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No Passport For Britons Refusing Mass Surveillance
UpnAtom writes "People who refuse to give up their bank records, tax records & details of any benefits they've claimed, and the records of their car movements for the last year, or refuse to submit to an interrogation on whether they are the same person that this mountain of data belongs to — will be denied passports from March 26th. The Blair government has already admitted that this and other data will be cross-linked so that the Home Office and other officials can spy on the everyday lives of innocent Britons. Britons were already the most spied upon nation in Western Europe — more so even than Sweden. Data-mining through this unprecedented level of mass-surveillance allows any future British government to leapfrog even countries like China and North Korea."
However, we do have one advantage over North Korea: Blair has less credibility than Kim Il Jong. And unlike most facist governments, they can't get the trains to run on time either.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
they just sit there in that pan of slowly heating water...
How does this benefit the average citizen?
It won't reduce terrorist activities.
It won't reduce crime.
All it will do is make it easier for the government to find SOMETHING on you if they ever want to.
So, does this mean that it's impossible to leave the country unless you first give over all your personal data? Even if you want to leave solely because you don't want to give that data?
I wonder if and when the first people will start running smuggling operations out of Britain.
Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.
I used to be very proud of being English. I believed Britain to be a light in the darkness and a bastion of freedom. I believed that the U.K., along with the U.S., stood as examples to the rest of the world as to what was possible when freedom won out over fear. But today, I no longer feel that way. I see freedoms being given up for illusory safety, and an unprecedented level of control being given to a government that has never proven itself even remotely worthy or capable of such a responsibility. Mostly, I feel anger and sadness, and a sense of frustration that the proverbial shining city on the hill has become so horribly tarnished with the shit of misinformation, misdirection, fear-mongering, and mediocre talking-heads proclaiming that just a few more liberties need to go to make us all safe.
Many Americans, I suspect, can relate.
P.P.S. I'm doing Science and I'm still alive.
In fact please have a look here for how many European nations are run today.
If you don't like Walmart's policies, you can simply not shop there. If you don't like the govornments policies, you still have to deal with them.
What you just presented was not only an example of "well, the US does it too!" but of comparing apples to oranges.
Even though it's a completly worthless counter argument it takes a shot at both the US and Wal*Mart so it get's modded up in the seconds between when the page loaded and when I clicked to see what your reply was.
If your theory is different from practice, then your theory is wrong.
The first thing I thought of when I saw this was the tower of Cirith Ungol in Lord of the Rings. After Frodo and Sam pass through it, they realize it's purpose is not as much to keep Men and Elves out of Mordor, but to keep Sauron's armies in!
We, the West, needed the Cold War to remind us of what was soulless and wrong with communist surveilance society police states. Now that the USSR has fallen, we have lost our perspective and are becoming what we used to despise.
Notice that the Netherlands, Germany, and Austria all are listed as blue/green countries in the Privacy International map, while the UK and the US, both nations with no national ID system, are in the red/black zone.
Overall, national ID cards by themselves don't threaten privacy, inadequate privacy legislation, tolerance of governmental intrusion into privacy, and tolerance of legal abuse of private information threaten privacy.
Curiously, all the fuss raised over national ID card systems usually come from same governments and political groups that then turn around and commit massive invasions of privacy and civil rights. I think they are actually simply using the national ID "debates" to bamboozle and distract people while they quietly realize their real agendas of a total surveillance state.
And they keep using that strategy elsewhere: they keep talking about less intrusive government, privacy rights, and states rights, but then turn around and create legislation that reaches into people's bedrooms and substance use. They keep talking about reducing the size of government, self-reliance, free markets, and fiscal conservatism, but bankrupt the government with bloating the size of the military, create artificial and unjustified monopolies through ill-conceived modifications to the copyright and patent systems, and waste billions on government handouts to their buddies in industry.
The national ID card debates are political strategy by people who don't have your interests at heart. Cut through the crap, participate in the democratic process, and deal with the real issues.
Amazing that not many people in the world, even in the U.S., know that the U.S. instituted a you-can't-leave list with the passport reform law last January. If you are on the list, no matter what, you are not leaving the country, not by car, cruise ship, cargo ship, plane,foot, or train. Like the U.K, your country is your prison. And don't expect Canadians to help hide you, because entering while on that list is a crime, and they are now using our "criminal" lists to block entry; sneaking past the American wall would qualify you as a federal criminal, therefore your ass is being sent back to the Home of the Free.
Why did they bother with WW2, they should have just said to Hitler, we like what you do. Lets unite, no bloodshed, let the industrial complex grow.
j/k
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
To get as much bad data into their database as we can.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
That statement is not compatible with the ideals that make America something to be proud of.
P.S. Your anecdotal experience is not the basis for an argument that makes broad generalizations.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
is that a truly free country does NOT assume its citizens are criminals, the people are "innocent until proven guilty!" A free and innocent person, not convicted of anything to prevent the acquisition of a passport, should thus be treated with courtesies and safe passage. A government that assumes otherwise of its citizens, as Britain does, is evil.
are the new Jews. Give history a little time to repeat itself.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
wytcld -- your response is classic Joseph Goebbels propaganda, and shows clearly how Muslims are indeed the New Jews. "Some have misbehaved, lets kill all of them." Second, what makes you think Muslims in general "tolerate" suicide bombers? Do Americans "tolerate" George Bush's widespread plundering of the middle east? Do Americans "tolerate" Foreign Affairs' call that a civil war in Iraq could be "good"? Do Jews tolerate that 6 year kids are shot in the back and killed after protesting their house being demolished? NO -- I just dont think the majority of people can do anything about these war crimes, just as the majority of Americans and Jews have not done anything about their own ranks committing war crimes. And of course, this puts aside the fact that far more killing, stealing, and plundering is done by non-Muslims (think Vietnam and Iraq war 2003, two of 40 examples that come to mind.)