subscribe to this blog:
Posts
All Comments
Showing posts with label police state. Show all posts
Showing posts with label police state. Show all posts
Tuesday, 15 October 2013
The state within a state
The surveillance state is well under way. It is said that if we were to turn into a police state that not much would have to change.
Us all
New laws that will mean ID checks for all, state supervision of the media, gagging of campaigns in the run-up to an election and a threat against publishers of devastating accounts of secret surveillance. Russia? China? Nope, dear old Britain.
The ConDems’ new anti-immigrants Bill will mean checks on status before people can access housing or health. This will hit everyone, as the Immigration Law Practitioners' Association (Ilpa) has pointed out.
"What this means in practice is a system of identity checks for all, since it is necessary for British citizens or people with permanent residence to prove that they are lawfully present in the UK if and when checked," says their response to the Home Office consultation.
Moving swiftly past the decision by the mainstream parties to introduce a legal oversight of the media through the unelected, secretive, feudal institution known as the Privy Council, let’s deal with state surveillance which we’re not supposed to know about.
US whistleblower Edward Snowden has just been given the Sam Adams Award by former CIA officers, who gave it to him in Russia, for “exhibiting integrity in intelligence”. The Guardian’s decision to publish Snowden’s revelations has run into a wall of hostility and intimidation.
Britain’s secret services – backed by Labour, Tory and LibDem politicians – have all but accused the Guardian of treason for printing chapter and verse of how the state can access every digital transmission you make – at will and without you knowing.
MI5 chief Andrew Parker’s accusation that Snowden was “handing the advantage to terrorists” ratcheted up the offensive on behalf of the secret state. He was predictably backed by No 10 and the ultra-reactionary Daily Mail, which accused the Guardian of “lethal irresponsibility”.
As we stand the state has so much information on us and increasingly so. They are making their way into our lives all the more every day. With advancements in technology come with dangers of keeping tabs on us and our thinking.
The government claims not much of the information collected on us is useful to them but they collect it all the same. This is a very disturbing fact in my opinion.
The ruling class and various government bodies go to such lengths to track our moves and information on us they run some very highly sophisticated programmes to do this and keep track of us all.
Tempora is the clandestine security electronic surveillance program established by GCHQ in 2011. It was exposed by Snowden, along with Prism, which is the US’s own mass data mining programme. The two programmes have a cable and network tapping capability called Upstream which allows spooks to extract information in “real time”.
We are entering an entirely new kind of human society, one involving an unprecedented penetration by the state into areas which have always been regarded as private. Do we agree to that? If we don't, this is the last chance to stop it happening. Our rulers will say what all rulers everywhere have always said: that their intentions are good, and we can trust them. They want that to be a sufficient guarantee.
The chilling fact is that the law governing surveillance is “so broadly drafted and interpreted, it’s almost impossible to break”,
We don’t live in a democracy, or at least one that is anything more than a sham. The totalitarian nature of state surveillance makes a mockery of the rule of law, which is often the only thing that stands between us and outright dictatorship. The major parties are cosying up to the secret state, not to mention on education and other policies.
Although the law cannot protect us from everything and we must not rely on it we must look to organise ourselves independently of the state a and any organisation linked to the state.
Monday, 2 April 2012
Are we heading towards a part police state ?
It was said that if the UK transformed into a police state some day not a lot would have to change. We are one of the most policed societies in the world believe it or not. There is CCTV nearly everywhere you go and all this is put down to the fact terrorism is a bigger problem than ever before.
Well to me as a marxist terrorism is something that if it didn’t exist would be created by the ruling class. It is used to divide people from the class struggle and rule them with a bit of nationalist words to get us all thinking we must protect ourselves against these foreign terrorists wishing to ruin our way of life.
So am I surprised when I hear of this governments latest plans to monitor our activity on the internet and more ? no I rarely am these days.
Proposals for real-time monitoring of email and social media show the government has caved in to the security services
'The Terrorism Act was introduced by Tony Blair with the promise that it would be used only in the gravest of cases. Less than five years later it was used to bar an elderly man [Walter Wolfgangfrom the Labour party conference for heckling.'
If the government were to suggest monitoring every building that each person in the UK visits, and making a note of every conversation they had, the policy would be seen asfurther breach’s on the nanny state which we were told the tories were dead against before the election..
Assurances that the actual content of conversations wouldn't be recorded would be unlikely to help.
It's a telling sign of how many real-world freedoms have been sacrificed online, then, that a government that just two years ago pledged to "reverse the rise of the surveillance state" feels able to propose real-time monitoring of all email and social media communications.
