BS: Police States Turn Up The Heat

Subject: BS: Police States Turn Up The Heat
From: Lizzie Cornish 1
Date: 17 Oct 10 - 08:46 AM

Holey Shite..

Check under your cars, folks!

Subject: RE: BS: Police States Turn Up The Heat
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 17 Oct 10 - 09:13 AM

Have you looked at the posts related to that piece of news? Is American getting scarier day by day or what? And that is the country with the world's largest stock of nuclear weapons. That really does worry me.

Subject: RE: BS: Police States Turn Up The Heat
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 17 Oct 10 - 12:05 PM

I suspect it won't be long before these kind of devices will be built into all cars before the leave the factory. Or for that matter,into all people, as a statutory implant.

And of course they'll say "if you aren't doing anything wrong you've no need to worry."

The so-called totalitarian societies of the past were primitive amateurs when it came to controlling the population. That's why they were so clumsy, having to go in for repression of people en masse. No need for that when you can target and pick off anyone you like as an individual, for whatever reason your particular regime might decide is unacceptable.

Subject: RE: BS: Police States Turn Up The Heat
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 17 Oct 10 - 12:24 PM

"Is American getting scarier day by day or what?"

No I think it's always been a pretty scary 20thC state. How about the Cuban Missile Crisis, "Star Wars" and McCarthyism?

Subject: RE: BS: Police States Turn Up The Heat
From: Rapparee
Date: 17 Oct 10 - 12:43 PM

Don't forget the First Red Scare, the KKK, the Bund, the SDS, and similar things. (And let's not forget the WFM, the IWW, and others.)

But it seems to me that while it might be "legal" and "constitutional" as long as the vehicle is on a public road, wouldn't you need a warrant to enter the vehicle to install the unit in the first place?

Subject: RE: BS: Police States Turn Up The Heat
From: Rapparee
Date: 17 Oct 10 - 12:51 PM

If you find one, break it. Make it look like an accident. Or wrap it in copper wire and ground it on the frame of the car.

Subject: RE: BS: Police States Turn Up The Heat
From: artbrooks
Date: 17 Oct 10 - 01:05 PM

I read somewhere, and I hope that it's an exaggeration, that every mile of every highway in the UK and all open pedestrian areas are under constant video surveillance. The US is far from this point. I think Rapaire's advice is good, although I do think it took a good bit of chutzpah for the FBI to ask for their GPS back.

Subject: RE: BS: Police States Turn Up The Heat
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 17 Oct 10 - 01:18 PM

Yes, the UK is the surveillance capital of the world! And that's pretty damned scary too. So much for freedom.

Subject: RE: BS: Police States Turn Up The Heat
From: pdq
Date: 17 Oct 10 - 02:10 PM

"that every mile of every highway in the UK and all open pedestrian areas are under constant video surveillance"

Every one of these cameras was installed by orders from the Labour Party government?

Subject: RE: BS: Police States Turn Up The Heat
From: Mrrzy
Date: 17 Oct 10 - 02:12 PM

What makes you un-free just because you're under surveillance? Not free to commit crimes, maybe, but what else can't you do?

Subject: RE: BS: Police States Turn Up The Heat
From: Amos
Date: 17 Oct 10 - 02:20 PM

The principle of privacy has long been associated with free republics. You can't, for example, arrange your life in the relative certainty that the left hand and the right hand are not sharing information about where you've been.

It may not be an intrusion for the simple middle class life, like mine, but I can see where someone who was busy creating a rich, multi-faceted life might value the privacy we once had.

For another thing, surveillance without permission is a violation of the right of the individual to be secure in his possessions. It is an intrusion of the state into the life of the individual without grounds, effectively classifying the individual as a suspect without grounds.

Subject: RE: BS: Police States Turn Up The Heat
From: Penny S.
Date: 17 Oct 10 - 02:24 PM

I don't know how the figures work for main roads, but the rural roads round here don't have anywhere for cameras to be mounted. Don't exaggerate.

Penny

Subject: RE: BS: Police States Turn Up The Heat
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 17 Oct 10 - 03:33 PM

I suspect it won't be long before these kind of devices will be built into all cars before the leave the factory. Or for that matter,into all people, as a statutory implant.

EVERY cell phone is required to contain a location device, accessible by "authorized agencies" to determine the location of the phone.

This has been true in the US for a few years.

