Prison Planet.com | May 12 2006

Eyewitnesses are reporting that during Bush's recent visit to Florida, protesters were shocked to see security goons and secret service aiming assault rifles at them hanging out of the window of the passing motorcade.

Should we be surprised that ordinary bill of rights exercising Americans are treated like terrorists in light of the latest revelations on the NSA spying program?

Is this Nepal or America?

Accounts provided to the Daily Kos website are reprinted below.

Narrative re: Bush's visit to SCC on May 9, 2006 from Barbara Nicholson

We stood with about 50 others on rte 674 and when the motorcade came by there was assault rifle OUT the window pointing at ALL of us and the cars all looked like I remember seeing in the Hitler motorcades in the movies when I was a child, all boxy and black and one had the Pres seal and American flag on the sides. It was absolutely chilling! I worked the inner city for 15 years with gangs and even with kids and families of the Bloods and Crips and have never had an assault rifle pointed my way. In my 75 years I have seen many Pres motorcades and shook many pres hands and seen many pres elects and their entourage but never anything like this with the motorcycles, big black cars and rifles were just the very last straw. It wasn't the rifle that was scary it was knowing that this madman is so insecure and scared and psychotic that this is how he must travel. AARRRRRGH! USA, Banana Republic for sure. Then to know our tax money paid for this photo op and for the fundraising luncheon at the Renaissance Club is truly the icing on the cake which will kill us all. Very depressing to say the least.

From an intern for Congressional candidate John Russell (FL-5):
Here is my full story, with everything correct. As you know I am interning with John Russell, a candidate in District 5 running against Ginny Brown-Waite. We went to the protest to make sure bush heard about the problems with Medicare Part D. As the President drove by John was delivering his message to the President, who was looking at us out the window. I don't remember if it was before or after the President's car, but inside on of the black suv's was a man holding, what looked to be, an automatic rifle out the window. It was pointed at the protesters. I am glad to hear that the people on the other side of the street saw this too. Those of us on the corner I was on couldn't believe that this had occurred, and John proceeded to tell President Bush as he got out of the motorcade, 'how dare you point a weapon at civil protesters' among other things. It was a very interesting day for me, being the first time I have ever seen the President, and the first time I have been directly threatened by the President. hopefully this helps in lining up the stories. Please send this out to everyone, and keep the talk growing. I want to know if this is standard operating procedure for the Bush motorcade, or a one time thing.

~Nic Zateslo
Intern for John Russell, Candidate for Congress District 5

And from Kossack boofdah:
Mary, Nic, and I were there as well; and yes, it went down exactly as Barbara and John have said below. I don't think I've ever felt such a sense of foreboding in my life as when I saw that automatic rifle pointed at us, peaceful protesters.

At the time September 11th happened, I worked at a military base near where I used to live before we moved to FL. Immediately after 9/11, our base was at Threatcon D, meaning that the military personnel guarding our base had to be armed. Yeah, I saw sharp-shooters and automatic rifles; but I took some kind of comfort in the notion that these measures were meant for the "bad guys."

On Tuesday, the message that the sniper hanging out the window with his automatic weapon had for us was that we peacefully-protesting Americans were the "bad guys." And that thought alone gave me the chills.

Respond to this article on the blog - click here.

I don’t know how much more evidence we need to demonstrate there is a plot underway to dismantle the Bill of Rights. Now we learn that soon after “the dark days” of nine eleven, “lawyers from the White House and the Justice Department began meeting to debate a number of novel legal strategies to help prevent another attack,” according to US News & World Report. “Meeting in the FBI’s state-of-the-art command center in the J. Edgar Hoover Building, the lawyers talked with senior FBI officials about using the same legal authority to conduct physical searches of homes and businesses of terrorism suspects–also without court approval,” that is to say in direct violation of the Fourth Amendment.

You know it is bad when the FBI—with its long and infamous history of trashing the Bill of Rights—resisted this effort. “FBI Director Robert Mueller was alarmed by the proposal,” two officials told the magazine. “Mueller was personally very concerned … not only because of the blowback issue but also because of the legal and constitutional questions raised by warrantless physical searches.” Apparently Mueller was so concerned he made it a point “to leave Washington—and sometimes the country—so as not to get pulled into the political crossfire. When Gonzales testified February 6 [before the Judiciary Committee], Mueller was on his way to Morocco.”

