Over the past 10 years our government has become increasingly overbearing, creating a nation of criminals out of good British citizens. We are subject to ever more officious laws and intrusive means of surveillance. Britain has 1% of the world’s population but about 20% of its CCTV cameras; it has one camera for every 14 people in the country.

Last year local authorities, the police and the intelligence services made 504,073 requests to access private e-mail and telephone data — that is nearly 10,000 requests every week.

Documents leaked earlier this year revealed that GCHQ, the government’s spy centre, had already awarded £200m to suppliers as part of Mastering the Internet, a mass surveillance project designed to enable the monitoring of all internet use and phone calls in Britain.

An Englishman’s home is no longer his castle: some 266 laws now grant the state the right to enter private homes. And if they can’t get you on tape, online or in your home, in recent months a slew of websites has appeared encouraging citizens to shop people dropping litter or acting suspiciously. Just as in Orwell’s dystopia, Britain is being turned into a nation of narks.

A 45-year-old man, from Briton Ferry in Neath, South Wales, complained of being assaulted by police during his arrest on 15 August, in which he claims South Wales police officers used a Taser on his head. He was taken to hospital for treatment and received stitches for facial injuries.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), the police watchdog, confirmed that it was investigating. "The man, from the Briton Ferry area of Neath, has also complained that when he was arrested a Taser was deployed and hit his head," an IPCC statement said today.

"He was taken to hospital where he received 10-12 stitches to his forehead and three stitches to his nose."

A new report has emerged about the alleged existence of a third secret prison used by the CIA in Europe. According to ABC News, the CIA operated a "black site" prison in Lithuania until the end of 2005. Following reports on "black site" prisons in Poland, ABC News is now reporting that a third jail existed in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius. According to the report, as many as eight prisoners were held there for at least one year.

The United States is believed to have used the third black site prison in Europe to hold high-value al-Qaida suspects after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and to question them using "special interrogation techniques." These included the simulated drowning of prisoners through the practice known as waterboarding. With the development, the debate in America over government interrogation techniques and torture appears to be taking on a greater European dimension.

ABC News reports that the site wasn't closed until late 2005, after newspapers and TV stations first reported on secret prisons in Europe used by the US after the 9/11 attacks. The broadcaster cited former CIA sources either directly involved or briefed on the secret program to detain the suspected al-Qaida terrorists in Europe.

The US intelligence agency refused to comment on the report. "The CIA does not publicly discuss where facilities associated with its past detention program may or may not have been located," CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano told ABC News. "We simply do not comment on those types of claims, which have appeared in the press from time to time over the years. The dangers of airing such allegations are plain. These kinds of assertions could, at least potentially, expose millions of people to direct threat. That is irresponsible."

"We've known for a long time that there had to be a third site in Eastern Europe," John Sifton of the New York-based human rights organization One World Research told SPIEGEL ONLINE. "But unfortunately we never knew where it was." Sifton has also obtained records which show flights to Lithuania, mainly in 2004 and 2005. Aircraft belonging to the company Richmor Aviation, which has been proven to have carried out flights on behalf of the CIA and which has repeatedly come under suspicion of transporting prisoners for the intelligence agency, landed in Vilnius on several occasions. Additionally, a cargo plane with the number N8213G, which also belongs to one of the CIA's partner companies, is alleged to have flown to the Lithuanian capital Vilnius.

The prospective national ID card was broken and cloned in 12 minutes, the Daily Mail revealed.

The newspaper hired computer expert Adam Laurie to test the security that protects the information embedded in the chip on the card. Using a Nokia mobile phone and a laptop computer, Laurie was able to copy the data on a card that is being issued to foreign nationals in minutes. He then created a cloned card, and with help from another technology expert, changed all the data on the new card. This included the physical details of the bearer, name, fingerprints and other information. He then rewrote data on the card, reversing the bearer's status from "not entitled to benefits" to "entitled to benefits".

