Being a "global warming sceptic" myself, I didn't plan on writing about the climate summit in Copenhagen. One more futile exercise owed to the hubris of man who basks in the sham glory of being the only species able to "destroy Earth". Really, though, it is only mankind and/or our way of life that we might be destroying. And would that be all bad?
It is not in our hands to destroy Earth. Unlike us, Earth has been around for billions of years, and – albeit changing incessantly – existed through warmer and colder periods much the same. That's one of the things Alex Higgins and I didn't see eye to eye on when founding the Sussex Centre for the Individual and Society (SCIS) back in 2006.
Enough is being said about this. No point in adding to it.
However, I just learned that in Copenhagen again someone associated with SCIS has been arrested – and remains imprisoned – for his political stance.
Among the many graduate students and doctoral candidates at the fringes of SCIS when it was founded at the University of Sussex, and a repeat guest in the original centre when it was still on campus, was one Tadzio Müller, a German alter-globalization activist who did his DPhil in International Relations at Sussex.
Obviously, with his left-leaning ideas, he fitted the Sussex profile much better than I ever did. That didn't save him from being arrested, though.
As the media and various blogs report, Tadzio – who is now a spokesperson for an organization called Climate Justice Action (CJA) – was selectively arrested on 15 December by plainclothes police officers following a press conference he gave at the summit venue. He stands accused of preparing for violence against the police and incitement to riot.
A charge that seems only the more ludicrous if one has seen the violence with which the Danish police are trying to contain protesters on the streets of Copenhagen, freely employing dogs, batons, and pepper spray (check out videos on Youtube). No chance that they will be held responsible for their actions.
More interestingly even, it has been revealed that Tadzio's arrest was only possible because of covert surveillance measures. The Danish police not only infiltrated protesters' preparatory meetings on a broad scale, but also tapped their mobile phones (calls and SMS), and intercepted the e-mails of known activists.
"People have to break the rules", Tadzio is reported as saying. Protesters should not allow themselves to be stopped by fences or other physical barriers. Or police intimidation, one might add.
Even if one does not believe in the great climate myth, one may be sympathetic with the activists who try to turn the climate debate into a debate against global capitalism. "Climate" merely seems a catchword for many of the protesters in Copenhagen.
Showing posts with label surveillance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label surveillance. Show all posts
19 December 2009
04 November 2009
"Political theology" equals terrorism?
Point of interest: We are all terrorists.
The keyword "political theology" now triggers the following paid-for Google Ad (at least on Google's UK site):
Report terrorism
Independent charity, not the police
Report terrorism anonymously
www.Crimestoppers-uk.org
Should anyone reading this be engaged in terrorist actitivies (rather than search "political theology" on Google for religious or academic and research purposes), please denounce yourself.
Cheers,
Erich Kofmel
Editor, "Anti-Liberalism and Political Theology" (forthcoming)
www.political-theology-agenda.blogspot.com
(Update: As of 6 November, the above ad does not seem to show up on Google anymore.)
The keyword "political theology" now triggers the following paid-for Google Ad (at least on Google's UK site):
Report terrorism
Independent charity, not the police
Report terrorism anonymously
www.Crimestoppers-uk.org
Should anyone reading this be engaged in terrorist actitivies (rather than search "political theology" on Google for religious or academic and research purposes), please denounce yourself.
Cheers,
Erich Kofmel
Editor, "Anti-Liberalism and Political Theology" (forthcoming)
www.political-theology-agenda.blogspot.com
(Update: As of 6 November, the above ad does not seem to show up on Google anymore.)
23 June 2009
Pirate parties against private property and surveillance
Every so often, political movements seem to sweep across Europe that cause people in different countries to form parties of a similar hue, pursuing programmes of an identical (or closely related) nature. The first such movement, in recent times, may have been liberalism, followed by the labour movement and the Greens, among others.
All of a sudden, we see "pirate parties" spring up all over Europe (and, indeed, the world). With the information and communication technologies at their disposal, the spread of this movement is even faster than on previous occasions.