Of course, we are told by neocon cheerleaders in the corporate media the Bush White House and the Justice Department are only interested in “warrantless physical searches” against possible “al-Qaeda” bad guys. Most Americans have nothing to fear—that is so long as they do not fear the trashing of the Constitution.

But then, considering most Americans are woefully ignorant of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and know more about cartoon characters, the absence of such fear should not come as a surprise.

Militia raid targets weapons - April 27/07

TIM LOUIS MACALUSO / Rochster City News | March 23 2006

Withdrawing money from your ATM, driving on I-590, ordering fast food, making a quick stop at the liquor store on the way home: private moments are becoming more public than you might think. You're being taped --- and it's happening so unobtrusively that you're probably not aware of it.

What's more, it's legal, and it's only the beginning.

Here in Rochester, and in communities across the country, video surveillance is used by almost every type of business and by many government agencies. "Video-surveillance technology is the fastest-growing segment of the security business, with video over the web being the biggest trend," says Steven Lasky, editor of Video Technology & Design. Sales for 2005, says Lasky, were $1.1 billion and are expected to hit $11 billion by end of the decade.

Businesses can spend from as little as $300 to more than six figures on a single security camera. Today much of the technology is digital, making images exceptionally clear and easy to e-mail and store.

And as the technology has continued to improve, the ways to use strategically placed video cameras have multiplied. Retailers use the cameras to prevent theft but also to lower risks of liability from customers who may be injured on their premises. Employers are using the cameras to monitor employee productivity. Government agencies like the Monroe County Department of Transportation use them to monitor traffic flow and make traffic-signal adjustments.

"Whenever you go into a store or an office building and you see those little black bubbles built into the ceiling, those are usually pan-tilt-and-zoom cameras," says David Jefferson, a consultant with Tyte Securities, a Pittsford-based surveillance company. "The pan-tilts are just one type, and they are a little more visible. Some you'll never see, but they're there. And the technology is so good now that you can read a license plate from a mile away. They even record in near total darkness."

Jefferson rattles off the different ways his clients use video surveillance: the maintenance engineer who looks outside his apartment building at 4 a.m. to decide whether he needs to call a snow plow; the pharmacist who monitors exactly how many pills went into each prescription and who signed for it; hospital nursing stations watching over patients with critical-care needs: the list seems endless.

"You can view from any location you want," Jefferson says. "A manager can be sitting in his office here in Brighton and watch production in his plant halfway across the world."

Surveillance cameras are so prevalent, he says, that the average person probably passes by about 100 in a day. If you have a job that requires a lot of air travel, the number could be much higher.

"This isn't just for banks and big shopping malls anymore," he says. "Even small-business owners understand what happens when they are exposed. The biggest risk of theft or damage, sorry to say, comes from their own employees. This is like having eyes without really being there. It's like an electronic insurance policy."

"It's like record keeping," says Paul Marone, owner of East Avenue Auto in the city. Marone has had his video surveillance system for three years. "If we need to verify some information, like what took place on the lot with a certain vehicle, we can actually go to it and see what happened," he says. "As a small [business] guy, an alarm is not enough. You need both. It's expensive, but it's an investment you have to make."

Producing evidence that has a "dramatic impact in the courtroom" is another big reason businesses are investing in video surveillance, says Steven Modica, an attorney who deals extensively with insurance companies.

"Probably 99 percent of the people out there are good people, but there is that one percent that tries to cheat the system," he says. "There's that guy that says he can't work and is on long-term disability, but there he is on tape washing his car and mowing his lawn. Once he sees himself on tape, he knows just what it's going to look like in a courtroom."

Once we leave our homes, we abandon our legal right not to be viewed, photographed, or taped.In legal terms, we've entered the public sphere. Rest rooms, locker rooms, and fitting rooms are generally considered exceptions to the rule. The other exception involves a government agency taping a private citizen for specific reasons, which usually requires a warrant.

