Police State 2007

2007 is the age of the Surveillance Camera. Orwell's dream of Big Brother has finally been realized, and I don't mean in the form of a tacky overdone TV program, either.
The use of CCTV to monitor the comings and goings of the public is a particularly heated issue in the UK at the moment. Britain now has hundreds of surveillance cameras operating in each city; each records our every move and there's even one city that has decided to put speakers on the cameras, so that the person monitoring the area can reprimand someone if they commit an offense. This and the ever-increasing police presence in the streets of Britain help us all to remember that we can't go anywhere or do anything without being watched. And that's the whole point; to take away our freedom. When we're not being watched, we feel free to do anything that we want.
That's the only positive thing about crime, I think. At least we used to be able to make a conscious choice of whether or not to commit a crime. Now, with all the police and cameras watching our every step, that choice has been thrown out of the window. And let's be fair, if you decide to mug someone when there's a copper a couple of meters away, then you're an idiot.
Ever notice how the rise in surveillance crept up on us all? During the Post 9/11 era, up until maybe the July bombings in '05, surveillance was never really an issue, and the number of CCTV cameras and armed police was certainly smaller than it is today. Then, all of a sudden, BOOM! There was a massive explosion of CCTV and armed police on the streets.
I have my own theories as to how we didn't notice rise until it was too late. Personally, I think that to some extent the media was manipulated by the government, therefore they didn't report the rise in surveillance technology. Think, when was the last time you heard about CCTV on the BBC? I sure as heck can't remember when.

Along with our privacy it seems that freedom of speech has gone out of the window too. We can't speak out against the government these days for fear of being arrested.
I heard a while back, though I'm not sure if it's true or not, that the government were trying to (or already had) pass a law that prohibited someone for joking about 9/11 or saying that they could understand what the hijackers were trying to do. If that's true, then we're pretty much screwed. A country where we can't disagree with our government is getting closer and closer to Orwell's Europa or if you want to go into a real example, Hitler's Nazi Germany.
One great example is one that I'm sure the majority of you have heard of: that of a Mr. Walter Wolfgang. Mr. Wolfgang is a 90 year old man (88 at the time of the story I'm about to tell you) who was a prisoner in Nazi Germany during the 40s and he's also a peace activist.
Now, in 2005 during the annual Labour Party Conference, our old friend Jack Straw (wink wink, nudge nudge) was in the middle of discussing Iraq. Now, he said, and I quote "We are in Iraq for one reason only: to help the elected Iraqi government build a secure, democratic and stable nation". Now, if you've any sense in you, you'd have done what Walter did next. He shouted "Rubbish!" out at Jack Straw. A perfectly ordinary comment, and one that I think is quite justified.
Bearing in mind that this is an 82 year-old peace activist (and I must underline this point. A PEACE ACTIVIST), Straw's hired chimps pushed and shoved their way to Walter, whereupon they manhandled him out of the room. Also a Mr. Steve Forrest was thrown out of the room because he objected to Mr. Wolfgang's treatment.
But it doesn't stop there. Oh no. Mr Wolfgang, remember our 82 year old peace activist was then arrested and held under Section 44 of the Prevention of Terrorism act which reads like so:
"
Authorisations
(1) An authorisation under this subsection authorises any constable in uniform to stop a vehicle in an area or at a place specified in the authorisation and to search—
(a) the vehicle;

(b) the driver of the vehicle;

(c) a passenger in the vehicle;

(d) anything in or on the vehicle or carried by the driver or a passenger.
"
Now, more interestingly, there is also another part of this act, in section 45 which reads:

"
Exercise of power

(1) The power conferred by an authorisation under section 44(1) or (2)—

(a) may be exercised only for the purpose of searching for articles of a kind which could be used in connection with terrorism, and

(b) may be exercised whether or not the constable has grounds for suspecting the presence of articles of that kind.
"

So basically this enables any officer of the law to stop and search you for no reason at all. It's Section 45,1b which sticks out like a sore thumb. He can stop you for no reason at all. I don't see how this fits in with terrorism.

More on the Terrorism Act later.

So ask yourself this: if the police are willing and authorized to stop and search an 82 year old peace activist, where do their limits lie? I envision them stopping toddlers in the street searching them for bombs, using deadly force on a man just because he 'looked suspicious' (then again, they already did that) or maybe even arresting completely innocent people and deporting them to god-knows-where.
It's closer than you think. The police are given some ridiculous rights, all of which encroach on our freedom of expression and freedom of speech.
I've even heard stories of people arrested for wearing T-Shirts critical of Tony Blair. It's insanity. In essence, what the government wants us to do is to stay home, watch TV and buy things, all while they're telling us that everything is Hunky Dory in the Land of the Magic Roundabout. They're telling us what to think.
'You don't want to be critical of your government! Come, come. We know what's best for you. We know you better than you know yourselves!'

Which brings me onto the next subject in this orgy of insanity and corruption:Bio-Information.
Now, the whole idea of Bio-Information is pretty simple: the government takes our DNA and biological data and adds it all to a big database in the Tower of Death. That way if someone commits a crime, they can easily identify any forensic evidence and compare it with that of the suspect. It actually sounds quite appealing in principle, but there are so many ways that this can go wrong.
The first and foremost is cyber-hacking. We've entered a world controlled by Information Technology, and wherever you have a computer, you'll have someone who tries to hack that computer, more so if the computer belongs to the government. What happens if someone does gain access to this database with all of our personal information on it? Identity theft is not the worst case scenario. Imagine the hacker in question decides to change some of the information, maybe cross a couple of files.
Now picture this; you're sleeping in bed next to your significant other when all of a sudden fifty heavily armed police officers kick the door down and arrest you. Turns out they found evidence at a murder scene which corresponds to some of the data found in your biometric file. You know you didn't do it, but you can't prove otherwise.
And again, it's proof that we are slowly slipping into a police-state, a place where the government knows everything about us. Doesn't anyone else find this slightly disconcerting? The problem is, with these new laws in place, people are afraid to speak up, lest they be arrested. In effect, we're playing right into the government's hands. This is the reason they put these laws here; to keep us scared and to keep us quiet. Already we've seen people arrested for writing critical comments about Blair on internet forums!
We can't stay quiet, this can't go unnoticed. We're slowly slipping into an imitation of Fascism.

Stay aware, stay yourself.

Peace.