Founded only in 2006, the Swedish Pirate Party already won a seat in the recent elections to the European Parliament – receiving 7.13% of the votes –, after having become the third largest national party in terms of membership (before the Green Party, Left Party, Liberal Party, Christian Democrats, and Centre Party). In Germany, albeit shortly before the end of term, a member of parliament last week switched allegiance from the Social Democrats to the German Pirate Party, becoming the pirates' first representative in a national legislature.
Pirate parties everywhere seek a reform of their countries' and international laws regarding copyright and patents. They fight against the surveillance state and for a strengthening of the right to privacy, on the Internet as well as in everyday life. They seek full transparency of state actions, government and administration. For now, they abstain from positioning themselves on the left-right political spectrum, in favour of forging alliances with all parties that are willing to support their goals.
There is no reason for pirate parties to remain single topic, though. Concerns with the coming (European) surveillance state encompass all spheres of life, wherever databases are kept to store information about us and infringe on our privacy. Informatics and the Internet permeate leisure and work alike and the state pries on us in private and in public. Labour – the Social Democrats – also started out as a single-topic movement, seeking the improvement of labour conditions, but swiftly transformed itself into a political force to be reckoned with more broadly.
The true significance of pirate parties is under-analyzed and under-theorized, not least due to the fact that they are run mostly by technologists (programmers, developers, IT entrepreneurs, etc.) with little background in social and political thought. Outside Sweden, they are often led by very young people (digital natives who do not remember a time before private computing) with no political experience at all. They are a reaction to real-life problems perceived first by people at the forefront of technological developments, but bound to become of ever greater importance to all of us.
The silly name, Pirate Party, proudly betrays the semi-criminal (at least, not law-abiding) background of this political movement. It has its roots in the Wild West anarchism of the early Internet and (illegal) file-sharing communities that are now being criminalized in most jurisdictions. The German member of parliament accepted into the folds of the Pirate Party is being investigated by the authorities for possession of child pornography (which, as he says, he obtained in the exercise of his duties as his former party's parliamentary spokesperson for Education and Research and New Media).
Whether known or unknown to them (and all their members), pirate parties fight the logic of capitalist market economy, and the laws protecting it, by supporting the pirating of goods (such as music and films), informational self-determination on the net, and open-access policies for scientific research findings. While pirate parties propose to abandon private property in the form of copyright and patents, it will, consequently, be necessary to abandon property at a more fundamental level, in all its forms.
Here the question arises whether the foundation of a political party is the right way – and a traditional party is the right form – to fight surveillance and property. After all – and hardly considered by the technologists behind these parties –, it is democracies that protect private property and, through security scares and fears of crime, give rise to the police or surveillance state (even though the latter may yet prove to be democracy's downfall).
I hold that it won't be possible to fight property and surveillance by democratic means. If pirate parties, in the course of time, grow less radical and become satisfied with introducing safeguards to surveillance and exceptions to property they may be accommodated within the democratic and capitalist system (just as Labour and the Greens were).
Ultimately, however, something more basic is beginning to take shape. The opposition against property and the police/surveillance state will form outside of parliaments and the fight will be fought against democracy and the indifference of the majority.
If the pirates make it their fight they will play a role of utmost historical significance. Otherwise, they will (have to) be superseded.
All of a sudden, we see "pirate parties" spring up all over Europe (and, indeed, the world). With the information and communication technologies at their disposal, the spread of this movement is even faster than on previous occasions.
Founded only in 2006, the Swedish Pirate Party already won a seat in the recent elections to the European Parliament – receiving 7.13% of the votes –, after having become the third largest national party in terms of membership (before the Green Party, Left Party, Liberal Party, Christian Democrats, and Centre Party). In Germany, albeit shortly before the end of term, a member of parliament last week switched allegiance from the Social Democrats to the German Pirate Party, becoming the pirates' first representative in a national legislature.
Pirate parties everywhere seek a reform of their countries' and international laws regarding copyright and patents. They fight against the surveillance state and for a strengthening of the right to privacy, on the Internet as well as in everyday life. They seek full transparency of state actions, government and administration. For now, they abstain from positioning themselves on the left-right political spectrum, in favour of forging alliances with all parties that are willing to support their goals.
