BBC goes full Big Brother in recent announcement
Brought to our attention by Mark Doran, a new BBC document dated May 2017 contains this bizarre threat to its licence-payers:
9. Offensive or inappropriate content on BBC websites
If you post or send offensive, inappropriate or objectionable content anywhere on or to BBC websites or otherwise engage in any disruptive behaviour on any BBC service, the BBC may use your personal information to stop such behaviour.

Where the BBC reasonably believes that you are or may be in breach of any applicable laws (e.g. because content you have posted may be defamatory), the BBC may use your personal information to inform relevant third parties such as your employer, school email/internet provider or law enforcement agencies about the content and your behaviour.
9. Offensive or inappropriate content on BBC websites
If you post or send offensive, inappropriate or objectionable content anywhere on or to BBC websites or otherwise engage in any disruptive behaviour on any BBC service, the BBC may use your personal information to stop such behaviour.

Where the BBC reasonably believes that you are or may be in breach of any applicable laws (e.g. because content you have posted may be defamatory), the BBC may use your personal information to inform relevant third parties such as your employer, school email/internet provider or law enforcement agencies about the content and your behaviour.
Here’s Mark’s screen cap of the doc:
Not only is this freakishly (yes, there’s no other word) Orwellian, it’s completely vague. Are the words “objectionable” and “disruptive” going to be employed like the words “hate” (currently being used to shut down discourse on social media), and “fascist” (currently being used by (often fascist) neoliberals to brand any serious criticism of globalism and the corporatocracy), to outlaw and/or punish dissident views? And what about “defamatory”? Is anyone calling Theresa May a malfunctioning Thatcher-bot going to be shopped out to her lawyers by the Beeb?
Clarification, at the very least, is urgently needed. Better still, the BBC should backtrack and guarantee it will remain a broadcast corporation and NOT presume to act as an arm of the state security system.
If you’re a concerned UK citizen, don’t hesitate to contact the BBC to express your views – though be prepared for a follow-up visit from the cops.
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For what it’s worth (probably not much), I felt obliged to write to the “data protection” guys:
Dear Sir/Madam,
With regard to the clause below concerning cookies etc, one really
must ask if the BBC has seriously gone, (not to put too fine a point
on it…) off its rocker:
“Where the BBC reasonably believes that you are or may be in breach
of any applicable laws (e.g. because content you have posted may be
defamatory), the BBC may use your personal information to inform
relevant third parties such as your employer, school email/internet
provider or law enforcement agencies about the content and your
behaviour.”
I am sorry, but what the BBC “believes” is a matter of opinion for the BBC alone.
Given that today there are many prominent people on the political and social
stage whose corruption, arrogance and outright wickedness are fully
deserving of “defamatory” comment, it is utterly immoral for the BBC
to imagine that my freedom to criticize those inadequate and pernicious
elements in our western society, however wealthy and influential, could
possibly be of interest or concern to my employer, school, email/internet
provider or law enforcement agencies.
It is the BBC’s behaviour which thereby comes under the heading of
“inappropriate content and behaviour”.
Please bring this historical and moral anachronism to the attention of
those whose job it is to shape BBC policy, if you would be so kind.
As a teacher, I would say to any student who stepped out of line like this,
“I am surprised at you.”
Yours faithfully,
Rikki Simm
I hate the BBC. I’m currently reading up on the history of this organisation – I want to put up a website detailing some of the more scandalous episodes of its ongoing state propaganda campaign (eg. Iraq war/David Kelly, Orgreave/miners’ strike, smear campaigns against Corbyn/the SNP, Jimmy Saville, etc). I keep hearing accounts saying the first scandal was the BBC handling of the 1926 General Strike, but details are always thin on the ground. Anyone know any (academic) sources detailing any of these events? Or where you might find old BBC archive news footage?
Watch ‘London Calling’, my film on BBC bias during Scottish referendum. https://vid.me/ZdTg or on YOUTUBE.
Point made. But my opinion (I don’t possess a specialist’s knowledge) is that Scotland doesn’t need to be attached to the barbaric EU.
