by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
In Spring 2009 Dame Stella Rimmington, the former Head of Security Services, stated that Britain is becoming more and more of a police state.
This is something that I have been saying now for many times and have repeated on several occasions and Britain is not alone in this in the European Union. Germany too is headed down the slippery slope too a total police state, yet again.
It would appear that in so many ways in the EU we are seeing a repeat of the 1930s onlhy that now such a surveillance is so total that what Gestapo, KGB and Ministry of State Security have done in the Nazi era and after would appear to be little boys' games.
Dame Stella's take is absolutely correct. We are headed full steam for a total surveillance state, a total police state, and the actions of police at the G20 event and also at other environmental protests shows this more and more.
The question is and remains as to whether there is a terrorist threat on the British mainland from Islamists to begin with. While the IRA and its attacks were real – I have experienced them myself – the supposed Islamist terrorists attacks seems strange and of those that have been foiled – supposedly – no details are made known.
The more I look at it the more I believe that we are being sold a dud here and that we are being conditioned under the guise of fighting Islamist terrorism to accept more and more restrictions of personal freedoms.
The government is preying on the people's fear of terrorism and is using that to bring in more and more legislation that more and more is destroying people's civil liberties.
The truth is that it is not only a case of the govt preying on the existing fears; in fact the government is in fact actively creating those fear in the minds of the people by claiming that this or that terrorist group if active in the same way that we are being told that the war in Afghanistan is necessary to keep the terrorists off the streets of Britain. Doh?
Methinks the silly war that we are engaged in there on behalf of a regime and president that no one in Afghanistan wants; Mohamed Khazi is hated by most of not all Afghanis and his government is not democratic but highly corrupt. He and his ilk have always been thus.
If Britain faces any terrorism threat then it is because we have gotten ourselves involved in this silly war against groups that we, the West, the USA and Britain, have put in place as a bulwark against the Soviets at the time.
Al Queida and the Taliban both are a product of US and British foreign policy and Osama Bin Laden himself was an asset of the Company. This is, however, something that is being kept oh so quiet now.
Even Saddam Hussein himself was once a puppet of the very same agency and agencies and when he went rogue that was when the West became worried and not before. Also something that is not spoken of and especially not in public where the people could hear it.
Britain proposed biometric identity cards – that were supposed to become compulsory – a total breach of British etiquette of personal freedoms – and claimed that those would prevent terrorism and crime in an attempt to get the people back the proposals. Ministers had to backtrack, however, in late Spring of 2009 admitting that this card would do neither.
In Germany proposals are now in place to use the new biometric ID cards (identity cards have always been compulsory for Germans) as log in on the Internet at e-stores, eBay, and such likes and possible even for social networking sites. Incremental creep of loss of all privacy and possibility to surf the Net anonymous in this case.
Surveillance cameras are all over the place in Britain and the British people and visitors too those Islands are the most watched in the entire world. Germany is becoming a close second now, as far as I can see.
The CCTV cameras have been “sold” to the public under the claim of “crime fighting” here and in Germany but the truth is that in most cases CCTV is useless and more often than not ruled inadmissible in a case.
In Britain the first cameras are about where the operators – mostly private security companies sub-contracted to the local councils – can talk to people they watch on camera and shout orders to them, such as “pick up the litter you have just dropped”, etc. Welcome to 1984!
Other proposals are there about fitting all street furniture, that is to say seats, litter bins, lamp posts, and what have you, with scatter radar to scan for hidden weapons, even and including small pocket knives and such like.
This is not going to make one iota of a difference in the fight against (violent ) crime. Not one. But people are being told by the councils and the police that it will.
The only things that will, when it comes to crime, especially violent crime and disorder, which is mostly committed by young thugs, is to first of all use the law as it was intended to be used and stop pussyfooting about and also to get the bored youths off the streets and engaged somehow.
When it comes to the anti-terrorism legislation this also is just being used to subdue and control the population even as far as suppressing peaceful protests of different kinds, whether environmental or otherwise. If you go out onto the streets of Britain today to participate in peaceful political protest for or against this or that the chances are that you could find yourself arrested under terrorism law or in the least being monitored from then on nigh on forever as a prospective terrorist suspect.
The right to peaceful assembly and protest is being curtailed under the anti-terrorism legislation left, right and center and the majority of the people seem to be happy to accept as “something we have to accept to be safe from terrorists”. Sorry, that does not compute.
The main targets are recent climate change protests, for instance, for police surveillance and searched have been journalists, even journalists from the major networks and publications and especially when they happen to catch police in the act of unlawful operations.
A journalist at such events is definitely under surveillance on camera and otherwise by police and security services and that seems to be because they might capture something on film – video or still – that the police would not like to come out.
Police state? You bet!
© 2009
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UK is becoming police state, says former Head of Security Services