There is no reason for pirate parties to remain single topic, though. Concerns with the coming (European) surveillance state encompass all spheres of life, wherever databases are kept to store information about us and infringe on our privacy. Informatics and the Internet permeate leisure and work alike and the state pries on us in private and in public. Labour – the Social Democrats – also started out as a single-topic movement, seeking the improvement of labour conditions, but swiftly transformed itself into a political force to be reckoned with more broadly.
The true significance of pirate parties is under-analyzed and under-theorized, not least due to the fact that they are run mostly by technologists (programmers, developers, IT entrepreneurs, etc.) with little background in social and political thought. Outside Sweden, they are often led by very young people (digital natives who do not remember a time before private computing) with no political experience at all. They are a reaction to real-life problems perceived first by people at the forefront of technological developments, but bound to become of ever greater importance to all of us.
The silly name, Pirate Party, proudly betrays the semi-criminal (at least, not law-abiding) background of this political movement. It has its roots in the Wild West anarchism of the early Internet and (illegal) file-sharing communities that are now being criminalized in most jurisdictions. The German member of parliament accepted into the folds of the Pirate Party is being investigated by the authorities for possession of child pornography (which, as he says, he obtained in the exercise of his duties as his former party's parliamentary spokesperson for Education and Research and New Media).
Whether known or unknown to them (and all their members), pirate parties fight the logic of capitalist market economy, and the laws protecting it, by supporting the pirating of goods (such as music and films), informational self-determination on the net, and open-access policies for scientific research findings. While pirate parties propose to abandon private property in the form of copyright and patents, it will, consequently, be necessary to abandon property at a more fundamental level, in all its forms.
Here the question arises whether the foundation of a political party is the right way – and a traditional party is the right form – to fight surveillance and property. After all – and hardly considered by the technologists behind these parties –, it is democracies that protect private property and, through security scares and fears of crime, give rise to the police or surveillance state (even though the latter may yet prove to be democracy's downfall).
I hold that it won't be possible to fight property and surveillance by democratic means. If pirate parties, in the course of time, grow less radical and become satisfied with introducing safeguards to surveillance and exceptions to property they may be accommodated within the democratic and capitalist system (just as Labour and the Greens were).
Ultimately, however, something more basic is beginning to take shape. The opposition against property and the police/surveillance state will form outside of parliaments and the fight will be fought against democracy and the indifference of the majority.
If the pirates make it their fight they will play a role of utmost historical significance. Otherwise, they will (have to) be superseded.
04 June 2009
Film: The Last Enemy
Anyone willing to acquire a better understanding of the kind of society the United Kingdom is swiftly transforming itself into, can do no better than watch the five-part TV drama "The Last Enemy", produced by the BBC in 2008 and now freely available in full-length videos on YouTube:
www.youtube.com/show/thelastenemy?feature=spotlight
Different from your usual science-fiction movie, the streets of Britain in this mini series look eerily familiar and it's only the small technological changes (spread of ID cards, iris scanning, RFID chips in basically everything, access controls, database integration, and so on) that have turned it into a totalitarian society of total surveillance – or, as the film calls it, T.I.A., Total Information Awareness.
This piece is set in the very near future and the science in it is not fictitious at all. It is all here. Tomorrow, it turns out, is after all just that – tomorrow. A few hours away. Everything shown in this picture already exists, there's nothing futuristic about it. It is just a question of scale and purpose. Even the heavily armed police troops in their protective gear that seem to pop up around every corner can be found now on the streets of London and many other cities.
It is hard to get one's head around it, but only if we understand that the transition from the Weimar Republic to Nazi Germany was gradual and Germany looked by and large the same in 1930 and 1935 will we understand that the totalitarian surveillance state does not require futuristic architecture, but is at home in the picturesque and old-fashioned stone-built sceneries of the long-lost Victorian Empire as well as present-day council estates.
The synopsis of the film taken from the website of the US Public Broadcasting Service (PBS): "[After just four years abroad, mathematician] Stephen Ezard [...] returns to London to mourn the loss of his brother, Michael, and enters a society now obsessed with surveillance. Searching to make sense of Michael's death, Stephen uncovers secrets about his brother's life – including a wife he never knew Michael had. Taking a government job to trace leads through a powerful new database [T.I.A.], Stephen exposes troubling revelations and soon finds himself stalked by a rogue agent [...]. But when Stephen stumbles into an international conspiracy, he realizes that the omnipresent and menacing eye of the government has turned on him".