The information stored would include the sender and recipient of an email, the time it was sent, and details of the computer it was sent from. This would build a profile of who contacts whom, with what frequency, and from where.
The government says such measures are essential to counter organised crime and terrorism, citing that 95% of organised crime investigations and "every" major counter-terrorism investigation use communications data. However, this statistic does not show if such information was essential or even useful to these investigations – merely that investigators chose to get hold of communications records on almost every occasion, usually via warrant or use of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa).
This kind of surveillance is nothing new: it's been gradually expanding in the UK over the past decade, from measures that make it easier to obtain permission to monitor communications, to requiring internet service providers to store information on email communications to all their users. Under Ripa, state employees as junior as Royal Mail officers are allowed to "ping" mobile phones for location information on the basis of a simple, unrecorded, verbal request.
Information about each email sent – the data that would be covered by the new proposals – already has to be stored by providers for at least a year under UK law. The change would make it accessible to intelligence services in real time, presumably to allow for patterns or unusual activity to be spotted.
Such efforts sound impressive, but whether adding to the huge pile of data at the disposal of the UK's intelligence agencies will make us safer is questionable. Trawling big data for suspicious activity is the 21st-century version of finding needles in a haystack. Terrorists are thankfully very rare relative to the size of the population. As such, attempts to identify suspicious patterns of activity may generate many "false positives": examples of innocent behaviour
All this comes in the background to what we hear on G4S security who is now one of the largest if not the largest employers of workers in the world now. A huge private security firm making profit out of security is it any wonder the government who have been found to have links to this company are wishing to have these nuggets of information about us and our habits opened up to a wider audience.
I wonder
Well to me as a marxist terrorism is something that if it didn’t exist would be created by the ruling class. It is used to divide people from the class struggle and rule them with a bit of nationalist words to get us all thinking we must protect ourselves against these foreign terrorists wishing to ruin our way of life.
So am I surprised when I hear of this governments latest plans to monitor our activity on the internet and more ? no I rarely am these days.
Proposals for real-time monitoring of email and social media show the government has caved in to the security services
'The Terrorism Act was introduced by Tony Blair with the promise that it would be used only in the gravest of cases. Less than five years later it was used to bar an elderly man [Walter Wolfgangfrom the Labour party conference for heckling.'
If the government were to suggest monitoring every building that each person in the UK visits, and making a note of every conversation they had, the policy would be seen asfurther breach’s on the nanny state which we were told the tories were dead against before the election..
Assurances that the actual content of conversations wouldn't be recorded would be unlikely to help.
It's a telling sign of how many real-world freedoms have been sacrificed online, then, that a government that just two years ago pledged to "reverse the rise of the surveillance state" feels able to propose real-time monitoring of all email and social media communications.
The information stored would include the sender and recipient of an email, the time it was sent, and details of the computer it was sent from. This would build a profile of who contacts whom, with what frequency, and from where.
The government says such measures are essential to counter organised crime and terrorism, citing that 95% of organised crime investigations and "every" major counter-terrorism investigation use communications data. However, this statistic does not show if such information was essential or even useful to these investigations – merely that investigators chose to get hold of communications records on almost every occasion, usually via warrant or use of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa).
This kind of surveillance is nothing new: it's been gradually expanding in the UK over the past decade, from measures that make it easier to obtain permission to monitor communications, to requiring internet service providers to store information on email communications to all their users. Under Ripa, state employees as junior as Royal Mail officers are allowed to "ping" mobile phones for location information on the basis of a simple, unrecorded, verbal request.
Information about each email sent – the data that would be covered by the new proposals – already has to be stored by providers for at least a year under UK law. The change would make it accessible to intelligence services in real time, presumably to allow for patterns or unusual activity to be spotted.
Such efforts sound impressive, but whether adding to the huge pile of data at the disposal of the UK's intelligence agencies will make us safer is questionable. Trawling big data for suspicious activity is the 21st-century version of finding needles in a haystack. Terrorists are thankfully very rare relative to the size of the population. As such, attempts to identify suspicious patterns of activity may generate many "false positives": examples of innocent behaviour
All this comes in the background to what we hear on G4S security who is now one of the largest if not the largest employers of workers in the world now. A huge private security firm making profit out of security is it any wonder the government who have been found to have links to this company are wishing to have these nuggets of information about us and our habits opened up to a wider audience.
I wonder
Friday, 29 July 2011
Why i feel banning the far right EDL would be a dangerous precedence to set
As i'm sure you are all well aware over the last week or so the far right and their activists have been thrown into the spotlight following the horrific murderings in Norway of young innocent teenagers and the bomb attack in Osl city centre.