"Not only are most people surprised to learn how often they are being taped," says Modica, "people think that it's somehow a crime, that it's illegal. And it may feel that way, but it's not. Once you go out into the public, you can be taped. You could go to a school board meeting, for example, and you can be rather outspoken. Let's say your boss at Kodak sees it and he doesn't like what he saw. He feels your actions compromised the company and he fires you. Being taped in that setting wasn't illegal."

When law enforcement tapes a person in public as part of an investigation, that's a different matter, says Modica: "There is a higher standard there. A warrant means that a judge agrees with the police officer that there is sufficient reason to suspect this individual of committing a crime, but no consent is required by the person who is being taped."

"Video surveillance is a strange thing," he says. "You have those people that say, well, if you're not doing anything wrong, it shouldn't matter. But it does concern me. It is becoming more and more intrusive. You have to wonder where this is all heading."

By the early 90's, video cameras, including those designed for surveillance, were entering the consumer market.Sixteen years ago, Robert Crowley was selling caller-ID units, and he says the experience tipped him off to the public's emerging interest in surveillance. He has since opened Spy Outlet stores in Rochester and Buffalo, and one is in the works for Syracuse. Spy Outlet is a kind of magic shop, part electronic gadgetry and part deception know-how. Crowley's clients include police officers, private investigators, doctors, attorneys, small-business owners --- and possibly your next-door neighbor. Crowley sells everything from books with titles like "Privacy for Sale" and "Hidden in Plain Sight" to pocket-pen cameras and safes that look like shaving-cream cans.

"This is a business driven by fear and paranoia," he says. "Years ago we had a greater sense of community. We had a need to get along. Now you have the neighbor wars and the couple that doesn't trust the housekeeper. This confirms what people suspect. I get people all the time who come in just to show me what they have caught on tape."

But the continuous oversight of video cameras, some would argue, can also be a good thing. High on the tops of poles along I-590 and I-490 are clusters of cameras that the Monroe County Department of Transportation uses to manage traffic flow. The cameras transmit a constant stream of images back to the DOT's regional operations center on Scottsville Road. Right now, eight pan-tilt-zoom cameras are delivering a live feed to operators who work around the clock trying to reduce delays and unsnarl traffic due to accidents and storms. They've worked so well that the DOT is adding 17 more cameras by the end of 2007, at a cost of $40,000 a camera.

The changing scenes of cars and trucks, some inching along in stops and starts, flash across a wide screen in the middle of the operations center. On large maps, city and county traffic signals light up in bright green. The pictures are perfectly clear, and it wouldn't be hard to identify an individual driver. But DOT manager James Willer says the center has absolutely no role in tracking individual vehicles or recording traffic violations.

"This is strictly incident driven," he says. "When something happens, we don't always see it as it occurs, but we can see what it's doing to traffic in all directions. If there's an accident on 590, we'll see what that is doing to the BayBridge, and we can alert our message boards so drivers know in advance there's a problem and how to avoid it. We don't want the situation getting any worse. And it's the cameras that allow us to do this."

Safety is also the reason for video surveillance at Tops Markets and Martin Superfoods Stores. "It's is part of the overall security package," says company spokesperson Tracy Pawelski. "We use them for training and reviewing incidents and, yes, we do share them with law enforcement with some regularity. Large volumes of people go in and out of our stores every day, and customers expect safety."

Pawelski says she has never heard of a customer inquiring about whether they are being taped while in one of her stores.

"I think they are more interested in things like lighting and the human aspect: is there someone there that they can turn to if there's a problem," she says.

Wilmorite, the company that manages PittsfordPlaza and Marketplace, Greece, and Eastview Malls, puts video surveillance at the top of its security program.

"We probably have invested more in video surveillance than most mall security management," says Doug Swetman, Wilmorite's director of security. "We have upgraded from the old video to digital, and in several of the malls, the surveillance is directly linked to a police officer right on location at the mall. We keep the data. If there is a theft, an injury, or an accident in the parking lot, we have to have the incident on tape for civil or criminal court cases. But ultimately, it is done to protect our customers."