Total Information Awareness is being introduced in this picture with the promise: "With T.I.A., there will be nowhere to hide". No one has the right to disappear or not wanting to be found.
And, as implausible as the name may sound, T.I.A. is actually based on a US-government programme of exactly that name, introduced following 9/11, but since defunded by congress. Parts of T.I.A. continue to be pursued under the responsibility of various government agencies.
www.youtube.com/show/thelastenemy?feature=spotlight
Different from your usual science-fiction movie, the streets of Britain in this mini series look eerily familiar and it's only the small technological changes (spread of ID cards, iris scanning, RFID chips in basically everything, access controls, database integration, and so on) that have turned it into a totalitarian society of total surveillance – or, as the film calls it, T.I.A., Total Information Awareness.
This piece is set in the very near future and the science in it is not fictitious at all. It is all here. Tomorrow, it turns out, is after all just that – tomorrow. A few hours away. Everything shown in this picture already exists, there's nothing futuristic about it. It is just a question of scale and purpose. Even the heavily armed police troops in their protective gear that seem to pop up around every corner can be found now on the streets of London and many other cities.
It is hard to get one's head around it, but only if we understand that the transition from the Weimar Republic to Nazi Germany was gradual and Germany looked by and large the same in 1930 and 1935 will we understand that the totalitarian surveillance state does not require futuristic architecture, but is at home in the picturesque and old-fashioned stone-built sceneries of the long-lost Victorian Empire as well as present-day council estates.
The synopsis of the film taken from the website of the US Public Broadcasting Service (PBS): "[After just four years abroad, mathematician] Stephen Ezard [...] returns to London to mourn the loss of his brother, Michael, and enters a society now obsessed with surveillance. Searching to make sense of Michael's death, Stephen uncovers secrets about his brother's life – including a wife he never knew Michael had. Taking a government job to trace leads through a powerful new database [T.I.A.], Stephen exposes troubling revelations and soon finds himself stalked by a rogue agent [...]. But when Stephen stumbles into an international conspiracy, he realizes that the omnipresent and menacing eye of the government has turned on him".
Total Information Awareness is being introduced in this picture with the promise: "With T.I.A., there will be nowhere to hide". No one has the right to disappear or not wanting to be found.
And, as implausible as the name may sound, T.I.A. is actually based on a US-government programme of exactly that name, introduced following 9/11, but since defunded by congress. Parts of T.I.A. continue to be pursued under the responsibility of various government agencies.
20 May 2009
A ranking of electronic police states
The worldwide-operating Chicago-based Internet security and privacy protection company Cryptohippie USA, Inc. has released a ranking of what they call "electronic police states":
https://secure.cryptohippie.com/pubs/EPS-2008.pdf
As I suggested earlier, their research confirms that the United Kingdom ranks by now as the most highly developed police state in Europe, leading even the United States in this regard. Both the UK and US, at positions 5 and 6, respectively, rank only marginally better than such communist or formerly communist abodes of unfreedom as China and North Korea, Belarus and Russia (1 and 2, 3 and 4).
Further cause for concern should be the fact that other core countries of the European Union, namely France and Germany, also rank in the top ten. It stands to reason that the EU as a whole will swiftly catch up with the big three member states.
As the authors of the study explain, "[t]he usual image of a 'police state' includes secret police dragging people out of their homes at night, with scenes out of Nazi Germany or Stalin's USSR. The problem with these images is that they are horribly outdated. That's how things worked during your grandfather's war – that is not how things work now.
"The electronic police state is quiet, even unseen. All of its legal actions are supported by abundant evidence. It looks pristine. [...]
[E]very surveillance camera recording, every email you send, every Internet site you surf, every post you make, every check you write, every credit card swipe, every cell phone ping ... are all criminal evidence, and they are held in searchable databases, for a long, long time. Whoever holds this evidence can make you look very, very bad whenever they care enough to do so. You can be prosecuted whenever they feel like it – the evidence is already in their database.
