Surveillance Society

[BeautifulBurnout]

My what-the-fuck-ometer has just broken.

Two weeks surveillance by a local council under legislation intended to detect and prevent terrorism and serious crime was engaged to verify whether a family actually lived within a school catchment area?

[Strangelet]

this is happening in the states too. elliot spitzer was caught because of the new surveillance being done on people's bank withdrawls, and thereafter continually monitored with anti-terror resources.

you just have to know going in, when you allow your government to intruduce surveillance practices, that its going to be used for what they deem fit, not what you initially wanted it to be.

[Sean]

Originally Posted by BeautifulBurnout

My what-the-fuck-ometer has just broken.

Two weeks surveillance by a local council under legislation intended to detect and prevent terrorism and serious crime was engaged to verify whether a family actually lived within a school catchment area?

So did they live within the proper area? Because we shouldn't be tolerating people not living where they're supposed to where school districts are concerned....freakin' terrorists....

[Rog]

Originally Posted by BeautifulBurnout

My what-the-fuck-ometer has just broken.

Two weeks surveillance by a local council under legislation intended to detect and prevent terrorism and serious crime was engaged to verify whether a family actually lived within a school catchment area?
>

You seem suprised BB, i'm not

[Jan]

The 2007 International Privacy Ranking
http://www.privacyinternational.org/article.shtml?cmd[347]=x-347-559597

[Rog]

depressing eh?

[BeautifulBurnout]

More wtf moments to be enjoyed here --

[Rog]

Originally Posted by BeautifulBurnout

More wtf moments to be enjoyed here --

and soon they will be able to lock you up for 40-odd days for innocently taking a snap.

but its ok for them to film you! i had a run in with the filth at a shrewsbury match last year, they were videoing a group of us walking to the match which we didn't take to as we are all 'law abiding' so we had a go at them verbally and i almost got arrested when i refused to give the officious bastards my name and address..............i hadn't done anything wrong at all

blahblahblah police state blahblah.........

[King of Snake]

yeah it's depressing. I mean come on, how does anyone come to think that this is a good idea?!

I just don't get it, how they can just campaign to make everyone suspicious of everybody else just for the infinitely small chance that a terrorist is actually caught in this way. Let's just get everyone to report everything "odd" or "suspicious" to the police so that completely innocent people can get fucked over by over-zealous cops and their rights and freedoms taken away for taking a bloody picture.

May I suggest a massive civil disobedience action where all amateur photographers in britain just take pictures of government buildings, cctv camera's etc on a certain day?

Luckily it's not quite so bad over here yet, although of course we are also following the global trend towards more and more invasive government and less and less privacy all in the name of anti-terrorism. (we now have compulsory indentification, plans for a biometric passport linked to a central database etc)

[Sarcasmo]

So retarded. The policy, the legislators that passed it, and the public that let it slide.

By September, I will have spent 21 months of roughly 4 years in Iraq, and I'm still more informed than most other Americans. At what point am I allowed to start hitting people? Seriously, I can't even talk to most people in my own country about what's going on for fear that I'll start clawing at my face and screaming obscenities at them. When they know dick about anything, it's usually misinformed mainstream media claptrap, and I'm lucky if they've taken enough time to read the ticker at the bottom of a 24 hour news channel.

It's all our fault, ladies and gentlemen. We wanted a representative government, and we got it, alright. We are represented by the majority vote, and the majority of the citizens in all of our countries are fucking stupid. And no amount of civil disobedience is going to change anything without educating the masses. The question is; how to educate them, and who's going to do it? If a thousand people stood outside the Pentagon, or the Hague, or Fort Bragg, or Credenhill, and took pictures all day, it wouldn't mean shit to anyone casually looking in on it, because they have no frame of reference. The majority is literally too stupid to understand the full depth of the problems within our governments. It's my opinion that things are going to get worse and worse, until they've reached a point where a radical change is forced, and I can say that I hope it's without bloodshed, but I hold no real illusion that this would be the case.

How polarized is my country, is Britain, is France, is Germany, against the war in Iraq? Does anyone really believe that it would be impossible to end it tomorrow? Who in their right mind would agree to let our governments spy on us, and trample our privacy in the ways that they have, if they actually could be brought to lift a finger to learn about it? All it takes is enough people to mobilize for a day to collect enough names to threaten the political careers of their local and state officials with recall. A perfectly legal and civil solution. Why is this not happening? We aren't capable of defending ourselves from the predations of our elected officials, but we'll be damned if we lose a day of work. Apparently, our economy is more important than our conscience.

Our forefathers gave us constitutional rights; weapons to use against a government gone awry, but long ago they stopped teaching us how to use them, stopped teaching us that it is our duty to use them. And so they've sat in a corner of our minds, collecting dust, with only a precious, impotent few to remember what they are, and how powerful they make us. Now, most look at them the with the same expression as a dog that's just been shown a card trick.

I don't know where this rant is going, but I've thought long and hard about a way to make the government sit up and pay some fucking attention, and there's nothing that can be done unless we can make everyone around us pay attention, too. I've always wondered what it would take to motivate enough people, say one million, to withhold taxes from the government, until it straightens it's shit out? Enough to cause a scene, but too many to effectively prosecute.