Even though the FBI's crime reports have shown a steady decreasein violent crime across the US during the last 10 years, the number of cities using video cameras in public places to deter crime is increasing, according to Geoff Kohl, editor for Security Info Watch, an industry trade magazine.

"We know there is an increase, but we don't know by how much," says Kohl. "We don't know how much money they are spending on it, because no one likes to reveal these numbers."

Police in New York and Niagara Falls are placing cameras where drug or gang activity is suspected. But it's too early to know what impact it may be having. One report released in 2004 by the California Department of Justice indicates that the results appear to be mixed.

So far, Rochester's police department has not taken this route, despite its high murder and drug-related crime rates.

"We are not to that point yet" says Sgt. Dave Foyer, a special investigator for the RPD. "Obviously with the amount of violence and stuff we've been dealing with, there has been a lot of talk about it. But we're not there yet, not at this time."

Foyer says the city and the police department are sensitive to concerns about invasion of privacy.

"I know everyone is worried that Big Brother could be watching you," he says. "But I think the concern that government is watching you is a little exaggerated. Obviously we want to protect people, but I think there is a greater threat of criminals trying to figure out what's in your bank account or how much Wal-Mart stock you have through your computer. That is a greater and more realistic threat to your privacy."

Foyer also believes people are much more likely to be observed on camera or taped by private businesses than by government entities. But that could be a result of more police urging business owners to consider installing video cameras if they don't already have them.

Weighing the benefits of video surveillance against the dangers of its misuse is a public debate that is overdue, says Barbara de Leeuw, executive director for the Rochester chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.

"When we know we are being videotaped or watched, studies show that we behave differently," she says. "This could have a chilling effect on our democracy as we know it. I have no objections with high-profile, specific uses --- city hall, the water authority, the airport. That is to be expected, to some degree. But the public needs to be assured that there are checks and balances in place to prevent mission creep."

It's being taped when we aren't expecting it that has de Leeuw worried. The public should be concerned about who is viewing the tapes and what happens to them, she says.

"Say I go to Wegmans, and I sign up for a Shoppers Club Card," says de Leeuw. "I have signed a piece of paper. I have agreed to give up some of my privacy, so when I purchase cat food, for example, and I receive a coupon for more cat food with my receipt, I agreed to let them use information about my shopping habits. But video surveillance is an entirely different thing. I am not agreeing to that. I am not even sure it is happening --- and right there is the problem. I should be. It's the easing in, that subtle erosion of privacy that seems so harmless. But what is it doing to our democracy?"

De Leeuw is also concerned about the secrecy that seems inherent to surveillance. A Wegmans spokesperson, for example, declined to offer any information for this article about the company's use of video surveillance. "We don't see where there is anything to be gained by talking about this," she said. And a spokesperson for the city declined to offer any information about its use of video surveillance in public spaces like CobbsHillPark.

"There are times when some of this secrecy can be justified," de Leeuw says. "But when surveillance becomes ubiquitous and ever present, yet we can't talk about it, then there's a problem. In the case of government, we should at least be able to access generic information. Not only are we [taxpayers] paying for it, but how can the public determine its efficacy otherwise?"

"A lot of case law is way behind the technology," says James Ross, an attorney and professor at SUNY Brockport. Ross has written extensively about the Patriot Act, and he says surveillance technology is advancing at such a rapid pace that it is changing the definition of public sphere.

"So far, the courts have been reluctant to see any unreasonable intrusion [of privacy] once the person is out of their private domain," he says. "But what exactly is one's private domain is becoming fuzzy. Is it your home? Is it your office? Is it your home-office? Is it your cell phone? Is it your TV? It's hard to say. But the big concern is what happens when these technologies begin to converge."

"New York City already has video surveillance and facial recognition in Times Square," says Ross. "When this [information] starts combining with other data bases, you can begin to see how it has the ability to stifle education and freedom of thought. Now there is fear of checking out a library book on Islam or the Koran because people might think you're a terrorist. It's not just you that entered out into the public domain, but so has all of this information [about you]. I may not want the public to know that I am seeing a marriage counselor or I visited a strip bar or I am being treated for cancer at Rochester General."

Ross says he is not seeing the synergy of shared information on the scale that is being developed in Europe, but he suspects we could be on the same path.