There has been increased calls from the EDL to mount demonstrations and march's to stand with the person who performed these horrific actions.
Likewise many are also calling for groups like the EDL who are anti muslim and oppose islam and would be considered far right to be banned from marching and protesting.
Who are the EDL ?
The EDL has now organised around 15 principal figures loosely based around the football firms providing the most support. Not all of those involved are from a football background, and many of the men have yet to meet each other face-to-face. But they are mobilising for each other on trust, using websites including Facebook and YouTube.
The British National Party has distanced itself from the EDL, but anti-racism campaigners have named party activists they have photographed at demonstrations. They add that some demos have included people with a record of football violence.
Each demonstration has led to confrontations. But leaders like Tommy are appealing for demonstrators to avoid drink because they don't want to be written off as racist thugs.
In Birmingham last week, the BBC filmed black and white men alongside each other on EDL's lines.
So if it's not exclusively white, is it just a cover for a wider Islamophobia?
"People aren't against Islam, they aren't against anything else other than the funders of terrorism, the sworn enemies of Britain," says Tommy.
"For 10-15 years these groups have gone unchallenged in our towns and cities. Those days have gone now. We will challenge them. Wherever there are terrorists, we will be there."
Street army
Nick Lowles is the editor of Searchlight, which campaigns against far-right extremists.
Whilst i do not agree with a thing the EDL stand for or their actions at all i do feel that stifling their right to protest as much as we disagree with them and what they stand for would be undemocratic and set a dangerous level of precedence for other protests.
I could see a situation if a call to ban protests by the EDL was stretched to cover all politically motivated or any supposed politicaly motivated protests. Any that are deemed provocative in any such way would be banned.
This is not the country i'd like to live in. Whilst i do feel we should all have the right to protest which is still a very hot potato at the moment especially on the left right now with police brutality called into question on several ocasions i would not like to see riots either. A peaceful protest with banners loud noise and well mannered protest is fine i'd say but trying to stir up racial hatrid or inciting violence is something the labour movement cannot support or condone .
So i do feel going forward that peoples right to protest should be upheld and respected while respecting peoples rightto disagree and form a counter demonstration which we are happy to do on the left to offer people a alternative a working class alternative to unite us all whichever race, creed, religion or nationality you happen to be.
At the end of the day we are all workers and facing the same challenges for jobs, food, housing and living conditions so i feel we would be better placed uniting as the working class than as a nationality or a race or anything i feel it is counter productive and only turns us further against eachother, playing right into the ruling class's hands.
There has been increased calls from the EDL to mount demonstrations and march's to stand with the person who performed these horrific actions.
Likewise many are also calling for groups like the EDL who are anti muslim and oppose islam and would be considered far right to be banned from marching and protesting.
Who are the EDL ?
The EDL has now organised around 15 principal figures loosely based around the football firms providing the most support. Not all of those involved are from a football background, and many of the men have yet to meet each other face-to-face. But they are mobilising for each other on trust, using websites including Facebook and YouTube.
The British National Party has distanced itself from the EDL, but anti-racism campaigners have named party activists they have photographed at demonstrations. They add that some demos have included people with a record of football violence.
Each demonstration has led to confrontations. But leaders like Tommy are appealing for demonstrators to avoid drink because they don't want to be written off as racist thugs.
In Birmingham last week, the BBC filmed black and white men alongside each other on EDL's lines.
So if it's not exclusively white, is it just a cover for a wider Islamophobia?
"People aren't against Islam, they aren't against anything else other than the funders of terrorism, the sworn enemies of Britain," says Tommy.
"For 10-15 years these groups have gone unchallenged in our towns and cities. Those days have gone now. We will challenge them. Wherever there are terrorists, we will be there."
Street army
Nick Lowles is the editor of Searchlight, which campaigns against far-right extremists.
Whilst i do not agree with a thing the EDL stand for or their actions at all i do feel that stifling their right to protest as much as we disagree with them and what they stand for would be undemocratic and set a dangerous level of precedence for other protests.
I could see a situation if a call to ban protests by the EDL was stretched to cover all politically motivated or any supposed politicaly motivated protests. Any that are deemed provocative in any such way would be banned.
This is not the country i'd like to live in. Whilst i do feel we should all have the right to protest which is still a very hot potato at the moment especially on the left right now with police brutality called into question on several ocasions i would not like to see riots either. A peaceful protest with banners loud noise and well mannered protest is fine i'd say but trying to stir up racial hatrid or inciting violence is something the labour movement cannot support or condone .