Murray Craig made a point that my brain was furiously chewing on right after the idea of a Scottish public broadcaster was presented. I thought the coverage was excellent. There’s so many issues. Catalan and other tiny semi-autonomous Spanish regions have their own public broadcaster. The British politicians who want the Scots (Scots or Scottish?) to think that the BBC (which has been caught out abusing the Scottish people) to think that they don’t need that have no case. On other hand, Murray is right, I think, in thinking that public broadcasters only end up as propaganda channels of the state. Therefore, Who needs them? On the other hand – like I said, many issues – the corporatocracy is furiously working on ways to silence alternatives to their own establishment media.
What to do?
No doubt if one asserts that the lastest psy op in manchester is just that, a psy op. I am sure that would be classed as objectionable content.
MEMORIES FROM 20 YEARS AGO
One of my first posts online was this message about netiquette in an internet newsgroup in 1997. The Finnish National Agency for Education had opened a web page for anonymous feedback. Two 8th graders at a Helsinki middle school had expressed their honest opinion.
The agency evidently did not like the feedback. They used the IP address of the poster to trace the message back to the school computer, then sent a strictly worded letter to the school demanding action. In the end the principal and the two pupils were forced visit the agency to issue formal apology.
I was pissed off by this Big Brother style abuse of authority. I used the same feedback form to state my protest in the most offensive way I could think of. (I took a photo from the newsgroup “alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.male.anal”, cropped it to minimal size, encoded it using uuencode and tried to squeeze everything through the character limit of the feedback form.) I then sent my whole feedback to the newsgroup “sfnet.viestinta.www”.
The original article in Helsingin Sanomat, the Finnish newspaper of record.
Reblogged this on .
This is an example of why government and it’s tentacles should be eradicated by any and all means and not sllowed to ever return! This can bedone by violent Revolution by as little as 3-5% of the population. The indoctrinated, braindead masses are not needed.
As with most state controlled entities, the BBC assumes an importance in our lives…..really?
The NHS nurse on BBC Question Time in the Edinburgh Debate with Nicola sturgeon . This woman that claimed she eats out of food banks ? Her daughter attends private education. Her last question before appearing on this program for the second time was asking how much a bottle of wine was? . The gentleman sitting beside her either her husband , boyfriend or father is a conservative councillor. This was either plant aginst the SNP, by the BBC itself or Ruth Davidson leader of the the Scottish conservative party. ? Someone’s heads need to roll for the lies against Scotland’s NHS & SNP, in order to win browny points before a G,E.
As an overseas observer I feel totally empowered upon reading this to immediately post comments on BBC sites informing them to “get f****d and stop being such c***s. I encourage others to do the same
Is there any way that current licence payers can refuse to pay any more to the BBC? How many UK residents and households who currently pay the annual licence to fund the BBC would need to withdraw before the BBC seriously starts to hurt?
You may find this page helpful: https://www.facebook.com/activeresistancetothetvlicence/
Sounds like we are truly in a national security state.
It will certainly lead to one thing: that critical readers and commenters will turn away from the BBC, in as far as they haven’t already done so, and try to find refuge in places like here where critical thinking is appreciated and allowed. That the BBC scares people away from their own pages is good for the readership of Websites like OffG, at least temporarily.
Things will only become grim when ‘intelligence’ shuts off free speech within alt and mainstream media for ‘our safety’. But I do not think our perception managers will ever try to do that. Because when they do that they will lose two important propaganda weapons
They will no longer be able to read our thoughts (as they are written here), and therefore become clueless about what people really think about the things that they want the people to believe as shown for instance on the BBC
People who would like to have their thoughts heard, will have to do something different than this; that is: commenting alone on a screen. They could either start to write things in the wall (which is kind of similar to what commenting on internet is IMHO), or they must talk with other people, maybe organize some meetings, so one and the other can hear each other’s voice. Like people did when they protested against the war in Vietnam, or the Bush/Blair coming war in Iraq. That kind of activism is far more ‘dangerous’ for our ‘intelligence agencies’ than letting us write and comment on Websites like these or on the BBC: it is more conceivable to quickly run out of control, and you have a real protest.
So why does the BBC write Orwellian ‘end of freespeech for all, or else’ on their website? – For the same reason why they like Orwell’s 1984 so much in the MSM: it scares people. And people who are scared are unable to think, which is great if you want to silence alternative speech or free speech. So there you go.
