More Flim-Flam From Security State

On Friday (10th July 2009) it was announced by the British Home Office that the law against sedition would be repealed. What? Is this real? How have we come from a situation in the 1970’s where the security services we’re ‘bugging and burgling across London’ in order to control political subversion to a point where in 2009 the State is struggling to maintain the illusion of centralised control against terrorism (and non-violent challenges to the State) and needs more than ever to fight political subversion. What is going on?

In yesterday’s Guardian (11th July 2009) several former MI5 bosses were quoted as having been against the use of the intelligence services for protection of the state against left-wing political and industrial ’subversion’ during the ’70s and ’80s. Really?

Since the security services have always aimed to gain Total Information Awareness (TIA) for the benefit of the state why would they say the opposite. Why would the law against sedition be removed at the same time as this article about three heads of MI5 and their opposition to targetting political subversion.

The Long Emergency ahead presents the State with a very clear need for TIA and an understanding of subversion to the current structure of the state I simply don’t believe that security services have changed their spots. These announcements have all the hallmarks of disinformation covering a stepping up in surveillance and target profile analysis processes.

Building Big Brother

This is what we have been trying to explain to the public over the past decade: The US and British governments, and perhaps many others, are in the process of building an artificial intelligence system that will be able to predict our behaviour:

The NSA is “developing an artificial intelligence system designed to know what people are thinking.”

There is no basis in any of our constitutions for the State to have such a power over its own people. The spirit of the law is that in Western democracies we are supposed to be free. Our elected assemblies are the place where the public and the private are supposed to interface in a way which governs society.

Intelligence agencies have more than enough tools to do their job of protecting the process of democracy from subversion and threats such as terrorism. However, if they feel that such activities are getting out of hand then the correct recourse is to provide this information to government so that the causes can be debated in the elected assembly and an appropriate course of action can then be taken.

That appropriate course of action would most probably be to engage with and solve the social problems and minority concerns which give rise to subversion and terrorism. The wrong course of action – if you read many of my blog entries – is to fight against threats to democracy.

If we fight subversion and terrorism, particulalrly by trying to subvert it by using the intelligence and security services we are simply ignoring the real problem which will then keep coming back to bite us. Many more will flock to the side of those who have real grievances and injustices if the State simply clamps down on what many believe to be legitimate resistance in defence of their human, economic and environmental rights.

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UK Police Admit Database of Political Activists

We’ve all known that this was coming but little did we know that it would be admitted publicly. When the Police monitor political activities we really do have a Police State.

There appears to be no independent oversight of this database and the uses it is being put to. Are those on it fully representative of the political spectrum – or only from certain sections of society? If there is a bias then we have a problem of the Police interfering with some political activities and not others. That is a Police State. How this will pan out when the Government forces the ID card scheme on us is a question that fills me with trepidation.

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