The card is similar to the ID card for British citizens unveiled last week by Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary, as part of the Government's ongoing National Identity Scheme. Embedded inside the card for foreigners is a microchip with the details of its bearer held in electronic form: name, date of birth, physical characteristics, fingerprints and so on, together with other information such as immigration status and whether the holder is entitled to State benefits.

This chip is the vital security measure that, so the Government believes, will make identity cards 'unforgeable'.

The Identity Cards Act introduced by Labour in 2006 states that the National Identity Register, which is the backbone of the scheme, may contain 50 separate categories of information about you. These range from 'biometric data' - your physical characteristics, fingerprints, facial image and so on - to your current and previous addresses, your immigration status, your National Insurance, passport and driving licence numbers. And, once registered for the scheme, if you fail to inform the Identity And Passport Service of any changes of address, you can be fined up to £1,000.

The Children’s Secretary set out £400million plans to put 20,000 problem families under 24-hour CCTV super-vision in their own homes.

They will be monitored to ensure that children attend school, go to bed on time and eat proper meals. Private security guards will also be sent round to carry out home checks, while parents will be given help to combat drug and alcohol addiction.

Around 2,000 families have gone through these Family Intervention Projects so far. But ministers want to target 20,000 more in the next two years, with each costing between £5,000 and £20,000 – a potential total bill of £400million. Ministers hope the move will reduce the number of youngsters who get drawn into crime because of their chaotic family lives.

Sin bin projects operate in half of council areas already but Mr Balls wants every local authority to fund them. He said: “This is pretty tough and non-negotiable support for families to get to the root of the problem. There should be Family Intervention Projects in every local authority area because every area has families that need support.”

The US marine corps have become the latest branch of the American military to ban the use of social networking sites, after officials expressed concern about potential security risks. An order sent out to marines yesterday informed them that they could no longer use sites including Facebook, MySpace and Twitter in case enemy groups used the information they contained to their advantage. "These internet sites in general are a proven haven for malicious actors and content, and are particularly high risk due to information exposure, user-generated content and targeting by adversaries," said the order. "The very nature of social networking sites creates a larger attack and exploitation window." Coming just days after US deputy defence secretary William Lynn ordered a review of the military's social networking policies, the move is being seen by some as a signal that the Pentagon could enact a blanket ban on social networks across the entire military system.

Mobile police used pepper spray and a Taser on a deaf and mentally disabled man Friday after they were unable to get him to come out of a bathroom at a Dollar General store, authorities said.

After forcibly removing Antonio Love from the bathroom of the Azalea Road store, officers attempted to book the 37-year-old, on charges of resisting arrest, disorderly conduct and failure to obey a police officer, but the magistrate on duty at the jail refused to accept any of those charges.

Love's family members said they had no idea where he was during the time that police had him in custody. Brodrick Love said the officers dropped his brother off in the parking lot of their apartment building without saying what happened or why his brother had been missing for six hours. Love's family members have filed a formal complaint against the officers.

Christopher Levy, a Police Department spokesman, said the officers didn't find out that Love had a hearing impairment until after they got him out of the bathroom and found a card in his wallet indicating he was deaf. The officers' decision to take Love to jail — even after they discovered his disability — as well as their conduct throughout the incident is still under investigation, Levy said.

Use of the Taser and the pepper spray appear to be justified according to the department's policy, he said.

Love, whose family said his mental abilities are about that of a 10-year-old, wrote them a narrative of the incident as he recalled it. The hand-scrawled, six-page note and the official police account of the confrontation are strikingly similar in their recitation of the chain of events.

Boise police already had the suspect handcuffed when they rammed a Taser gun into his anus and fired. Then they placed the Taser gun against his genitals and threatened to do the same.

At the time, the domestic violence suspect was lying face down with three officers on top of him, according to the Idaho Statesmen.

