International Law

Police Receive £50 Million For 10,000 Hand Held Computers i.e. £5,000 each - are they gold plated ?

Gordon Brown's dire speech to the Labour Party Conference last September promised, amongst other things,"10,000 hand held computers" for the Police.

Incredibly, it seems that according to this National Policing Improvement Agency press release, and subsequent reports in The Register and by the BBC, each of these hand held computers is going to cost £5,000 each.

Almost none of our worries about the security implications of this scheme have been answered, but it does seem that an incredible amount of central government allocated tax money is going to be spent - £50 million for only 10,000 units i.e. £5,000 each - you could literally get gold plated hand held computers for this amount of money !

How can issuing 10,000 hand held computers, in other words, to only 7 percent of the Police force, actually reduce bureaucracy ?

Surely these inherently physically insecure hand held computers are going to make it easier for ruthless attackers to illegally access sensitive National Security or Confidential Human Intelligence Source intelligence databases ?

Which politician will resign from office, when, not if, someone's life is put in danger, as a result of the loss or theft of these hand held computers, and the inevitable loss of the passwords, either because they are written down, or because a Police Officer or someone else is being held hostage and is threatened with violence, by criminals or terrorists who have access to such a mobile device ?

See: Gordon Brown's speech to the Labour Party Conference - no good news for freedom. liberty or security, but plans to confiscate £670 million from bank accounts

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Full post as published by Spy Blog on May 26, 2008 (boomark / email).