Slashdot Mirror
Is the West Building Its Own Iron Curtain?
New submitter pefisher writes "The British are apparently admitting that they track their citizens as they travel the world (through information provided by intelligence agencies) and are arresting them if they have been somewhere that frightens them. 'Sir Peter, who leads the Association of Chief Police Officer's "Prevent" strategy on counter-terrorism, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that those returning from Syria "may well be charged and investigated, but they will be put into our programmes".' The program seems to consist of being spied on by the returnee's cooperative neighbors."
The Iron Curtain kept people from escaping from oppressive regimes. This article is just talking about prosecuting people who have been fighting for terrorists, and scrutinizing those suspected of hanging around with terrorists. It has auras of creepy surveillance, but definitely is not an Iron Curtain.
In discussions about government spying and surveillance, there is often a vocal group who says "if you don't have anything to hide, then this spying should not bother you."
The counter argument is that governments have tended to take information they are given and when the right person is in power, or the right sentiment strikes the public, those programs are expanded and distorted beyond their original intent.
I'm sure in the 1970s and 1980s when these programs were first beginning to be set up, they had noble intentions of only ever targeting known criminals and spys, and eventually were justified by saying that if makes people feel more secure in a post-9/11 world.
But the reality is, even without these programs, we live in the safest time that humanity has ever seen. The odds of dying of a freak accident like choking on a grape are more real to the average person than terrorism, or crime.
This is not the right solution to this invented problem.
That Britain is the place where 1984 actually happens.
The notion of this being an Iron Curtain is a bit silly IMHO.
However every country on Earth has laws against their citizens defecting to the enemy, and serving as enemy combatants. Why should Muslims get a free pass, because it's currently unfashionable to call them out on antisocial and illegal behaviour (under the rubric of "anti racism")?
You don't, as a Muslim or anybody else, move to the land of milk and honey, take advantage, and then go and wage war against your country's interests. If you do so, then your adopted country is well within its rights to deal with you as they would any traitor.
Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis said "The objections to despotism and monopoly are fundamental in human nature. They rest upon the innate and ineradicable selfishness of man. They rest upon the fact that absolute power inevitably leads to abuse."
Look at what happened to people's politicians like Tony Blair and Obama, or government goons like Clapper and Alexander who defile the Constitution and flip us the bird. History as far back as we know it shows absolute power is always abused, to the point now where politicians and government workers are never held to account. The answer is to roll back government to the bare minimum necessary: I have no need to be led. People have to stop letting those who abuse power off the hook so easily and to punish those who violate our rights severely and decisively with impeachment.
The Iron Curtain's primary goal was to keep the information (about West's superiority) out — and own citizenry in.
As long as the British are free to leave their country, things are Ok... Letz, I believe, once said: "A country you can leave is the country you can live in."
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Gee, ya think? What has it been, like over a decade since the Patriot Act and people are just now figuring it all out?
I'm glad that the totalitarian impulses of the global elite are finally starting to penetrate peoples' realityTV-addled brains. Maybe pretty soon they'll figure out that it's just a mechanism to promote the redistribution of wealth upwards.
Then it will get interesting. I can't really fault people for taking a long time to figure out that ubiquitous surveillance and a corporate/government surveillance regime is a bad thing. I didn't want to believe it myself until around the middle of last decade, when it became impossible to deny.
But it's one of those things that once you see it clearly for what it is, you can never un-see it. Now, it's impossible to see practically any major news story without seeing the effect of developed, industrial nations turning into gulags.
You are welcome on my lawn.
There are British citizens or residents who, in a private capacity, engage in armed conflict abroad, often due to alliegance to ideologies and religious beliefs that deem their home country to be a target, and they come to the attention of the state, and other states who also fear being targeted by the same people for the same reasons. They may have to explain themsleves on their return home, and may be arrested if suspected of criminal activity. In the mind of some slashdot submitters and editors this can apparently be equated to the imprisonment of hundreds of millions of people, and the killing of many hundreds or even thousands simply for trying to travel abroad.
Dear fucking cretins at slashdot,
here is a small hint: there was no equivalent of Heathrow or Gatwick airports or Dover or Southampton ferry ports in the DDR, the USSR, or any of the other "people's" republics. If you're British and you want to travel abroad do you know how hard it is? You go to the ferry port and get on a ferry. You need some money and some ID such as a driver's license. That's it.
I'm pleased that people who train for and engage in murder and kidnapping are actually faced with the prospect of being held to account, whether they do it here or in Syria or Pakistan or Ulster or anywhere else.
