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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."
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.
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.
Exactly. Like the United States. They start or get involved in many, may wars, spy on every other nation on earth and even track their own people like dogs with microchips under their skin.
If you're traveling to the US your intentions surely must be questioned.
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.
Iron curtain, no. Stasi, maybe.
You forgot some pertinent facts: The U.S. has a long history of funding terrorists, supporting coups, and undermining democracies.
The notion of this being an Iron Curtain is a bit silly IMHO.
You're right. What they're doing is far more oppressive and effective than anything the creators of the Iron Curtain ever dreamed of.
However every country on Earth has laws against their citizens defecting to the enemy, and serving as enemy combatants.
Those laws are supposed to be applicable when the country is at war, at least in a country with rule of law. I wasn't aware that Britain was at war with Syria.
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")?
So now what you're saying is that "antisocial behaviour" is the equivalent of serving as enemy combatants.
The Western Democracies are so far down the slippery slope people like you can't even see the top anymore. They've got their propaganda machines cranked up to a level that would leave Goebbels in a highly admirable daze.
As someone further up posted, your chances of dying from choking on a grape are far higher than dying from a terrorist attack. Yet here you're defending the government monitoring and oppressing a group simple for have what you define as "antisocial behaviour".
Who is John Galt?
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.
"There are certain places in the world that if you go you should be setting off alarm bells."
I see. Guilt by association is now okay? That's news to me.
I don't give the slightest damn where people go. It's what they do when they get there that matters.
While it might not be like an "iron curtain", per se, it certainly IS like a dictatorial police state.
You're being ridiculously blind to our actions, making a blanket statement they were necessary for the very existence of the U.S.A. rather than often bone-headed moves that not only were against our supposed morals (e.g., freedom, democracy, not-mass-murdering) but also ended up biting us in the ass and incurring loss of life that otherwise wouldn't have happened. If we actually acted as a country in a way that we say we believe in, we'd probably had a much better last 50 years.
So true. Definitely not home of the brave after remotely bombing so many children and innocents.
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It's more a case of rogue agencies with internal agendas acting to further their own perceived self-interests.
For the fully documented stuff proved beyond question we have idiocy like one part of the CIA running guns to Castro and another opposing him. We also have an agency in the US selling weapons to Hezbolla less than a year after they had killed off more than one hundred US Marines. That sort of thing made the USA look very weak. It's the sort of thing that showed Bin Laden that he had a chance.
After that we've got less well documented stuff with extremist middle east groups, hard core Islamists that stand against everything the USA stands for, getting US weapons, just to make some Saudis doing backdoor deals with US companies happy. That sort of thing, and the far better documented Iran-Contra, are directly opposed to the interests of the nation state but are of benefit to individuals. I don't know what to call it, because treason now means playing chess against the wrong person or exposing abuses to the constitution. Selling weapons to declared enemies with a recent high body count of your own people is now seen as the act of a "patriot".