Recent models allow you to choose whether anyone you call can "read" your location; and you can turn off this "public" function. You cannot turn off access to the location information by police or "emergency rescue" agents, and it's ridiculous to presume that the gestapo (whatever local form it takes) can't access it at any time.

All major auto makers, for at leat the past two "model years," already include similar "emergency locators" in recent autos sold in the US. So far as I can tell, even the "fringe" makers include something similar. The most common kinds include GPS with reported accuracies within 40 to 80 feet, although some of the older ones merely reported the nearest cell tower.

Although I can't yet say that you can't buy a new car without it, it would apparently be difficult to find one. If you are offered one without this "feature," the equipment most likely is already installed, and operable, but just isn't "activated" for you to use if you opt out of this "benefit."

The UK, and most particularly London, has been reported for several years as having the greatest number of surveillance cameras (per capita?) of any place in the world; and this network is apparently being rapidly expanded. The monitors, as of the last authoritative report I've seen, are most generally located in police stations, with little control over access by "anyone who wants to look." In the US, New York City in particular has been aggressively attempting to "copy the UK systems," and numerous smaller cities have significant "surveillance capabilities" that are apparently unknown to the majority of their citizens.

rural roads round here don't have anywhere for cameras to be mounted

Microwave frequency communications, as used by cell phones, require essentially line-of-sight between the antenna and the user. While rural areas may not (yet) have high resolution visual surveillance, one may assume that if your cell phone works, most of the road you're on has a suitable (and virtually invisible) place to mount a camera. Reports of widespread attempts to mount cameras in these places are sparse, but they are reported as being "in place" on a fair number of US Interstate highways.

But who really cares? After all, it's for our own good (?) "they" say.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Police States Turn Up The Heat
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 17 Oct 10 - 05:45 PM

"What makes you un-free just because you're under surveillance? Not free to commit crimes, maybe, but what else can't you do? "

Depends on what Big Brother defines as a 'crime' at any period of time.

Subject: RE: BS: Police States Turn Up The Heat
From: pdq
Date: 17 Oct 10 - 06:04 PM

Lets say you have a purse-snatcher working in the area of Broadway and Vine.

It is perfectly reasonable and constitutional to ask a judge, in court, to grant the police the right to use a surveillance camera so that the suspect can be identified.

If the perp is caught, the camera should be removed.

Any film showing other actions, such as the guy smoking a joint, should be erased and destroyed.

If you want to catch pot-smokers, the court order should specify that offence.

Use of surveillance cameras everywhere people go in public is an outrage to libertarians.

Inside a private business such as a store, is different. You will also see signs like "Smile, you being photographed" on the wall. Hense, you were warned.

Subject: RE: BS: Police States Turn Up The Heat
From: gnu
Date: 17 Oct 10 - 06:47 PM

GPS the works. Put up the cams. I am all for it.

You aren't skeptical about the government are you? Do you really think the government would abuse the people? Come on now... really?

I mean, if that was really the case, more people would be opposed to taking firearms away from law abiding citizens. But, they aren't.

Seriously. If some of you don't want GPS or cams, why do some of you want to take away the guns held by law abiding citizens?

You want your cake and you want to shove it down others' throats. I say evryone should should be GPSed and cam'ed... because I don't trust you.

Subject: RE: BS: Police States Turn Up The Heat
From: gnu
Date: 17 Oct 10 - 06:58 PM

Oh, as for profiling... DUH? You can't be serious??? How on this earth can profiling be dispensed of as a technique to prevent crime? That is beyond reality to me. Absolutely naive and inane. If it's insulting to ANYONE, tough shit.. it works.

Subject: RE: BS: Police States Turn Up The Heat
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 17 Oct 10 - 07:18 PM

Oh FFS - because it treats the innocent and the guilty the same. Go and buy a brain.

Subject: RE: BS: Police States Turn Up The Heat
From: Slag
Date: 17 Oct 10 - 07:26 PM

Don't flinch now Rap, as we wire you up. It's not that you are a suspect, it's just that we don't want you to BECOME a suspect. Now don't flinch again as we insert the probe. We know that you are eating the "right" foods, as that is now all that is available. We just want to see what you are DOING with them after you eat them.

Subject: RE: BS: Police States Turn Up The Heat
From: Ebbie
Date: 17 Oct 10 - 08:53 PM

Richard Bridge, what happened to that vaunted British sense of irony?