So if you think just getting on a boat or aplane and crossing a national boundary should amount to a license to do as you please and some kind of immunity then just fuck off and get a clue or if that is too difficult maybe you can ask mommy, but please stop whining and regurgitating your misunderstandings, half truths, and flat out lies.
Spot on. I just lost my modpoints, or I wouldn't be commenting, I'd be promoting.
Like all rational policy, there needs to be some sort of risk/reward analysis objectively performed on the "security" aparatus in the West. For 100 years of claiming superiority as the "first" world, we seem to be throwing the baby out with the bathwater at an alarming rate seemingly in reaction to the various growing pains in the "second" (and, in some cases, "third") world. What happened to our example? Even more frighteningly, what WILL happen? The massive security aparatus of the West (and, obviously, the US first and foremost) represents an enormous risk to future security of the freeman. And, it counters an absolutely miniscule risk in comparison. This is no sensible policy. I pray to God (literally) that this is reversible.
After WWII, technology grew by leaps and bounds, and lots of naive optimism about how we'd have a leisure society or end world hunger. Instead we're regressing to how humans have always behaved: high school students with armies.
Iron curtain, no. Stasi, maybe.
The US is not "first and foremost," the UK has 100% information sharing with the US. We are fully and entirely the same team in this.
Already a thing: http://www.nsa.gov/kids/
- In Soviet Korea, only old people loose all their bases to Natalie Portman's petrified hot grits overlords.
The counter argument is that governments have tended to take information they are given and when the right person is in power, or the right sentiment strikes the public, those programs are expanded and distorted beyond their original intent.
You don't even have to look at surveillance programs to prove this point. My favorite example? The US Census was used to assist in the rounding up of Japanese-Americans for internment. It was also given to General Sherman during the Civil War and helped his Army identify productive areas of the South to destroy during the March to the Sea. Neither usage was condoned by the laws in force at the time the data was collected. The usage to track down Japanese-Americans wasn't even legal at the time and remained secret for decades after the war.
I get my census form and they get one piece of information: X number of people live here. Race? "Other: American"
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I pray to God (literally) that this is reversible.
I see. Well, thanks for nothing. Some of us are trying to do something about it. Maybe you could help instead of chatting to your invisible friends about it...
How is this insightful? Sometimes a question is just a question, and the point is to have a discussion. If anything, ending this with "nuff said" shows just how intellectually bankrupt you are. I guess you just weren't fast enough to say "first post!", huh?
Very well put. What I like to say to people who say that they have nothing to hide is a quote from Cardinal Richelieu: "If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him." This massive trove of surveillance data can and will be used against anyone whom the powers that be don't like, and it is very easy to twist casual remarks and jokes out of proportion, to destroy the credibility of someone who may rock the boat. God forbid you are actually be doing something perfectly legal that isn't socially acceptable. If you stay one of the proles, sure you have nothing to fear, but if you try to do something useful like, oh, try to run for public office with a mind to changing how the government does things, those six million lines and counting describing everything you've ever said and done will be examined, and they will definitely find something in them which will hang you.
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
How about the one of... i don't know what country, which recorded peoples' religions so they could give them proper burial. Until they were invaded by the nazis. You know how germans love efficiency, you can only imagine what a happy day it must have been for them.
Don't know what happened to the poster to whom you're responding, but I always answer the census form only with the number of people here. I've gotten personal visits from census takers; I tell them, "I've told you all I'm going to tell you, good day." I have not yet been dragged off to Gitmo for doing so.
The Constitution authorizes an enumeration, not an interrogation. Other demographic information that the feds may legitimately desire -- it is useful to base policy on data, after all -- can be obtained via voluntary anonymous surveys.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Iron curtain, no. Stasi, maybe
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/201...
Even a true-blue Stasi operative (retired) couldn't help but to marvel at the level of sophistication the Western Stasi has in their possession.
Wolfgang Schmidt, 78, a retired lieutenant colonel in the Stasi, lamented that during his stint in the Stasi organization, their listening devices could only spy on 40 telephone lines at once. Targets had to be prioritized, and to take on a new spying subject, an old one had to be let go.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Lots of countries have 100% information sharing with the US.
It's not really sharing, in the traditional form of the word.
More like paying protection money, to be honest. I mean, you might get back something you can use against your political enemies (so long as they are Americas enemies too), but mostly you have to hand it over and not look them in eye; and all the while some thug is poking under your head of sate saying thing like 'this parliament looks a bit old to me, positively a fire hazard really, be a shame if it burned down.. what do you think?'
"Oops, I always forget the purpose of competition is to divide people into winners and losers." - Hobbes