"Do you [...] trust [...] every government worker and every policeman? And, if some leader behaves badly, will you really stand up to oppose him or her? Would you still do it if he had all the emails you sent when you were depressed? Or if she has records of every porn site you've ever surfed? Or if he knows every phone call you've ever made? Or if she knows everyone you've ever sent money to? Such a person would have all of this and more – in the form of court-ready evidence – sitting in a database, waiting to be organized at the touch of a button.
"This system hasn't yet reached its full shape, but all of the basics are in place and it is not far from complete [...]. It is too late to prevent this – it is here. Our purpose in producing this report is to let people know that their liberty is in jeopardy and to help them understand how it is being undermined."
Factors taken into account for this comparative ranking include, among others, requirements for national identity documents (i.e. biometric passports), inspections at borders and searches of computers, mandatory decryption of data and prohibition or restriction of data encryption, financial tracking, ISP and phone data retention, data storage and search ability by state authorities (i.e. police and intelligence agencies), as well as "covert hacking" ("State operatives removing – or adding! – digital evidence to/from private computers covertly. Covert hacking can make anyone appear as any kind of criminal desired").
https://secure.cryptohippie.com/pubs/EPS-2008.pdf
As I suggested earlier, their research confirms that the United Kingdom ranks by now as the most highly developed police state in Europe, leading even the United States in this regard. Both the UK and US, at positions 5 and 6, respectively, rank only marginally better than such communist or formerly communist abodes of unfreedom as China and North Korea, Belarus and Russia (1 and 2, 3 and 4).
Further cause for concern should be the fact that other core countries of the European Union, namely France and Germany, also rank in the top ten. It stands to reason that the EU as a whole will swiftly catch up with the big three member states.
As the authors of the study explain, "[t]he usual image of a 'police state' includes secret police dragging people out of their homes at night, with scenes out of Nazi Germany or Stalin's USSR. The problem with these images is that they are horribly outdated. That's how things worked during your grandfather's war – that is not how things work now.
"The electronic police state is quiet, even unseen. All of its legal actions are supported by abundant evidence. It looks pristine. [...]
[E]very surveillance camera recording, every email you send, every Internet site you surf, every post you make, every check you write, every credit card swipe, every cell phone ping ... are all criminal evidence, and they are held in searchable databases, for a long, long time. Whoever holds this evidence can make you look very, very bad whenever they care enough to do so. You can be prosecuted whenever they feel like it – the evidence is already in their database.
"Do you [...] trust [...] every government worker and every policeman? And, if some leader behaves badly, will you really stand up to oppose him or her? Would you still do it if he had all the emails you sent when you were depressed? Or if she has records of every porn site you've ever surfed? Or if he knows every phone call you've ever made? Or if she knows everyone you've ever sent money to? Such a person would have all of this and more – in the form of court-ready evidence – sitting in a database, waiting to be organized at the touch of a button.
"This system hasn't yet reached its full shape, but all of the basics are in place and it is not far from complete [...]. It is too late to prevent this – it is here. Our purpose in producing this report is to let people know that their liberty is in jeopardy and to help them understand how it is being undermined."
Factors taken into account for this comparative ranking include, among others, requirements for national identity documents (i.e. biometric passports), inspections at borders and searches of computers, mandatory decryption of data and prohibition or restriction of data encryption, financial tracking, ISP and phone data retention, data storage and search ability by state authorities (i.e. police and intelligence agencies), as well as "covert hacking" ("State operatives removing – or adding! – digital evidence to/from private computers covertly. Covert hacking can make anyone appear as any kind of criminal desired").
19 March 2009
On getting arrested in the UK
As is well known, since the 1990s the United Kingdom has become the country most densely populated by CCTV cameras. In all major cities, everyone is being watched almost every moment of their lives – when they are in public, and often even while they are in private.
Still, many people do not perceive just how rapidly the UK is turned into a surveillance and police state (defined as a state in which the police – and other intelligence agencies – are largely uncontrolled and left to do as they please). To everyone with a sense of history, the situation must be reminiscent of the build-up to totalitarian rule under Nazism in 1930s Germany.
Laudably, the “Guardian” newspaper continues to expose the worst excesses of British policing. Here a selection of articles published in the last few months.
