Friday, March 07, 2008

Feeling Odd?

Legendary pie-aficionado and Flickr regular Thomas Hawk recently made a comment about a certain poster being used in the latest Metropolitan Police Anti-Terrorism publicity campaign

I won’t reproduce the original poster here but the text reads…


Thousands of people take photos every day

What if one of them seems odd?

Terrorists use surveillance to help plan attacks, taking photos and making notes about security measures like the location of CCTV cameras

If you see someone doing that we need to know

Let experienced officers decide what action to take


Hmmm, given that I and most of my chums a) take pictures of stuff in public places and b) look a bit odd, it’s difficult not to take this latest heap of fear-mongering bollocks personally

It’s also worth remembering that here in the UK we have something like 25% of all the world’s CCTV cameras and that most of those cameras are privately controlled, by poorly-regulated c*nts. So it’s a bit rich, or rather a bit fascistic, when our publicly funded police force is essentially easing towards criminalising anyone who might take photographs of those wretched, corporately-operated, things

Anyway, Thomas’ post (itself picked up from another blog) was picked up by Boing Boing and people have started to post ‘remixes’ of the original poster







There is also a chirpy radio ad to accompany the poster campaign that can be accessed on the Met site here (transcript here)

When a time comes when it’s virtually impossible to distinguish between real anti-terror publicity and satirical anti-terror material that’s a time to start feeling really quite uncomfortable about where we are being led (if, perish the thought, you haven't already)




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Fans of dystopian sci-fi movies will, however, with all these Orwellian ‘public service’ announcements about generic terrorists and the accelerated blurring of state and corporate power and interests, be feeling right at home…

"Quaid, activate the reactor Quaid…"

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edit: and whilst on the subject of not being able to distinguish 'truth' from satire and dystopian sci-fi, cheers to anon for this little nugget...



Next Week on Fox News - Al Qaeda only 'months away' from completing a Death Star?...

edit#2:

Everyone's friend Henry the Hoover - unlike the Al Qaeda Dalek, a Weapon of Love not War

.

5 comments:

Kier said...

I reckon the Czech republic could learn a lot from this campaign.

http://tinyurl.com/2v6jt4

Their police just wonder what's going on, whereas ours would have undoubtedly had some super-vigilant member of the public onto them in seconds!

Anonymous said...

Poland: We are launching a mission to explore the sun tomorrow!
Everyone else: But you'll burn up!
Poland: Don't worry, we are going at night!

Anonymous said...

"Judges back Lockerbie evidence suppression.

Background and details can be found here where a philosophy prof was invited by the UN to observe at the Lockerbie trial. He prepared reports for the UN but to everyone's dismay, he insisted on publishing these reports.

This process is ongoing, such as, "Statement by Dr. Hans Koechler on the withholding of evidence by the British government."

Note particularly,

"6 The British Government’s interference makes devolution of authority in matters of Criminal Justice to Scotland entirely _meaningless_. What is the meaning of “devolution” if a Scottish Court is prevented from operating according to its own rules? Scots Law is not to be administered under the terms of a Protectorate. The crucial question will now be whether the Scots will be able to assert their (constitutional) independence in devolved matters."

Consider the secession of Kosovo and consider whether or not Alex Salmond has the guts to secede from both the UK and NATO and subsequently join the SCO, inviting SCO (Russian) troops to occupy Faslane and other such bases in order to protect their natural resources.

DE said...

Time to get to work with Paint.NET

ziz said...

I simply hope this won't encourage people to wander round taking pictures of , say, policemen , the War Office, House of Parliament street drain covers etc.,using a fillum camera ...er ... without any fillum in.

... being accompanied doing this by someone who takes pictures of PC Plod investigating the matter.

That really would not be a good idea.