Tuesday, October 09, 2007

The more of this shi*t we are subject to the sooner people will start taking it down



There’s an amusing little piece on the Sunday Herald website entitled UK 2017: under surveillance ...

“It is a chilling, dystopian account of what Britain will look like 10 years from now: a world in which Fortress Britain uses fleets of tiny spy-planes to watch its citizens, of Minority Report-style pre-emptive justice, of an underclass trapped in sink-estate ghettos under constant state surveillance, of worker drones forced to take on the lifestyle and values of the mega-corporation they work for, and of the super-rich hiding out in gated communities constantly monitored by cameras and private security guards.

This Orwellian vision of the future was compiled on the orders of the UK's information commissioner - the independent watchdog meant to guard against government and private companies invading the privacy of British citizens and exploiting the masses of information currently held on each and every one of us - by the Surveillance Studies Network, a group of academics…”


It’s worth a read and the report it quotes from is nowhere near as sensationalist, either in its predictions or timescales, as it could have been

My own take on this subject is that sooner or later we’re going to reach a tipping point with all these cameras and databases. Once that tipping point is reached a significant number of people are going to discover a new found sense of purpose in this soulless, consumerist prison of a society which corporations are creating around us.

and that purpose will be to fuck those corporations' precious little cameras and databases up

Non violently of course

Looking forward to it…

Lots


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4 comments:

The Antagonist said...

The Antagonista in everyone is beginning to stir.

Einstein is reported to have said, "I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."

Did you know the catapult was the most powerful weapon in history
until the invention of gunpowder?

It is reported that CCTV cameras are blinded by bright lights.

Juxtaposition.

Anonymous said...

I thonk we're very close to that tipping point. When you hear even the most conservative and mainstream of people are complaining about this, the office workers, the mums - you know there's a lot of very pissed of people out there.

It's important though, that people realise that this isn't really a New Labour party political thing - the surveillance obsession is that of the ruling classes generally.

Anonymous said...

Of course, if we were all French, we'd have ripped all this shit down years ago.

Anonymous said...

You know I wish that was the truth.

But just look at what happens when even very normal people do react to the surveillance state.

The 'terrorist' who sent letter bombs to all the Capita offices earlier this year.

As soon as someone acts out there are dozens of disgruntled office workers, mums etc.. who typically stammer "Well I don't like these organisations but the letter bombs go too far- it was wrong".

I'm not advocating the letter bombing tactic, but how times do we hear that American policy in the Middle East has caused more terrorist attacks and insurgency?

Well, what about policies at home. I say if you work for a company that makes it's wage from persecuting, enforcing strict authoritarian and predatory regimes on the common citizen, then you have no right to complain when the citizen hits back.

When was the last time you were stopped by someone in authority who gave you a short, sharp telling off and sent you on your way for a minor incident?