ralpress.org

Have just been sent this link by a friend:

http://www.pistonheads.com/speed/default.asp?storyId=18782

Look on the bright side, at least there won’t be so many terrorists, paedophiles or fly tippers clogging up the bus lanes.

And eco-warriors, titter ye not with vengeful glee, for it’ll be but a Pyrrhic victory. They’ll be doing the same to pedestrians next, including the ones that only eat vegetables. They’ve already got the face recognition software, and it can reportedly “see through” beards and cosmetic alterations.

They’re simply wrecking our society with this totally unnecessary surveillance porn and attendant authoritarian attitude. I’m losing track of the number of people of my generation who have registered an intent to emigrate. Intelligent people don’t want to tracked every inch of their journey through a public space, they don’t want flourescent jacketed “officers of the council” scratching and sniffing their rubbish bins each week, they don’t want pilotless police drones flying over their homes and observing them in their gardens and yards.

It’s not terrorists destroying our public spaces and society in general, it’s our own government and its authoritarian, technology intoxicated, control freak minions.

Quite honestly, I think our government is going collectively mad.

Capturing the database state: community photocall

Get snapping! It’s dead easy to make your images available on Flickr to be used by the Open Rights Group for Freedom Not Fear day. Simply:

• Tag it: “FNFBigPicture” (no quotes of course, and tag-case is unimportant)
• Choose the “Attribution Creative Commons” license

Et voila. You’ve hopefully helped strike a small but important blow for an open, accountable society. At the very least, you’ll have registered your concern.

Here are those that have been tagged so far: Freedom not Fear on Flickr

Where these days does one see public messages delivered in such a threatening, confrontational tone? North Korea? Saudi Arabia? Planet Earth, post Dalek invasion? Perhaps, but this one is currently displayed by the TV Licensing organization (the enforcement arm of the BBC) on a giant advertising hoarding on the A23 near Streatham Common in South London (click on the image to see a larger version).

Nice isn’t it? Not the kind of intimidation you would normally expect to see in a modern, civilized democracy. And it’s astonishingly insensitive, even provocative, coming as it does during a time of heightened public sensitivity about state surveillance and the database culture. It’s a huge billboard and it literally looms over you as you walk past. It’s actually rather chilling.

It looks like Noel Edmonds was right. Auntie isn’t as benign and “avuncular” as it likes to make out. If the BBC really wishes to remain the cherished institution it so often claims to be, it had better start behaving like a civilized, responsible organization. These Gestapo tactics are ugly, ominous and unconscionable, and we are all heartily sick of them.

Edit: It seems that Tom Clougherty on adamsmith.org shares my feelings about this unpleasant and ominous poster.

After persuading someone to participate in the protests this coming weekend, I was asked for more background information regarding state surveillance in the UK. Of course, typing the keywords UK surveillance society into Google is as effective a means as any. My own, rather random, collection of links is here. It hasn’t been compiled with much coherency or academic rigour, but if you haven’t been paying much attention and need to get up to speed, there’s more than enough there to fill you in and give you pointers for further research.

Don’t just moan, do something about it:

“On 11. October 2008 we call for an international action day in as many European capital cities as possible and elsewhere around the world to demonstrate against the total retention of telecommunication data and other instruments of surveillance. We would like to recall the remembrance of the historical achievement of civil rights and liberties as a heritage of the Age of Enlightenment and to support the trust in security in our free society”

Background:

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/05/freedom-not-fear

Planned protests:

http://wiki.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/Freedom_Not_Fear_2008

http://wiki.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/Freedom_Not_Fear_2008/London

And don’t forget the preliminary campaign:

http://www.openrightsgroup.org/2008/09/29/capturing-the-database-state-community-photocall/

Come along next Saturday (October 11th) and be counted, or at least, surveilled :-0