Subject: RE: BS: Police States Turn Up The Heat
From: Janie
Date: 17 Oct 10 - 10:00 PM

I don't have anything to add to the argument. I'm just glad that we are able to continue to argue both sides of the equation, and hope that we will continue to have the freedom to do so. I don't think either side of the argument, if that side were to win politically, could ensure that freedom.

Long live open argument!

Subject: RE: BS: Police States Turn Up The Heat
From: Rapparee
Date: 18 Oct 10 - 11:07 AM

Make the cops work for their money.

As for cell phones, toss it in the back of a police car. Shove it down between the cushions. Or...don't get one!!! Use public Internet terminals, or write letters. Take public transportation.

As for the cameras, wear a hoodie or a hat or cap pulled down low.

Or better still, learn to ignore them by doing things they can't see. Always move in a crowd. Wear clothing similar to a police uniform -- they don't see their own (similar, not identical).

Geez, you people would never make good bomb-throwing anarchists. Where's sister Jenny when you need her?

Subject: RE: BS: Police States Turn Up The Heat
From: GUEST,Songbob
Date: 18 Oct 10 - 11:21 AM

"Geez, you people would never make good bomb-throwing anarchists."

It's funny, or perhaps ironic, but the Times Square bomber (just this past week sentenced to life imprisonment) failed to make an effective explosive device because US controls on certain chemicals made it harder to get "the right stuff," and he had to substitute lesser chemicals that did not produce the explosion he hoped for.

So, without the use of onerous profiling and intrusive wiretapping, the legal anti-terrorist methods used actually worked. The result is that the right-whingers are calling for more profiling and wiretapping, and also calling for star-chamber special courts ("military tribunals") instead of the normal criminal courts that convicted and sentenced him. Obviously, the line from reasonable protections to conviction and sentencing isn't inclusive of enough restrictive methods to satisfy the troglodites among our citizenry.

And I thought the right-whingers didn't "do" irony. Imagine my surprise.

Bob

Subject: RE: BS: Police States Turn Up The Heat
From: Slag
Date: 19 Oct 10 - 02:24 AM

If you know what you're doing you can make a quite effective explosive device from very common substances far beyond the controls of importation. Got aluminum? Got urine? Got sugar and flour? Got stump remover? Matches? I could go on but then someone might come and try to arrest me for reading the government's own handbook on the subject.

Subject: RE: BS: Police States Turn Up The Heat
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 19 Oct 10 - 06:17 AM

growing up (army brat) in the post Sputnik post Cuban missile crisis education system, I wonder if I can sue the US government for my lifelong paranoia and scepticism of government policy and sanctioned activity?

While I am at it... at least one day every week a strange (sickening) chemical odour is coming from an adjacent flat into our bathroom for the last month. Bomb or drug factory?

Subject: RE: BS: Police States Turn Up The Heat
From: olddude
Date: 19 Oct 10 - 10:52 AM

Tam
most likely someone is cooking Meth ... get out of there, very toxic and very explosive ... call the authorities please

Subject: RE: BS: Police States Turn Up The Heat
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 19 Oct 10 - 10:58 AM

well if it happens again, I will Dan. It maybe they are redoing their bathroom (flats designed so bathrooms are back to back and stacked upon each other). It might only be the stuff they stick tiles down with (when ours was done it was pretty awful) and they can only work on it one day a week. i.e. the guy upstairs is a cab driver and has only one week day off.

Subject: RE: BS: Police States Turn Up The Heat
From: olddude
Date: 19 Oct 10 - 11:06 AM

That makes sense Tam, If you get an ammonia smell then take action ok .. that is one of the key signs ... the chemicals the bad guys use are deadly toxic ...

Subject: RE: BS: Police States Turn Up The Heat
From: Penny S.
Date: 19 Oct 10 - 02:08 PM

John, our rural roads are not like those in Kansas. Single track and winding between tall hedges over very undulating topography. While phones could be tracked in most places, visual contact would require cameras every few yards.

Meanwhile, there has been a case in Birmingham where the security forces bamboozled the local authorities into installing umpteen cameras around areas where Muslims lived in order to "reduce crime". The matter was spotted, identified as false, and the process stopped.

Penny

Subject: RE: BS: Police States Turn Up The Heat
From: Slag
Date: 20 Oct 10 - 03:48 AM

VT: Strong ether odor is a key stench and highly explosive. You got good advice. Clear out and alert the authorities. If they are cooking up the goods and you were to knock and ask what's up, you won't like the answer.

