Friday 31st August 2018

BCfm’s weekly Politics Show presented by Tony Gosling

At six – discussing the big stories in Bristol, Britain and around the world
After seven – straight talking and investigative reports with Martin Summers

Listen live http://www.bcfmradio.com/player or http://stream.bcfmradio.com:7017/live.mp3

BCfm audio files usually available 1hr, Radio4All 3-4hrs, after TX
Any probs mp3s should be on alternative links below by then

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVUF_zsogDY

First hour: news review: with Bristol North West Labour MP Darren Jones. Examining use of algorithms in the criminal justice system. Police should not keep suspects locked up because a computer program has told them they are likely to be offenders, a human rights group has told MPs. Algorithms that predict whether someone is a criminal based on past behaviour, gender and where they live could be “discriminatory”, Liberty said. The human rights group was giving evidence to the Commons science and technology committee. The MPs are investigating the growing use of algorithms in decision making. They are concerned businesses and public bodies are relying on computer programs to make life-changing decisions – despite the potential scope for errors and misunderstandings. Durham Police have already launched a system which uses algorithms to help decide whether to keep a suspect in custody. The Harm Assessment Risk Tool (HART) uses historical data on offending to classify suspects as low, medium or high risk of offending. The tool uses information such as offending history, the type of crime a suspect has been accused of, their postcode and gender. It’s not just Russia. China, North Korea, and Iran could interfere in 2018 elections, too. National Security Adviser John Bolton said four countries — including Russia — may try to interfere in November’s elections. National Security Adviser John Bolton is warning that Russia is working to interfere in the 2018 midterm elections. That may not surprise you, but this might: He’s warning that three other countries are doing it, too. In a Sunday interview on ABC’s This Week, Bolton said the Trump administration is worried that China, North Korea, and Iran have stepped up their efforts to meddle ahead of the November vote. “I can say definitively that it’s a sufficient national security concern about Chinese meddling, Iranian meddling, and North Korean meddling that we’re taking steps to try and prevent it,” Bolton told anchor Martha Raddatz. “So all four of those countries, really.” MI5 agents can commit crime in UK, government reveals. Secret order on authorised criminality by spies made public after legal battle by rights groups. MI5 agents are allowed to carry out criminal activity in the UK, the government has acknowledged for the first time. The prime minister was on Thursday forced to publish the text of a direction to the Investigatory Powers. Commissioner’s Office, the spying watchdog, on governing “security service participation in criminality”. It instructs the IPCO to oversee the participation of MI5 agents in criminal activity, which was previously conducted by the now-defunct office of the Intelligence Services Commissioner, under a secret order referred to as the “third direction”. However, guidance about when British spies can commit crimes, and how far they can go, remains confidential. The commissioner, Lord Justice Sir Adrian Fulford, said: “I welcome the government’s decision to make public my oversight of this sensitive area of work.” The order was published after a legal battle by the human rights groups Reprieve and Privacy International. Maya Foa, the director of Reprieve, said: “After a seven-month legal battle the prime minister has finally been forced to publish her secret order but we are a long way from having transparency. “The public and parliament are still being denied the guidance that says when British spies can commit criminal offences and how far they can go. “Authorised criminality is the most intrusive power a state can wield. Theresa May must publish this guidance without delay.” GOSCC nerve centre based in Wiltshire’s leafy lanes at Corsham: It is hard to believe that the central communications hub for the entire British Army sits unassumingly on the outskirts of the quiet Wiltshire market town of Corsham. Yet while we have been watching events in Libya unfold on our TV screens over the last few months, it was a very different kind of screen watching on view at the new MoD Corsham base. The centre, at Westwells Road, in Neston, is home to GOSCC – the Global Operations Security Control Centre – a top secret centre which houses up to 600 specialists working behind the scenes to make huge military operations such as those in Libya, Afghanistan and Iraq a reality. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to describe GOSCC as something akin to the control rooms seen see in James Bond or disaster movies. The ‘wow’ factor hits you as you enter the huge circular room, which has rows of operations desks facing a series of giant screens displaying highly sensitive data on the whereabouts of satellites and personnel on the ground. Some of the screens were blacked out for our arrival. There is an eerie stillness about the room, and Royal Navy Captain Chris Parsons, who heads the operation, said: “It is always calm in here. You waste as much energy panicking as you do when you are thinking so we do the latter. “At pinnacle moments in operations you might see some worried faces walking across the room, but generally we stay very calm.” GOSCC is a 24/7, 365 days per year operation and its works affects the daily lives of 300,000 personnel scattered across the world. As well as military, RAF and Navy personnel, specialists from companies such as BT, Atlas and Paradigm monitor telephone lines and satellite activity in space, and a special crack team work on cyber threats. As his isolation intensifies, WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange faces possible threat of eviction, extradition. LONDON — For Julian Assange, the world’s most famous whistleblower, freedom could be dangerous. As his residency at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London enters its seventh year, the self-styled cyber revolutionary – WikiLeaks’ founder and controversial publisher of some of the world’s most closely guarded official secrets – is facing a pair of converging crises that have left his allies fearing for his wellbeing and his safety. Inside the embassy, he is living an increasingly secluded existence, having been stripped of his phones, computers and visitor privileges after running afoul of the very government that gave him asylum. Outside the embassy, he is embroiled in the global political scandal surrounding Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 election, with questions about his role in that drama being raised by friends and foes alike. In more ways than one, the very walls protecting Assange also appear to be closing in. “Life goes on outside the embassy,” journalist Vaughan Smith, one of Assange’s staunchest supporters and perhaps the last friend to visit him, told ABC News. “But life doesn’t go on inside.” Veteran Labour MP Frank Field has quit the party’s group in Parliament, saying the leadership is becoming “a force for anti-Semitism in British politics”. The Birkenhead MP also blamed a “culture of intolerance, nastiness and intimidation” in local parties. A month ago he lost a confidence vote in his constituency party, after siding with the government in Brexit votes. Jeremy Corbyn has apologised for hurt caused by anti-Semitism in the party and pledged to stamp it out. A Labour Party spokesman said: “Jeremy Corbyn thanks Frank Field for his service to the Labour Party.” But a Labour source claimed “Frank has been looking for an excuse to resign for some time.” Darren runs regular pub and picnic events and has to dive off for one now. Alex Salmond resigns from SNP after sexual misconduct claims. Former leader of Scottish National party quits to fight allegations that he denies. Banks are preparing for house prices to fall by a third after Brexit – House prices falling by a third, interest rates soaring by more than 4% and the economy going into recession – it’s the prediction from the Bank of England on what will happen in the event of a no deal Brexit. BOE boss Mark Carney made the dire warning today that there is an ‘uncomfortably high’ risk that Britain will leave the European Union without a deal and it could have devastating consequences. After his comments, the pound sterling plunged to an 11-day low against the dollar. The Governor of the Bank of England Mark Carney said a no deal Brexit is ‘highly undesirable’ (Picture: EPA) Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Mr Carney said that the event of no deal was ‘highly undesirable’ and that Britain and the EU should do everything possible to avoid it. ‘I think the possibility of a no deal is uncomfortably high at this moment,’ he said. Man, 21, charged with murders of ex-girlfriend and her mum in Solihull ‘Our job is to look at what could go wrong and what we could do to make sure that the bank is in a robust position so it lessens the impact of a no deal Brexit. ‘We have made sure that banks have the capital, the liquidity that they need and we have the contingency plans in place if there were to be a no deal Brexit.’
Radio4All download pages
BCfm audio file
Radio4All audio file