[[ They will no longer be able to read our thoughts (as they are written here), and therefore become clueless about what people really think about the things that they want the people to believe as shown for instance on the BBC ]]
The BBC have no interest in the thoughts and views of their listeners or viewers. For example, BBC Radio 3 – their classical music channel – built up a very successful online forum, where listeners and program-makers exchanged pleasant and informed ideas. It had taken years to establish and grow. And then overnight, the BBC announced they had closed it down. No reason was ever given for doing so.
great point… loved.
it is better to meet and make friends with good ideas, freedom, and revolution, the pigs can fly so why not make bbq’s, melted cheese and beer gatherings to discuss personaly and live with others?! we are much using these tools of spying called smartphones… they know and hear us whenever they can pigs… lets make more meetings and gatherings one on one…. great idea brother… cheers from far away
The BBC, Amazon … they’re all at it.
A review comment of mine on Amazon was censured/moderated out of existence followed by two emails warning that if it happens again I will have my “reviewing privileges” removed.
Well, F*ck their reviewing priveleges. Free speech has gone on Corporate/Establishment forums, not that this is anything new, other than the scale and depth of the censorship now being applied.
Samuel Adams observed “It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people’s minds”. And that’s where keyboard warriors come in. Remember most revolutions of the 20th century are said to have started in coffee shops. The Internet today is the equivalent of these coffee shops. Maybe now is the time for us to spend less time on the keyboards and more on the streets engaging in real social action.
[[ followed by two emails warning that if it happens again I will have my “reviewing privileges” removed. ]]
They sent the same one to me, too.
I sent them a F*cK-Off note by return, and haven’t spent a brass farthing with them since. I shall be very pleased if Jeff Buzzoff flies off to Mars and never returns, of course… but I begrudge funding even a suicide trip for this simian clown.
I tried to reply twice to you yesterday, on my Dell ultrabook, with windows 10. Once, I tried to reply from the Off Guardian website and once from my WordPress Reader. Nothing appeared. I’m at home now, on a different machine, using windows 7.
When I read this yesterday, I was in a coffee shop. I had just had a discussion with a young fellow, a new barista, about the establishment’s attack on real news and I directed him to Off Guardian, explaining to him how OG came about.
My latest defeat: http://bit.ly/2mS4UyY
I was made aware of this horror some two days ago via Gab.ai – a very good source for many and varied nefarious and baffling news (and some tiresome racism and parochial US stuff).
So now one is forced to pay, literally, for one’s own censorship and authoritarian reaction?
Good to get this info from Off Guardian. Tried to sign up at Gab.Ai but seems they only take on some types? I dunno but couldn’t be bothered to check them out now.
Terry Gilliam’s ‘Brazil’ – an inspired, if wayward, masterpiece – featured a moment in which political detainees are invoiced with a detailed price breakdown of the costs of their own interrogation. At the time I thought it was satire… but it has proved to be prophecy.
I very much liked that film, but I don’t recollect anything “wayward” about it. But then it has been quite a while since I saw it. If we could go off topic, would expand on that?
[[ warning – offtopic material follows… ]]
By ‘wayward’ I meant that – in my opinion – Brazil would have benefitted from some firm editing. It’s nearly 10 minutes too long, and the final sequence loses direction… just at the moment the noose needs to tighten :-(( Great film… I feel sure Gilliam would edit it differently now? 🙂
Reblogged this on wgrovedotnet and commented:
If the BBC were not such an objectionably, biased and inflammatory propaganda platform it would not need to make a statement such as this. It’s 1984 full circle, just not who we thought it would be.
But were it not for the jolly old Beeb, Mohandeer… where would all the Tristrams and Fenellas find work, eh? There has to be some sort of pay-off for being Head Girl at Roedean, or Punting Captain at Chillingborough, now that openings for private tutors in the Raj have mostly dried up, and even the Queen’s Own Pesawar Mastodon-Tusk Cavalry have closed their ranks to duffers.
The jolly hockey-sticks Fenellas and their rugby-playing, Bullingdon Club restaurant-trashing Tristram bruddahs would join the Conservatives as foot soldiers in media relations and PR, the way David Cameron did, if the BBC did not exist.
Didn’t he have a brief interlude flogging things around the Middle East with the now Baron Mark Thatcher before he got involved elsewhere?
Ah, the paternalism of our rulers, delivered daily by the BBC. From cradle to grave, full spectrum indoctrination and surveillance…
And now the shipping forecast. Cue subliminal music with rhythmic incantations.