back to article UK still lousy on electronic nosiness

A new report highlights a depressingly consistent drift towards ever greater control of the population using new technologies. There are few surprises in the 2010 report (pdf), entitled The Electronic Police State, issued yesterday. It shows Russia and the United States within a couple of points of each other when it comes to …

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  1. Pete 2 Silver badge

    Only one possible solution

    we're all gonna have to start talking face to face again,

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Big Brother

      Nope

      No, that would lead to parabolic mikes on CCTV and a surge in available jobs for lip readers..

      IMHO, the only way you'll crack this is if you start asking for the data on a massive scale. Just target one collector after another. Swarm them with DPA requests, for £10 you will set a 30 day clock going, and if you have enough people asking there's no way they can provide your data in time. At that point you file a formal complaint - again en masse.

      Note that £10 doesn't even begin to cover the costs of providing this data - nobody is automated enough to make that payment cover costs. Thus, in volume you will hit them where it hurts - twice, because dealing with the complaint is also going to cost.

      That's the only way you will be able to start people think - make it cost money.

      Oh, and make sure you know the laws - no single unauthorised tap should go unpunished. It's perfectly OK to have legal intercepts, but they ought to become exceptions, not rule.

      So there, now start your revolution..

      1. Secretgeek

        "30 day clock."

        Addendum: It's a 40 day clock in the UK

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    one would imagine

    our government are sorry they didn't come higher in the list.

    They've been trying so hard after all. Oh well, maybe next year.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I see a market niche...

    ... for loads of those old analogue scramblers used by Crowley in "The Professionals."

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Cameras are one way

    I like this:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rX7lOk2H8eo

    The love police (not real police) try to give a man in police uniform (also not real police) a hug. In doing show he shows everyone not to be afraid of these officious assholes.

    All of their intimidation is based on fear, when a police office in uniform, gets 5 of his friends to surround you he's trying to induce fear. You are supposed to be terrorised into complying with whatever rule he wants because you fear what he and his friends may do.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9bfmW3iMqk

    See how the officer refers to the man 'terrorising' people by speaking into his megaphone, trying to redefine Section 44 anti-terror act, in a way that speech = terror!

    And when a group of knowledgeable people assemble like that and cooperate to defeat the intimidation and surveillance culture, everyone smiles because it empowers them. Suddenly they start to think they have rights too, they can refuse random searches and arbitrary rules too.

    If only more people would stand up to this.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    Just because you maybe paranoid

    Doesn't mean they are not out to get you.

  6. MinionZero
    Big Brother

    A massive disaster in the making getting ever worse...

    Its very depressing how so much of Europe is near the top of the list. So much for the myth of freedom. I guess thats why they have to tell us all so often, that we are free, and that we live in a free country, because otherwise more people may have time to realize the truth. Which also explains the so called "land of the free" who have been brought up to believe they are free when they are not.

    I find that list very interesting. Its helped me to understand why every time any attempt to complain about the UK Police State ends up suffering the same sales pitch where opponents say, well just look how badly they have to live in other counties like China. Why the hell do these morons always fail to see all the other countries that are better than the UK and only focus on the remaining few countries that are actually worse than the UK!

    Even more disturbing is the thought we are still only at the beginning of the slide into a technological Police State. There is so much more they can do to spy on us all. Worse still they show how determined they are to find ways to spy on us all. (after all there is money to be made from all this spying). So much for the idea that our politicians are our "government representatives" when they show they work against us not for us. But then the whole nature of political power is to have the power to tell others how they must live, so is it any wonder that over time that power gets ever more powerful until they cause real harm and hardship to peoples lives.

    All this spying is not improving our lives (its already forcing ever more rules, regulations and punishments on to us all, resulting in us being forced to waste ever more of what little time and money we have to comply with our masters wishes). Its only improving the profits for a minority who have control of the spying technology as they exploit us all for ever more profit. Thats not an improvement, its basically herding us towards what the people in power want, which is ever more power and the personal gain they get from having such power over us.

    Sadly I think a global police state is inevitable because too few stand against it, plus the control freaks are determined to exploit ever more technology because the people in power want power, its as simple as that, they want power. It is however sad that too few people in each country have enough knowledge of history to see the hidden dangers in human actions when a minority seek and gain ever more power over others and too few people have knowledge of psychology (or simply human nature) to see that every generation suffers a minority of people with extreme utter self centered, greedy, contempt for others, which is why each generation has to guard against this minority gaining such power over everyone else, otherwise they end up causing considerable harm and hardship for everyone else in society. Its been repeated throughout history.

    Worse still too few people these days can even imagine just how deep the depths of utter contempt Narcissists have for other people, (and just how quick they are to resort to angry contempt to get their own way) so they fail to see just how self centered Narcissists are and how ruthlessly self centered they are when they gain power over people. Its why they cannot be trusted with such power over everyone. Narcissists are attracted to power so many of our politicians are Narcissists and its why they act like our masters instead of our government representatives. Narcissists are also attracted to power over people in companies. Its why they are a danger in society and why our technology needs to be setup to watch all Narcissists in power and not them watching us. They work for us. They want Big Brother technology its time to use that against them. Also generations fought to free themselves from state interference yet we are rapidly sliding back into incredible levels of state interference. Plus we even have some corporate interference forcing us to comply with their rules as they seek to spy on us. (We only have to look at the Narcissistic scum at Phorm to see some of the problems society faces with corporate interference, plus we also have ever more out sourced government control of our lives, for example all the ever more government databases to monitor us all so that we are complying with every wish and whim of our masters and so they can punish us whenever we don't comply).

