citizen first, the migrants secondary, despite the fragrant words the world hears on television.

Maybe this law, along with other laws, will help these migrants, who came into the country to support their own families back in their country, have a right to the UK justice system. Nobody deserves to be treated like a slave, either through human trafficking or domestic imprisonment.

Clare’s Law and the Sanctity of Relationships

Now, before you think this is a “holy” type of post, I’d just like to clarify that sanctity in the title meant “honesty” or “values” in a relationship. I just want to point out here that the new Clare’s Law, or the Domestic Violence DisclosureScheme, while it protects individuals, it may also breed mistrust. 

I am all for the safety of our women and girls, but researching about the history of your partner, with his or her own knowledge, is a way of degrading the “honesty” and “genuine-ness” of relationships. Sure, it could be a romantic and less-than-practical notion, but why bother partnering up in a relationship if you could not even trust each other?

Potentially, the law can save lives, but is this law really necessary? Maybe it is, for people who look for partners in online dating and matchmaking websites. It will also be helpful especially in divorce cases, but the previous example is already an irony.

Definitely, it will really be nice to know that you have a good premise during divorce because you know that your partner has a violent history, but do you plan to get into a relationship just so you could get a divorce?

There is nothing wrong with Clare’s law, but intimate trust, understanding, patience and good values will always make a good relationship, not a back-end solution. There is nothing wrong with the law being passed, but if people use it to concern themselves of their partners, they were already planning to fail the relationship.

BMJ Report Accuses Several UK Medical Universities of Racism

A British Medical Journal report “Academic Performance of Ethnic Minority Candidates and Discrimination in the MRCGP Examinations Between 2010 and 2012: Analysis of Data,” claims that MRCGP examiners discriminate in the exams of Asian, Indian and Black doctors compared to white doctors. According to the authors, General Practice Professor Aneez Esmail and Biostatistics Professor Chris Roberts, medical universities have a bias when giving out their MRCGP examinations.

Today, the British Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (BAPIO) has filed a legal case against UK’s Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) and the General Medical Council (GMC) for the MRCGP examinations biased against minority ethnic candidates. This legal case puts medical practitioners minorities in the UK on the spotlight.

Esmail and Roberts’  report showed that Black and minority ethnic graduates trained in the UK were likely to fail than their white UK counterparts in their first attempt at a clinical skills assessment exam. Black and minority ethnic candidates who trained abroad also had a greater likeliness to fail in the exam. The likeliest to fail are minority candidates who did not train or study in the United Kingdom.

According to the lawyer of BAPIO, Attorney William O’Neill, should BAPIO win the case, it will mean good quality medical graduates from universities regardless of ethnicity, which would give the NHS the boost it needs to provide quality medical service.

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No Win No Fee: Is It Really Bad For All Of Us?

In January this year, the UK Legal Ombudsman had ordered lawyers to repay more than £1 million in compensation for misleading consumers regarding the No Win No Fee confusion, or the Conditional Fee Arrangement (CFA) used by most lawyers, solicitors and claims handling companies.

According to the Legal Ombudsman, it said that it “begun to see cases where the fundamental promise, which underpins the marketing of these arrangements- that the consumer will not have to pay for losing cases-is being broken.”

Truthfully, no win no fee is something I’d prefer because it enabled me to reclaim refunds from my bank without much trouble. I did not mind paying back 25%. However, most claims handling firms now concentrate on the viability of a client’s success rather than fulfilling their duties to represent any client in court.

The viability of success, coupled with legal intelligence, had resulted into widespread disasters for the insurance industry. Insurance premiums have skyrocketed in rates, deeply affecting younger drivers applying for car and personal injury insurance.

No win no fee can be misleading because in the end, clients will need to pay undisclosed fees. If legal representatives will not make their statements clear to avoid hidden costs or misleading information, then it would be better to banish no win no fee from the legal system once and for all.

Don’t Take It to a Lawsuit at Once, Be Fair

We might say laws are meant to be broken, but being fair is more important. 

A neighbour of mine recently told me her story regarding her neighbour who moved out because she filed a litigation against their family without even warning them about a petty little thing. Since this country, the UK, has a compensation-culture society, anybody could get affordable legal help even if the legal aid cuts the government can implement any time.

But, this litigation culture can also damage personal reputations, particularly one’s social connections and well-being. My neighbour demand that their neighbours avoid looking indecent when sunbathing; they sunbathe naked without minding the passers-by across the area.

Sure, sunbathing naked is quite offensive and obscene right? I told her she could have sent a warning or a letter to them explaining why she found it indecent. However, she directly for a lawsuit.

A litigation is intimidating because it pits another person to definite terms in the law that he or she violated. Instead of appealing to their common sense, taking them directly against the wall can be offensive or unnatural.

My neighbour said that if she hadn’t done it, our area’s property values would have fallen. She asked me what could have happened if a media spectacle or a Youtube video was posted of it. I just said that it is still fair that she should have sent and explained these things to her neighbours first.

Fairness and ethics is important to retain in one side even if the other party does not bother to have or to learn them. This aids the law in defending who is truly right.

Tax Avoidance is not the Same as Tax Evasion

Many governments all over the world seem intent on blurring the lines between tax avoidance and tax evasion. Lawmakers are gumming it up to the abuse of benefits and exemptions by many people. Sure it is quite unfair that celebrities could hire professional accountants that help them reduce the amount of taxes they pay, but it is really because they could manage the finances effectively that they could reduce their taxes.

With the lack of knowledge of tax avoidance, a blue-collar worker pays 10% of his or her salary to the government. A celebrity with professional accountants could reduce that amount to 3% at best by tax returns, exemptions and benefits.

We’ve heard of people marrying for convenience because bearing children could effectively reduce the taxes couples pay. Add to that the combination of declaring the lower-rate taxpaying partner being the primary breadwinner, then their taxes are effectively reduced as well.

Declaring that tax avoidance is the same as tax evasion is declaring that knowledge is something damnable. I think that a better solution to the problem would be the reduction of the beneficiary taxes based on income, not declaring those who understand the law to be abusing the system.