Opinion
Britain’s vast camera network is being used to secretly surveil drivers, privacy experts warn
From LifeSiteNews
Big Brother Watch reported that U.K. number plate recognition systems are recording vehicles at an unprecedented rate, warning that police have been given access to this data and raising significant concerns about personal privacy and civil rights.
The use of automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) in the U.K. is now reportedly producing mass surveillance on a truly massive scale – cameras are capturing number plates close to 44.5 times per second.
That translates to more than one billion times a year, privacy and civil rights group Big Brother found out via freedom of information act (FOIA) requests, that concerned eight local or regional authorities.
This makes for “one of the biggest surveillance networks in the world,” is how the group summed up the situation.
🎥Number plate recognition cameras run by local authorities enforcing green driving schemes are capturing cars more than a billion times a year, according to our own analysis.
More than 110 million entries a month were recorded by just eight local or regional authorities Clean… pic.twitter.com/jbGB8Ep026
— Big Brother Watch (@BigBrotherWatch) November 5, 2024
APNRs are there to enforce green driving schemes (Clean Air Zones, CAZ; in London, this is known as the Ultra Low Emission Zone, ULEZ) by deploying mass surveillance and collecting data on drivers that can be retained for up to a year.
And this comes on top of the police capturing number plates for their own purposes, said to be happening billions of times per year.
The declared reason for the use and proliferation of surveillance cameras in these ULEZ-like schemes is to control how much emissions drivers are allowed to create. The authorities have the right to charge penalties – but in thousands upon thousands of cases, reports say this is based on erroneous data.
Data hoovered up by APNRs is connected to the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA). One of the fears privacy advocates have is that this data will be used for purposes other than protecting the environment and that this is already happening as some of it is available to the police.
According to Big Brother Watch, Birmingham City Council had struck a secretive, and apparently ongoing, deal with West Midlands Police before the 2022 Commonwealth Games which let the police access the council’s ANPR network.
The response to this FOIA request, however, did not specify how much data was given to law enforcement thanks to this agreement, which the privacy advocates say, provided “unfettered access to number plate data.”
Meanwhile, Transport for London (TfL) data captured from 163.2 vehicles driving past its live CCTV cameras was requested by the Metropolitan Police between August 2023 and June 2024.
“Millions of innocent people’s car journeys are captured by automated cameras every day and this level of surveillance is a threat to everyone’s privacy,” warned Big Brother Watch Head of Research and Investigations Jake Hurfurt.
Reprinted with permission from Reclaim The Net.
National
Eco-radical Canadian Cabinet minister resigns after oil deal approved
From LifeSiteNews
Steven Guilbeault, a Quebec MP who had formerly served as Justin Trudeau’s Minister of Environment, said he was leaving the Cabinet because his ‘climate’ policies were being abandoned.
One of Canada’s most radical environmentalist politicians has resigned from Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Cabinet.
Steven Guilbeault, until recently the Culture Minister, quit his position after the federal government struck a deal with the province of Alberta that relaxes environmental regulations and allows the construction of a new oil pipeline.
On Thursday, November 27, Guilbeault, a Quebec MP who had served as former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Minister of Environment, said he was stepping down because his “climate” policies were being abandoned.
“This afternoon, it is with great sadness that I submitted my resignation to the Prime Minister as Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture and Minister responsible for Official Languages, Minister of Nature and Parks Canada, as well as his Lieutenant in Quebec,” he said in a statement.
“When I entered politics, it was because I had a deep conviction that I could make a difference in fighting climate change and protecting our environment. My commitment to leaving a better world for the future of our children and our planet remains unchanged.”
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and Prime Minister Mark Carney signed on Thursday a memorandum of understanding (MOU) which will let Alberta build an oil pipeline to the coast of British Columbia. It also lessens tanker restrictions and allows Albertan oil to be sold on Asian markets. The pipeline still faces opposition from British Columbia’s ruling New Democratic Party government.
The MOU agreement changes a host of other green-related initiatives that Guilbeault had a hand in, such as imposing an emissions cap on the oil and gas sector and new Clean Electricity Regulations. Under the deal, Alberta will be exempt from these radical environmental regulations.
Premier Smith has been battling Guilbeault over his extreme climate change policies for years now. She said of the recent MOU that, although it’s a “massive win for Alberta and Canada, we will still hold the federal government accountable for keeping their end of the bargain.”
“There’s a lot of work left to do so let’s roll up our sleeves and get the job done, Alberta!” she stated.
Smith has repeatedly defended Alberta from Trudeau-era climate regulations and asserted Alberta’s right to control its power grid, also promising the province will not be “transitioning away” from oil and natural gas. She had called on the then-prime minster to replace Guilbeault because he was too “extreme.” Last year, Smith blasted the Minister after he said the federal government would no longer fund road construction projects and instead funnel the savings to “climate change” projects.