"You have Great Britain, the same country that gave us George Orwell, creating its 'ring of steel' around London," he says. "Between all the cameras they have circling that city, citizen ID cards, and tracking devices in cars, they will know every person driving in and out of there, who they are, where they went, and when they left. I don't know if that is what America wants. It would certainly redefine what we think of as freedom."

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U.S.: FBI sought info without court OK

WASHINGTON -- The FBI secretly sought information last year on 3,501 U.S. citizens and legal residents from their banks and credit card, telephone and Internet companies without a court's approval, the Justice Department said Friday.

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CIA and Google Team Up Again For More Spying - Mar31/08

Government lawyers say Americans consented to have phone records seized

• Methods Questioned In Investigation Leading Up To Sears Tower Arrests

“On the face of the indictment alone, this is a classic case of entrapment. Every activity deemed criminal in this case was written, directed, and

produced by the government.”

Video of citizens arrested for committing FREE SPEECH in Washington DC!

Police given numerous opportunity to explain "the charges" but remained stone-faced. Is this not the definition of a police state?

Americans may need passports to board domestic flights or to picnic in a national park next year if they live in one of the states defying the federal Real ID Act. [full report]

The over hyped false alarm of a construction drill that caused a mass panic over rumors of gunshots in the Rayburn Building on Friday and the way in which it was reported by the servile media was a means of indoctrinating Americans to the procedure of martial law lock down of a major city.

Following reports of gunfire in the Rayburn Building, House members were ordered to stay inside and shut all the doors. Parts of the Capitol complex, including the Capitol itself, were locked down during the height of the search.

Police went door to door inside the buildings as an FBI SWAT team ordered House members to put their hands on their heads and frog marched them out of a committee room and through a metal detector.

Two women reported a man with a gun inside a Rayburn gym as another panicked and had to be taken to hospital. The gunman turned out to be a plain clothed police officer and the source of the 'gunfire' was an air hammer or a pneumatic drill being used in construction work on nearby elevator.

The construction drill created the perfect mandate for another type of drill, that of authoritarian martial law city shutdown. The opportunity to parade SWAT teams, sniffer dogs, police with assault weapons and armed FBI tactical units wearing flak jackets did not go to waste.

Americans were told in no uncertain terms that in times of crisis, the men in black uniforms enforcing mandatory relocation and quarantines were here to help.

As News Hounds pointed out, Fox was not going let an opportunity to showcase the police state go to waste."

Why did Fox News stick with blanket coverage so long, preempting its regular coverage? Fox News loves pictures of people in uniforms with guns. Such images reinforce the perception that Americans live in constant danger and must keep the growing police state atmosphere in place regardless of the cost in terms of civil liberties. In other words, "See what could happen, America? This is why the government needs to spy on you, track your phone calls, and who knows what else. We're here to protect you."

Fox's Catherine Herridge even went so far as to say that the whole incident was a learning curve for terrorists to judge police reaction. The pounding fear-driven specter of terrorists, alarm and panic was carefully interwoven into what otherwise was a complete non-event.

Following the confirmation that the whole charade was a false alarm, Fox relentlessly pressed on and bizarrely interlinked the concept of jailing reporters who publish sensitive information with misinterpreted construction noises.

In May 2004 US News and World Report and others reported that the US election could be cancelled in the event of a terror attack on the Capitol Building in Washington. The magazine said that White House officials were under a "working premise" that an attack was inevitable and that it was "going to happen." It was reported that the administration was conducting secret antiterrorism exercises in preparation for this scenario.

So it follows that on June 10 2004, the U.S. Capitol and Supreme Court were evacuated when a small plane entered restricted airspace during the funeral procession of former President Ronald Reagan.

The terror and consternation was encapsulated by a Washington Post report on the incident.

Scores of members of Congress and thousands of staffers poured out the doors as police officers shouted, "This is not a drill!"

Nearby on the Mall, U.S. Park Police and Capitol Police ordered people to flee. "Do not stop," officers yelled. "Keep moving."

"Ladies and gentlemen, let's move like our lives depend on it. I mean it!" a D.C. police officer screamed."

