The Emergence of Global Infrastructure For Mass Surveillance 10 Signposts

[chill_wind]

The Emergence of a Global Infrastructure For Mass Registration and Surveillance: 10 Signposts

(...)
The object of infrastructure is not ordinary police work, but mass surveillance of entire populations. In its technological capacity and global reach, it is an unprecedented project of social control. Already, the United States and other countries are aggressively using information gathered and shared through this infrastructure to crack down on dissent, close borders to refugees and activists, and seize and detain people without reasonable grounds.

And, all of this is taking place at a time when the U.S. and its allies are maintaining a system of secret and extraterritorial prisons around the world, in which unknown numbers of prisoners are facing indefinite, arbitrary detention and torture.

It is time for the public to take stock of the road that governments are leading us down with these new registration and surveillance initiatives. The ten "signposts" described below show just how far down the road we have already traveled, and the dangers that lie ahead for all of us if we fail to make governments turn back.

(...)

read them here: http://i-cams.org/Surveillance_intro.html

Critical reading. One for the bookmarks. (bold emphasis mine)





About ICAMS-

The International Campaign Against Mass Surveillance (ICAMS) was founded by the American Civil Liberties Union, Focus on the Global South, the Friends' Committee on National Legislation, the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group and Statewatch.

ICAMS was launched on April 20 2005 in London, Manila, Ottawa and Washington with the support of almost one hundred groups from around the world.

The ICAMS report, "The Emergence Of A Global Infrastructure For Mass Registration And Surveillance", was published with the launch of the campaign.

That pdf report is here: http://www.i-cams.org/ICAMS1.pdf

Some mighty chilling reading.

[AverageJoe]

1. K & R

:kick:

[rodeodance]

2. 9th Signpost: The Erosion of Democratic Values

........9th Signpost: The Erosion of Democratic Values

The ninth signpost is the dismaying betrayal of democratic values by the government of the United States and other democracies as they move to implement the global surveillance project. In order to achieve their ends, governments have:

* suspended judicial oversight over law enforcement agents and public officials

* concentrated unprecedented power in the hands of the executive arm of government

* circumvented the democratic oversight and debate normally provided by the legislative arm of government by imposing policy through unelected, unaccountable transnational bodies

* steamrolled over well-established privacy protections for citizens

* ignored constitutional guarantees and rolled back criminal law and due process protections that balance the rights of individuals against the power of the state (such as the presumption of innocence, habeas corpus, attorney-client privilege, public trials, the right to know the evidence against one and to respond, reasonable grounds for search and seizure, and the right to remain silent)

* undermined freedom of expression and association..........

[chill_wind]

3. NYC 's "The Surveillance Camera Players"

An interesting (an often satirical and entertaining) civil liberties group with an extemely informative website dealing with only one subset of the growing issues: public surveillance cams.

"Only someone completely distrustful of all government
would be opposed to what we are doing with surveillance cameras."
-- NYC Police Commissioner Howard Safir, 27 July 1999.

http://www.notbored.org/the-scp.html

press coverage (plentiful) here: http://www.notbored.org/scp-press.html

[Joanne98]

4. The Amber alert system is a SET UP! Today children tommorrow

everything else.

[rman]

5. kick