It was all caught on tape. Here is the exchange that took place:
Cop: Do you feel this?
Suspect: Yes, sir.
Cop: Do you feel that? That’s my …
Suspect: Okay
Cop: … Taser up your ass.
Suspect: Okay
Cop: So don’t move.
Suspect: I’m trying not to. I can’t breathe.
Cop: Now do you feel this in your balls?
Suspect: I do, sir. I’m not going to move. I’m not gonna move.
Cop: Now I’m gonna tase your balls if you move again.
(A full minute goes by)
Cop: Okay, I’m gonna take this Taser out of your asshole now. Are you going to fight with me?
Suspect: No, not at all, sir.
Cop: (to another cop) So far, for the last two minutes, he’s been cooperative. But then my Taser’s in his ass.

Not only was the exchange documented on the cop’s own tape recorder, the suspect ended up with burns on the inside of his right buttock. These were evident in photographs taken ten and 13 days after the incident. Also, another cop who taped an interview with the suspect at the jail later that night ended up erasing the taped interview.

Both officers have been “disciplined”, according to police. But details of the discipline were not released. And neither were the names of the cops. After all, police say, this is an “internal personnel matter.”

Boise’s Community Ombudsman, Pierce Murphy, who happens to be a former cop investigates complaints of misconduct against cops. Although he never names the cops, he did provide an extensive and graphic 43-page report on his findings. The officers all told Murphy that the suspect was fighting, resisting and using profanity the entire time they were dealing with him, yet he notes that none of this is evident in the audio recording.

Further evidence of the close involvement of British agents in the torture of British citizens in Pakistan has emerged during a series of interviews with Pakistani intelligence officers.

Researchers from the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) say several Pakistani officials have corroborated accounts of torture given by several victims. The officials not only made clear that their counterparts in British intelligence were fully aware of the methods they were employing during interrogations but claim the British agents were "grateful" it was happening.

In a statement issued today , HRW said senior Pakistani officials had told it "on numerous occasions" that British officials were aware of the mistreatment of a number of terrorism suspects from the UK, including Rangzieb Ahmed and Salahuddin Amin, who are now serving life sentences in the UK, Zeeshan Siddiqui, whose whereabouts is unknown, and Rashid Rauf, who is said to have died in a US missile strike after escaping from custody.

HRW said senior officials in Pakistan had confirmed the "overall authenticity" of the allegations made by Ahmed, from Rochdale, who had three fingernails ripped out of his left hand after MI5 and Greater Manchester police drew up a list of questions and handed them to his Pakistani captors. The sources said that an account given by Amin, from Luton, of the manner in which he was tortured in between meetings with MI5 officers was "essentially accurate", adding that his was a "high pressure" case in which the demand for information made by both British and American intelligence officers was "insatiable".

A quarter of all government databases are illegal and should be scrapped or redesigned, according to a report. The Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust says storing information leads to vulnerable people, such as young black men, single parents and children, being victimised. It says the UK's "database state" wastes billions from the public purse and often breaches human rights laws.

The government spends £16bn a year on databases and plans to spend a further £105bn on projects over five years but does not know the precise number of the "thousands" of systems it operates, the trust claims.

In the wake of numerous data loss scandals, the cross-party trust - which campaigns for civil liberties and social justice - examined 46 public sector systems. It said 11 were "almost certainly" illegal under human rights or data protection laws. These included the national DNA database and ContactPoint, an index of biographical and contact information on all children in England which notes their relationship with public services.

ContactPoint, intended to aid child protection, has been criticised by opponents, who say at £224m it is too costly and could put children at risk if security is lax.

When examining criminal justice systems, the trust discovered one woman's caution over a playground fight when she was 13 will stay on the Police National Computer until she is 100.

Meanwhile, the genetic fingerprints of nearly four-in-10 black men aged under 35 were held on the DNA database in England, where records are not deleted even when people are acquitted or released without charge, the report claimed.

Author, Professor Ross Anderson of Cambridge University, said: "Britain's database state has become a financial, ethical and administrative disaster which is penalising some of the most vulnerable members of our society." Co-author Terri Dowty, director of Action on Rights for Children, said systems such as Onset - a tool for identifying potential youth offenders - can stigmatise youngsters.