    I can't however believe this slide into a technology based Global Police State can carry on indefinitely without people starting to fight back against it. But I suspect by then it'll be too late, as by then, the Police State will be able to move to use any number of ways to delay, punish or distract any hostile critics to effectively silence and undermine critics. But that is just going to build ever more public anger against the control freaks. That can't go on without it ending up causing a massive very angry revolution against the control freaks.

    Its like watching a massive disaster in the making getting ever worse. I feel like saying sorry George Orwell, you tried to warn us all, but too few listened. :( ... sadly even now, we still suffer some who fail to see the dangers. Until everyone can stand together against what is happening, nothing is going to improve and its going to keep getting ever worse. The scale of this growing nightmare could very well end up defining our time and place in history so we end up as another sad warning note in the history books. I wonder how future historians will label us. I would suggest victims of a growing Technological Police State or more to the point victims of a new form of Fascism they could call Technological Fascism. :(

    1. Nebulo
      Big Brother

      @MZ - Superb post, alas.

      You're absolutely right. It's like that ghastly slow motion feeling you get before your car actually hits something, when you can see the disaster inevitably developing but can't do anything about it. Throw in the time factor, such as the way we're all being primed for a "2012" disaster with movies, pop videos featuring armed, uniformed men strutting about, officials now allowed to "enter" your home "to ensure that unauthorised hypnotism is not taking place in the premises" (FFS, is this surrealism thrown in for the entertainment of the intelligent, or just to mock us?) ... armed police and Tasers deployed in the (once) "free" UK ... I tear my rapidly whitening hair out daily at the way people just don't see it. "Oh, no, I feel *so* much safer knowing there's cameras everywhere".

      But like you, I'm damn sure they are going to see it before long. And it's not going to be pretty. And I wish to God that I could think otherwise, even though I don't believe in Him.

      There's a flesh-crawlingly sharp piece on Global Research at the moment which I could have written myself and thoroughly recommend - "Prognosis 2012" (http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17826). It's all in place. RIP Civilisation, it was nice while it lasted.

    2. Steve Roper
      Big Brother

      People aren't going to fight

      No matter how intrusive and oppresive it gets. Look at Soviet Russia, China, North Korea - hell, even Zimbabwe. That's what people will put up with without fighting back. Remember what Orwell said, since we're using his icon: "Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious."

      They won't fight for two reasons. One: The police state, especially in the west, has technology and psychology on their side. They have the money and power to hire technical and psychological experts to develop systems of surveillance, mind and crowd control. Riot police are trained in how to control the behaviour of a crowd - that's why you can see say 20 of them managing a crowd of 20,000. Add to that the various pain-rays, vomit-rays, taser guns, water cannon, riot gas, plus riot armour and rubber bullets (or even real bullets) to the mix and it's plain to see even a large crowd has no hope of opposing that lot.

      Two: People are concerned only for their own and their family's safety, they don't give a fuck about anyone else. Nobody's going to stick his neck out and risk depriving his family of a husband and father to stand up for others' freedom. What he's more likely to do is try to find means of evasion rather than opposition. This is what has happened in the past - in feudal Europe, in Nazi Germany, in the Soviet Union - people hid things from officials. That's why the black market flourishes under an oppressive regime. And you'll find that people today will, like their forebears, take the easy path of evasion and concealment rather than rebellion and opposition. Example: How many people do you see lobbying for copyright reform, compared to how many try to hide behind PeerGuardian, Tor, anonymising proxies or VPNs when downloading their music and movies? The vast majority focus on evading detection rather than fighting the system proactively. That's the sort of thing I'm talking about here.

      The problem with this, that is NOT matched by historical precedent, is the extremity of power available to despots in the form of modern technology. The feudal lords of medieval Europe, the Spanish Inquisition, the Nazis and the Soviets did not have access to the kind of computing power and surveillance technology available to today's police-state progenitors. With face-recognition on cameras that are everywhere, biometrics, DNA databases, DPI monitoring and all the rest, evasion is going to become increasingly difficult. When that surveillance reaches even into the home - and it will - evasion will become impossible. People will try, and they will fail, and as these "criminals" are herded into sweatshops it will justify the vicious cycle of ever-increasing oppression to stop "crime" until, at the last, any act of self-assertion becomes a crime and any demonstration of intelligence gets you marked as a enemy of the state. Only by blind, unquestioning obedience will you survive. At that point, driven to behave like ants with no possibility of resistance or concealment, humanity loses its intelligence and reverts back to the animal state it evolved from, like Wells' Eloi and Morlocks. This is inevitable, and it is how the world will one day end.

      So I fought back the only way I know how - I refuse to have children. I know a few - only a few - other people who share my view. It's a war we will never win, because the heedless billions who think they will be able to evade the worst of what's coming will breed enough slaves for all of us. So my only consolation is that I will die knowing that nothing else matters, that my family line ends with me, and the human race can go to slavery without any children of mine being part of it.

      1. Secretgeek

        Okaaayy.

        Great post. Lots of interesting theories but I really think you're being far too pessimistic. I also think that a better reason to not have kids is the fact that there are 7 billion of us twats running all over this planet already.

        You cite all the negatives but think of some of the proactive things even the unsuccesful or misdirected ones - Tianamen Square, the campaign against the Burmese junta, the collapse of apartheid, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the orange revolution, Lech Walensa, hell even the Taliban are fighting back against the authority that's being placed upon them (I make no other comment on that conflict as I support the unbelievably difficult job our soldiers are doing).

        People will put up with a hideous, horrible amount of oppression but don't ever think that we will never be motivated to act and act in unexpected and vigorous ways. That would be an overconfidence, that I believe, will be the controlling powers undoing in the long run.

  7. Tom Chiverton 1

    Umm

    Umm, where's Iran ? Shouldn't that be very very high up ?

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