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vqhi16iikxk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1bPKTOsrGc&t=96s

Second hour: Investigative reports: 21 year old Hong Kong democracy party founder Joshua Wong. Israel Threatens to Use Nuclear Weapons to ‘Wipe Out’ its Enemies. Standing next to a secretive Israeli atomic reactor earlier in the week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatened to “wipe out” his enemies. In a speech that many will see as the Jewish state breaking its long silence over the possession of nuclear weapons, the Likud leader warned that it has the means to destroy its enemies.  At Dimona reactor, Netanyahu warns Israel’s foes they risk ruin. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used a visit to a secretive Israeli atomic reactor on Wednesday to warn the country’s enemies that it has the means to destroy them, in what appeared to be a veiled… He said on Wednesday during a ceremony to rename the complex, near the desert town of Dimona: “Those who threaten to wipe us out put themselves in a similar danger, and in any event will not achieve their goal.” The site has long been suspected to be the location where Israel has been developing nuclear weapons. The ceremony was postponed several times as not to draw attention to Israel’s nuclear capabilities amid the struggle against Iran’s nuclear program. Iran hit back by describing Netanyahu as a “warmonger”.  The threat of “atomic annihilation” against the Islamic Republic was denounced as “beyond shameless in the gall”. Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif wrote on his official Twitter account: “Iran, a country without nuclear weapons, is threatened with atomic annihilation by a warmonger standing next to an actual nuclear weapons factory.” Pro-democracy political party Demosisto to shift focus away from seeking Hong Kong Legislative Council seats as it supports social movements. Group co-founded by Occupy movement leader Joshua Wong and disqualified lawmaker Nathan Law cites deprivation of its members’ ‘political rights’. Hong Kong’s youngest political party co-founded by student activist Joshua Wong Chi-fung has declared it will shift its focus from contesting elections to backing social movements, claiming officials have blocked its path to the city’s councils. The “declaration of transition” was issued on Friday at the party’s second anniversary dinner, attended by Wong, a leader of the pro-democracy Occupy movement of 2014,and Nathan Law Kwun-chung, a disqualified lawmaker who co-founded and recently led the organisation. “We considered Demosito a political party when we founded it, with participation in electoral politics an important direction,” the statement read. “After our members were being repeatedly deprived of their political rights, the road to election has clearly been suspended.” Law was elected to the Legislative Council two years ago, but was disqualified last year by the court over his improper oath-taking in October 2016. Demosisto put forward a candidate, its standing committee member Agnes Chow Ting, to try to retake Law’s seat in a special by-election. However, officials banned Chow from running on the grounds that Demosisto’s call for self-determination was “unconstitutional”. Law stepped down last week from his post as party chairman, while vice-chairwoman Tiffany Yuen Ka-wai quit the party – a move seen as a tactic to avoid the risk of being banned from standing in the district council elections next year. The new chairman, Ivan Lam Long-yin, said on Tuesday the party would not commit resources to waging election campaigns. We will adjust our focus towards civil society and devote our energy to policy advocacy. Conceding a difficult road ahead while claiming suppression by the government, Demosisto said it would continue to stand in the frontline of the city’s democracy movements. “In the future, we will adjust our focus towards civil society and devote our energy to policy advocacy,” the party said in its statement. “We will strive to connect with more Hongkongers in the coming battles and democracy movements.” It added that party members needed to prepare for what it called a key point of contention: a national security law.
Radio4All download pages
BCfm audio file
Radio4All audio file