Subject: RE: BS: Police States Turn Up The Heat
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 20 Oct 10 - 04:02 AM

I don't know what ether smells like... It was an adhesive or solvent smell but particularly strong. Running the fan in bathroom helped to clear it. No eye or nasal irritant or taste in mouth effects which are repportedly attendant in meth labs.   I am remembering a light tapping hammering for several hours going on either next door or upstairs a couple of weeks ago, like tiles being removed. The odour has not recurred this week.

why I first mentioned the odour was to illustrate my paranoia

Subject: RE: BS: Police States Turn Up The Heat
From: Slag
Date: 21 Oct 10 - 03:53 AM

Well, just don't let it happen again;).

Tom

Subject: RE: BS: Police States Turn Up The Heat
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 21 Oct 10 - 04:27 AM

looks worryingly side to side.... and over shoulder....

is that a threat?   ;~}

Subject: RE: BS: Police States Turn Up The Heat
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 21 Oct 10 - 04:28 AM

oops forgot to add... there are men on ladders outside my first floor flat...


window cleaners, my Ant Fanny....

Subject: RE: BS: Police States Turn Up The Heat
From: Slag
Date: 21 Oct 10 - 11:43 PM

Oh, where I could go with the straight line you just handed me.

Subject: RE: BS: Police States Turn Up The Heat
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 22 Oct 10 - 02:44 AM

hhmmm George Formby, anyone?

Subject: RE: BS: Police States Turn Up The Heat
From: Donuel
Date: 22 Oct 10 - 04:36 PM

What is a reasonable expectation of privacy? Does the court define it properly with any examples?

Subject: RE: BS: Police States Turn Up The Heat
From: Lizzie Cornish 1
Date: 22 Oct 10 - 05:01 PM

"What is a reasonable expectation of privacy? Does the court define it properly with any examples? "


Don't know, but....Cameron and Clegg want to resurrect the Big Brother idea of New Labour's which even they shelved, due to public outcry, of logging/recording every mobile phone call made and every email/internet action carried out, by everyone...

Cool, huh?

ANTHEM FOR DISSENT
By Ann Onimus, John Boncore/Splitting The Sky and Ron Bankley

United in fear we trade freedom, our prize for the Patriot Act as united we securitize
United in power over patriarchy, we misogynize
United in self-righteous arrogance, we imperialise
United in degenerate genital mutilation, we circumcise
United we consume and spend, and, united, we capitalize
United in greed we exploit, as united we multinationalize
United we commit economic suicide as, united, we globalise
United in beligerent violence, we waste trillions as, united, we militarize
United we massacre millions and think we're so brave, united we fantasize
United we bomb, destroy, maim, mass murder, slaughter and terrorize
United in massive denial we look the other way, as united, we atrocitize
United in 'might makes right', we dominate and, united, we hegemonize
United we pillage the third world and then, united, we moralize
United we covet their resources and, united, we monopolize
United in total denial we deny that, united, we brutalize
United we believe without question the star spangled propaganda our leaders so unceasingly televise
United we, so very obediently, swallow the many fabricated red white and blue lies
United we're so blind, with closed eyes except wide-eyed Ashcroft spies
And in the many resource rich countries that, united, we occupy and we colonize, and united we impoverish and victimize
Yet another corporate billion is pried and yet another heart broken mother cries and yet another star spangled bomb drops
And yet another innocent child heinously dies
Yet another example of united we collateralize
Just U.S. business as usual, as united we privatize
United we stand completely deranged
Global terrorist in our 'freedom and democracy' disguise
As united we stand apathetic and complicit in American terrorism
As united we turn on TV to de-sensitise
As united we stand in massive denial
As united we ignore the innocent pleas of the innocent ones we exterminate
As united we stand inanely pledging allegiance to the flag of facist terrorism
As their blood on it dries
As united we stand, surrendering our freedom to the real 'axis of evil' Corporation, CIA, and Military guise
As united we stand with our heads in the sand, as the American Fourth Reich is born
And freedom dies
As united we stand so comfortably numb and deniably dumb
That united we don't have sense to realise
That united we stand on the brink of the New World Order totalitarian police state
United we are so...BLIND!

'Anthem for Dissent' - Youtube

Subject: RE: BS: Police States Turn Up The Heat
From: Donuel
Date: 22 Oct 10 - 05:13 PM

A picture I made

http://usera.imagecave.com/donuel/penny1.jpg