On the powers of British police to arrest anyone for any reason whatsoever:
www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/henryporter/2009/mar/06/civil-liberties-police
According to this article, “[a] retired senior police officer has expressed concern about the 'sweeping power' that he claims is being abused on a daily basis in all of the 43 police forces” of the country. He, a former police man himself, even started a petition “against police powers to arrest any person for any offence” – including “not wearing a seatbelt, dropping litter, shouting in the presence of a police officer, climbing a tree, and building a snowman”:
petitions.number10.gov.uk/PowersofArrest/
As he explains, under section 110 of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 no arrest has to be justified by police anymore.
A similar statement has been made by Dame Stella Rimington, former head of intelligence agency MI5:
www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/feb/17/government-exploiting-terrorism-fear
It is not me but Rimington who calls Britain a “police state”.
On the driving force behind such sweeping powers of arrest, the Association of Chief Police Officers – a private company that is not subject to any public scrutiny, but nevertheless runs its own secret intelligence unit –, see this article:
www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/henryporter/2009/feb/10/police-civil-liberties
The website of the ACPO:
www.acpo.police.uk/about.html
“Why was ACPO so keen to make every offence arrestable? Look no further than the DNA database. The more people the police arrest, the more profiles they could add to the database. [Already] the profiles of more than 7% of the population, including one million children[!], are on the DNA database”:
www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/feb/27/dna-database-children-criminal-record
Half of those on the UK's DNA database have no criminal record. As everyone arrested is entered into the database, one can conclude that half of those arrested are never convicted of a crime. People falsely arrested and then not prosecuted or found innocent will not be removed from the database.
In his petition, the former senior police officer writes: “young and inexperienced police officers, (and soon, PCSO's [police community support officers]), are being trained that arrest and detention of a suspect is the first option in most encounters with the public. This sweeping power is being roundly abused ... and puts you, your wife, husband or partner, your children and your friends at risk of arbitrary action by the police”.
The situation is even more dire for foreigners (such as students, doctoral candidates and postdocs, but also occasional visitors) in the UK: Reportedly from April 2009, the new UK “e-Borders” scheme will be collecting the biometrics – including fingerprints, DNA, iris patterns, and face recognition – as well as travel information and credit card details of everyone entering or leaving the UK, by air, sea, or rail. Information on an estimated 250 million journeys a year into and out of the UK will be stored in one central database for up to 10 years. Moreover, foreign residents in the UK already require an identity card that contains biometric data. This scheme is to be expanded to British nationals and European residents by 2012. The “national identity register” will be yet another database containing information on millions of people:
www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/feb/25/data-surveillance-identity
This obsession with surveillance and data collection is bound to lead to consequences such as those experienced by some UK residents of Muslim origin, described by a court as “of good character and well-respected in their communities” that have been prohibited, under UK anti-terrorism legislation, from spending any of their own money – with no way left to them to challenge the measures imposed on them. Such persons are rendered “criminally liable for activities as mundane as spending the change in their pockets” and will be punished with up to seven years' imprisonment if they do. One of the men reports asking his solicitor whether his “son was allowed to buy me milk from the shop ... The answer was no”. No one in their households is allowed to work because any household income “would count as the transfer of funds which could be used for my benefit”:
www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/nov/03/terrorism-welfare-spending-law
If you are a foreigner it may happen to you that you get arrested on an occasional visit to the UK on the basis of some wild accusations, totally unproven, simply so police can question you, search you, fingerprint you, and take your DNA sample for entry into a plethora of databases – all of which they cannot do without an arrest, for which, however, they need no justification whatsoever. There has to be no intention of charging you with a serious offence or crime and no evidence against you. Police may then release the foreigner, who is neither a UK citizen nor resident in the UK, on police bail and expect him to return after so many months (of investigations that start only after the arrest!) to the UK at his own expense. If he decides not to follow up on such highly questionable arrest, he may become wanted in the UK. However, it is then up to UK police to request such a person's extradition from another country. In which case UK police will have to make their case in a foreign court – where they can't exercise the sweeping and uncontrolled powers granted to them in the UK.
Still, many people do not perceive just how rapidly the UK is turned into a surveillance and police state (defined as a state in which the police – and other intelligence agencies – are largely uncontrolled and left to do as they please). To everyone with a sense of history, the situation must be reminiscent of the build-up to totalitarian rule under Nazism in 1930s Germany.