Alberta does have support from the Supreme Court, however, which recently sided in favor of provincial autonomy when it comes to natural resources. The Supreme Court ruled that Trudeau’s law, C-69, dubbed the “no-more pipelines” bill, is “mostly unconstitutional.” This was a huge win for Alberta and Saskatchewan, who challenged the law in court. The decision returned authority over the pipelines to provincial governments, meaning oil and gas projects headed up by the provinces should be allowed to proceed without federal intrusion.
Guilbeault’s extreme eco-activist past
Guilbeault, under Trudeau’s watch, pushed a radical environmental agenda similar to the World Economic Forum’s “Great Reset” and the United Nations’ “Sustainable Development Goals.”
He was as extreme as they come for an environment minister, and his background shows a history of breaking the law for ideological aims. In 1997, he joined Greenpeace and served for a time as a director and then campaign manager of its Quebec chapter for a decade.
He was arrested many times for environmental protests, the most famous arrest coming after an incident in 2001 when he climbed Toronto’s CN Tower with British activist Chris Holden. The pair hung a banner saying “Canada and Bush — Climate Killers.”
Greenpeace is a group that advocates for population control in addition to calling for an end to all oil and gas.
His extreme ideals continued in his role as environment minister. He threatened Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe, who said that his province would no longer collect a federally imposed carbon tax on electric heat in addition to natural gas, with arrest and jail.
While Minister of Environment, Guilbeault was hoped to create a new “global’ carbon tax applied to all goods shipped internationally that could further drive-up prices for families already struggling with inflated costs.
The reduction and eventual elimination of the use of so-called “fossil fuels” and a transition to unreliable “green” energy has also been pushed by the World Economic Forum – the globalist group behind the socialist “Great Reset” agenda – an organization in which Trudeau and some of his cabinet have been involved.
The reality of Trudeau’s, and then Carney’s push, for so-called renewable energy showed itself just over a month ago when Alberta’s power grid faced near certain collapse due to a failure of wind and solar power.
Daily Caller
John Kerry Lurches Back Onto Global Stage For One Final Gasp

From the Daily Caller News Foundation
John Kerry, one of the grandest and most persistent climate scolds of the 21stcentury, lurched back into the news this week when he was knighted by Britain’s King Charles, a prominent climate scold in his own right.
In fact, their shared efforts involving flying off on carbon-spewing private jets to lecture the masses to live smaller, more costly lives in the name of fighting climate change was the motivation for the award, as the King thanked Kerry for his “services to tackling climate change.” That seems to be a bit of a grammatical error, but when royalty is involved, no one really cares, do they?
“King Charles and I share the same point of view — that there’s an urgency to doing things,” Kerry told the Globe in an interview. “He’s been ahead of most folks on this from the time I can remember… He always had a commitment to nature.”
Unfortunately for the U.K.’s citizens, the Labour government’s “commitment to nature” mainly appears to involve covering thousands of acres of bucolic British farmland with massive solar arrays and felling thousands of forest trees to make home to big wind installations these days.
Projects like those – frequently forced by the central government on objecting rural communities – form the centerpiece of Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero Ed Miliband’s program to deindustrialize the formerly formidable British economy.
That program – based on the shared philosophy of King Charles and Kerry – has sent the U.K.’s utility rates skyrocketing to the highest on earth. It has also rendered the former global power dependent on imports from foreign nations for its energy security, with China the most prominent among them.
Such are the fruits of the King Charles/Kerry “point of view.” Most would agree with Kerry’s statement that “there’s an urgency to doing things.” The problem is that pretty much everything he and the King have been doing in this realm across the first quarter of the 21st century leads inevitably to serfdom to the Chinese Communist Party.
In an interview with the Financial Times the same day, Kerry repeated much of the tiresome dogma of his alarmist religion, in the process excoriating President Donald Trump as a “denier” and calling U.S. corporate leaders cowards for straying from the narrative he and the King prefer. “It is not that they don’t believe [in climate change] or they don’t want to move forward. They are just scared,” Kerry said of the corporate CEOs, adding, “The process of Donald Trump in the last months, coupled with the justice department, coupled with his vengeance programs, has scared… a lot of people.”
But a more believable alternative explanation for the shift away from the twin manias of ESG and DEI by many companies in recent years is that these corporate leaders have a fiduciary duty to maximize returns on capital to their investors. The problem for Kerry and his disciples is that the preferred alternatives they have advanced too often devolved into unprofitable boondoggles that fail to satisfy that duty. Kerry wants to place the entire blame on Trump – who, ironically, was recently honored by King Charles himself with an unprecedented second state dinner. But the truth is that shift started in earnest in 2023, when Joe Biden’s autopen was still in charge of the ship of American state.
That shift has certainly accelerated this year, as companies have been freed from the incessant hectoring of the Biden government and are now being denied access to the ruinous green subsidies from the IRA that so radically distorted energy markets. This has little to do with climate denialism or cowardice and much to do with sound business practice and CEOs properly carrying out the mandates of their high positions. No amount of hyperbolic talking points from Kerry or the King can change that reality.
In the end, Kerry’s remarks come off as a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing. Now in the twilight of his career, he has become a relic, a totem of a fading global religion whose end cannot come soon enough.
David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.
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