So i do feel going forward that peoples right to protest should be upheld and respected while respecting peoples rightto disagree and form a counter demonstration which we are happy to do on the left to offer people a alternative a working class alternative to unite us all whichever race, creed, religion or nationality you happen to be.
At the end of the day we are all workers and facing the same challenges for jobs, food, housing and living conditions so i feel we would be better placed uniting as the working class than as a nationality or a race or anything i feel it is counter productive and only turns us further against eachother, playing right into the ruling class's hands.
Monday, 31 January 2011
are our governments turning more authoritarian ?
As we have seen over the last few months with more and more protests taking to our streets around the globe. Be it in North Africa in Tunisia or Egypt where the main news is focussed on heavily at the moment.
In 2010 we saw towards the end of the year mass scale protests on the streets of London and Greece towards their governments . In Britain it was the student movement taking to the streets to fight against the trebling of tuitian fees and the scrapping of the EMA allowance.
Whilst out on the streets i have noticed more and more reports that police tactics during these protests is becoming more and more heavy handed. I find this quite worrying. The oppressed in these countries are already oppressed so why do the governments of these countries feel the need to clamp down even more on them.
Even in Britain i'm hearing noises from the government and Labour that strike action by unions trying to protect jobs will be frowned upon and the laws may even be changed to prevent strike action. This to me is nothing else but authoritarian and governments around the world are becoming more and more like this.
Whatever happened to our right to protest ?
We seem to be dictated to when and how we can protest. Fair enough we must keep within the law but saying people cant strike or protest and flex their democratic right then waht kind of society are we really living in ?
It would seem as though we are turning into a police state in this country, Britain that is, With heavy handed police tactics being enforced on our streets on protesters it looks as though they are coming down on people with a opinion in a heavy way.
To even have the leader of the labour party and various MP's critesise unions for even wishing to strike and take industrial action to protect their jobs and conditions of their workers is a sign of how far we have come. This also shows how much the labour party is now in the hands of the capitalists it likes to protect. The labour party used to be out to protect workers rights and the workers movement this seems to be a distant memory now as they look to prop up our banks and protect big business who continuely exploit their workers year after year.
So it is a worrying sign if our governments are looking to clamp down on us having a voice. It seems they want a society as do as i say and follow us and you can only have a say if we allow you too.
It certainly does feel like we are heading back to the past where in victorian times there was a huge gulf in class's and a real distinction between class's.
I do hope either the lib dems or labour realise their roots and stand up for ordinary working people wishing to protest to protect their lives, jobs, benifits, working conditions and everything that is currently under threat peacefully and lawfully and without attacking them for doing this.
We wait and see.....
In 2010 we saw towards the end of the year mass scale protests on the streets of London and Greece towards their governments . In Britain it was the student movement taking to the streets to fight against the trebling of tuitian fees and the scrapping of the EMA allowance.
Whilst out on the streets i have noticed more and more reports that police tactics during these protests is becoming more and more heavy handed. I find this quite worrying. The oppressed in these countries are already oppressed so why do the governments of these countries feel the need to clamp down even more on them.
Even in Britain i'm hearing noises from the government and Labour that strike action by unions trying to protect jobs will be frowned upon and the laws may even be changed to prevent strike action. This to me is nothing else but authoritarian and governments around the world are becoming more and more like this.
Whatever happened to our right to protest ?
We seem to be dictated to when and how we can protest. Fair enough we must keep within the law but saying people cant strike or protest and flex their democratic right then waht kind of society are we really living in ?
It would seem as though we are turning into a police state in this country, Britain that is, With heavy handed police tactics being enforced on our streets on protesters it looks as though they are coming down on people with a opinion in a heavy way.
To even have the leader of the labour party and various MP's critesise unions for even wishing to strike and take industrial action to protect their jobs and conditions of their workers is a sign of how far we have come. This also shows how much the labour party is now in the hands of the capitalists it likes to protect. The labour party used to be out to protect workers rights and the workers movement this seems to be a distant memory now as they look to prop up our banks and protect big business who continuely exploit their workers year after year.
So it is a worrying sign if our governments are looking to clamp down on us having a voice. It seems they want a society as do as i say and follow us and you can only have a say if we allow you too.
It certainly does feel like we are heading back to the past where in victorian times there was a huge gulf in class's and a real distinction between class's.
I do hope either the lib dems or labour realise their roots and stand up for ordinary working people wishing to protest to protect their lives, jobs, benifits, working conditions and everything that is currently under threat peacefully and lawfully and without attacking them for doing this.
We wait and see.....
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)