Laudably, the “Guardian” newspaper continues to expose the worst excesses of British policing. Here a selection of articles published in the last few months.
On the powers of British police to arrest anyone for any reason whatsoever:
www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/henryporter/2009/mar/06/civil-liberties-police
According to this article, “[a] retired senior police officer has expressed concern about the 'sweeping power' that he claims is being abused on a daily basis in all of the 43 police forces” of the country. He, a former police man himself, even started a petition “against police powers to arrest any person for any offence” – including “not wearing a seatbelt, dropping litter, shouting in the presence of a police officer, climbing a tree, and building a snowman”:
petitions.number10.gov.uk/PowersofArrest/
As he explains, under section 110 of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 no arrest has to be justified by police anymore.
A similar statement has been made by Dame Stella Rimington, former head of intelligence agency MI5:
www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/feb/17/government-exploiting-terrorism-fear
It is not me but Rimington who calls Britain a “police state”.
On the driving force behind such sweeping powers of arrest, the Association of Chief Police Officers – a private company that is not subject to any public scrutiny, but nevertheless runs its own secret intelligence unit –, see this article:
www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/henryporter/2009/feb/10/police-civil-liberties
The website of the ACPO:
www.acpo.police.uk/about.html
“Why was ACPO so keen to make every offence arrestable? Look no further than the DNA database. The more people the police arrest, the more profiles they could add to the database. [Already] the profiles of more than 7% of the population, including one million children[!], are on the DNA database”:
www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/feb/27/dna-database-children-criminal-record
Half of those on the UK's DNA database have no criminal record. As everyone arrested is entered into the database, one can conclude that half of those arrested are never convicted of a crime. People falsely arrested and then not prosecuted or found innocent will not be removed from the database.
In his petition, the former senior police officer writes: “young and inexperienced police officers, (and soon, PCSO's [police community support officers]), are being trained that arrest and detention of a suspect is the first option in most encounters with the public. This sweeping power is being roundly abused ... and puts you, your wife, husband or partner, your children and your friends at risk of arbitrary action by the police”.
The situation is even more dire for foreigners (such as students, doctoral candidates and postdocs, but also occasional visitors) in the UK: Reportedly from April 2009, the new UK “e-Borders” scheme will be collecting the biometrics – including fingerprints, DNA, iris patterns, and face recognition – as well as travel information and credit card details of everyone entering or leaving the UK, by air, sea, or rail. Information on an estimated 250 million journeys a year into and out of the UK will be stored in one central database for up to 10 years. Moreover, foreign residents in the UK already require an identity card that contains biometric data. This scheme is to be expanded to British nationals and European residents by 2012. The “national identity register” will be yet another database containing information on millions of people:
www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/feb/25/data-surveillance-identity
This obsession with surveillance and data collection is bound to lead to consequences such as those experienced by some UK residents of Muslim origin, described by a court as “of good character and well-respected in their communities” that have been prohibited, under UK anti-terrorism legislation, from spending any of their own money – with no way left to them to challenge the measures imposed on them. Such persons are rendered “criminally liable for activities as mundane as spending the change in their pockets” and will be punished with up to seven years' imprisonment if they do. One of the men reports asking his solicitor whether his “son was allowed to buy me milk from the shop ... The answer was no”. No one in their households is allowed to work because any household income “would count as the transfer of funds which could be used for my benefit”:
www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/nov/03/terrorism-welfare-spending-law
If you are a foreigner it may happen to you that you get arrested on an occasional visit to the UK on the basis of some wild accusations, totally unproven, simply so police can question you, search you, fingerprint you, and take your DNA sample for entry into a plethora of databases – all of which they cannot do without an arrest, for which, however, they need no justification whatsoever. There has to be no intention of charging you with a serious offence or crime and no evidence against you. Police may then release the foreigner, who is neither a UK citizen nor resident in the UK, on police bail and expect him to return after so many months (of investigations that start only after the arrest!) to the UK at his own expense. If he decides not to follow up on such highly questionable arrest, he may become wanted in the UK. However, it is then up to UK police to request such a person's extradition from another country. In which case UK police will have to make their case in a foreign court – where they can't exercise the sweeping and uncontrolled powers granted to them in the UK.
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