Posted on 04/20/2005 7:34:10 PM PDT by tomball
Governments are building a "global registration and surveillance infrastructure" in the US-led "war on terror", civil liberty groups warned yesterday.
The aim is to monitor the movements and activities of entire populations in what campaigners call "an unprecedented project of social control".
The warning came from the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group, including the American Civil Liberties Union, and Statewatch, a UK-based bulletin which tracks developments in the EU.
They point to the system whereby all visitors to the US are to be digitally photographed and fingerprinted. The EU has agreed that member states must fingerprint all passport holders by the end of 2007. The information will be held on databases.National ID cards, they warn, will become a "globally interoperable biometric passport". The setting up of airlines' passenger name records (PNRs) could include more than 60 different kinds of information, including meal choices which could reveal personal, religious or ethnic affiliations.
The US and EU governments are expanding legal powers to eavesdrop and to store the product of intercepted personal communications, the groups warn.
They also point to an agreement between Europol - the EU's incipient police headquarters - and the US giving what they say will be an unlimited number of American agencies access to sensitive information on the race, political opinions, religious beliefs, health and sexual life of individuals.
The groups point to increasingly close cooperation between national police, security, intelligence, and military establishments.
To achieve their ends, they say, governments have suspended judicial oversight over law enforcement agents and public officials, concentrated unprecedented power in the hands of the executive arm of government, and rolled back criminal law and due process protections that balance the rights of individuals against the power of the state.
These initiatives, say the civil liberty groups, are not effective in identifying terrorists.
Still, there's only so much you can do with all that information. Remember, when Joe Stalin wanted to kill people he simply did it.
That's odd. The Guardian is upset over privacy intrusion? What about the zillion and a half cameras all over Britain already that count the hairs on their bums?
Maybe they are only trying to identify socialists?
Afraid of someone seeing you pick your nose?
Yea right. this is pure fear mongering. They can't even watch the mexican/US border in one state, and hold illegals in custody, deport them, or keep track of them. This is laughable to say the least.
I can see CCTV really taking off when technology allows unintrusive personal cameras attached to clothing so that you can record everything happening in a 360 degree radius during your day. It would give you the chance to use it as evidence in crimes, car accidents, lawsuits, arguments, etc so that you wouldn't have to bother protesting your innocence.
Now that you mention it.. yes, yes I am.. Especially when I get those big green goey ones.. Mmmmmmm LoL
Please tell me you don't eat them...
The next step these evil monsters have in store for us is a National ID.
With video tech costs plummeting as fast as inovation is rising, it won't be far off.
We, in the task force community, sleep with our backs to our backs...
Microsecond by microsecond, thread by thread, we will not cease until resistance is understood to be futile...
LOL. The propaganda just rolls on. If anyone bothers to look up and around in any US city, they will find cameras watching everyone, everywhere, and at all times. Cameras are at every stop light, inside and outside every government building, inside every gas station (over cash registers), inside every bank, in every cop car (dash cam), etc. Privacy rights have been a thing of the past for a long time. It just took a few years longer for The Guardian to notice it.
There is plenty of nose pickin' being watched. Little did Alan Funt know just how far his Candid Camera would go.
If this is true:
"an agreement between Europol...and the US giving...American agencies access to sensitive information on the race, political opinions, religious beliefs, health and sexual life of individuals"
Why aren't they more worried that Europol even has that info before worrying about who they are sharing it with?
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