The surveillance arms race Surveillance breeds more surveillance. That seems to be the primary message from the first day of this year's Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference, held this week in Montreal. The theme of the conference is "autonomy", one of those vanishing luxuries. Lawyer Eugene Oscapella uses the war on drugs as an example. This …
apart from talking that is.
I no it's a scary prospect, but we have actually got to address the real issue here, which is how we take control back from governments. I may not have all (or indeed any) of the right answers, but I'm pretty sure I'm addressing some of the right questions with my take on the Identity Card.
http://www.fullmoon.nu/book/side_issues/IdentityCards.htm
Even in countries where you can do something about it, those with the necessary clout (mainly politicians) are too afraid to do so.
Why? Because their opponents (despite privately agreeing that such powers go way too far) will use any sort of protest against privacy invasion as a "not tough on terror" mantra in the next election.
The other problem is both left and right wing politicians have helped pass this lunacy into law.
The main reason the FBI and CIA gave for not catching the 9/11 terrorists was that they had too little man power to sift through all the data, and weren't able to correlate reports that probably had all the information they needed to stop it from happening.
So our answer to this is to exponentially increase the amount of data by vacuuming up every thing said on any form of communication.
And do they filter out the tat by targeting known havens for terrorists, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, etc? No. Instead we target our own citizens.
Why? Because most politicians couldn't care less about terrorism.
Some of them assist the passage of bills like the Patriot Act because they see financial gold mines for themselves and their crony run corporations that win very tasty government contracts.
Other reasons are very complicated, and mostly have to do with paranoia and bigotry.
Mostly though it comes back to money, and if by allowing too much power to fall into the hands of assholes they can earn large amounts of it, what do they care if those powers are abused?
because they can. As a member of the inner sanctum of fathers 4 justice(I have been quoted in the register before) I now do little other than provide advice. because men are so pathetic and useless. the courts run circles round us - and so does the government to the population of the UK.
I suppose we get the sort of government we deserve.
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