Similar alarms occurred again in 2004 and 2005, providing the media with images of panic-stricken politicians and others running from the Capitol as armed SWAT teams swarmed around barking orders, invoking memories of people clamoring to escape the wave of dust on New York City streets as the twin towers collapsed on 9/11.

These scenes have become the archetype for the post-9/11 American security obsessed mentality and they are being ceaselessly recreated in order to inculcate Americans with a sense of dread and a prevailing message that in times of emergency, whether real or manufactured, the government is your boss and you will follow their every order, no matter how brutal, in order to ensure everyone's safety.

If we have learned anything over the past 18 months it is this: that the first rule of politics - power must never be trusted - still applies. The government will neither regulate itself nor be regulated by the institutions which surround it. Parliament chose to believe a string of obvious lies. The media repeated them, the civil service let them pass, the judiciary endorsed them. The answer to the age-old political question - who guards the guards? - remains unchanged. Only the [armed] people will hold the government to account.

They have two means of doing so. The first is to throw it out of office at the next election. **This works only when we are permitted to choose an alternative set of policies.** But in almost every nation, a new contract has now been struck between the main political parties: they have chosen to agree on almost all significant areas of policy. This leaves the people disenfranchised: they can vote out the monkeys but not the organ-grinder. So voting is now a less important democratic instrument than the second means: the ability to register our discontent during a government's term in office.

Applying the first rule of politics, we should expect those in power to seek to prevent the public from holding them to account. Whenever they can get away with it, they will restrict the right to protest. They got away with it last week.

The demonstrators who have halted the construction of the new animal testing labs in Oxford command little public sympathy. Their arguments are often woolly and poorly presented. Among them is a small number of dangerous and deeply unpleasant characters who appear to respect the rights of every mammal except Homo sapiens. This unpopularity is a gift to the state. For fear of being seen to sympathise with dangerous nutters, hardly anyone dares to speak out against the repressive laws with which the government intends to restrain them.

It is not as if the state is without the means of handling violent extremists. Murder, arson, assault, threatening behaviour and intimidation are already illegal in the United Kingdom. Instead, it has seized the opportunity provided by the violent activists to criminalise peaceful dissent.

The Home Office proposes "to make it an offence to protest outside homes in such a way that causes harassment, alarm or distress to residents". This sounds reasonable enough, until you realise that the police can define "harassment, alarm or distress" however they wish. All protest in residential areas, in other words, could now be treated as a criminal offence.

The new measures, if they are passed, will also ensure that most protesters can be charged with stalking: they need only to appear outside a premises once to be prosecuted under the 1997 Protection from Harassment Act. The government will also seek to "suggest remedies" for websites which "include material deemed to cause concern or needless anxiety to others". As my own site has already been blacklisted by at least one public body, I have reason to fear this proposal, alongside every online dissident in Britain.

If all this goes ahead, in other words, legal protest will be confined to writing letters to your MP. Or perhaps even that could be deemed to cause "concern or needless anxiety" to the honourable member.

When Caroline Flint, the Home Office minister, introduced these proposals to a grateful nation on Friday, she promised that "we are not talking about denying people the right to protest". We have every reason to disbelieve her. The same promise was made with the introduction of the 1986 Public Order Act, the 1992 Trade Union Act and the 1994 Criminal Justice Act, and immediately broken. When the 1997 Protection from Harassment Act was passed, the government swore that it would not be used against demonstrators: it was intended solely to protect people from stalkers. The first three people to be prosecuted under the act were all peaceful protesters. The government also assured us that it would not misuse the antisocial behaviour orders it introduced in 1998 to deal with nuisance neighbours. They, too, were immediately deployed against peaceful demonstrators. It is hard to think of
a better tool for state repression: once an order has been served on a protester, he is banned from protesting until it lapses. The police now use it to neutralise the most effective activists. The government liked this new power so much that in 2003 it wrote it into law, with an Anti-Social Behaviour Act designed to restrict peaceful protest.

When some of us complained that the Terrorism Act 2000 was so loosely drafted that it could be deployed against almost anyone seeking political change, the government told us we were being hysterical. Since then, peaceful protesters all over Britain have been arrested as potential terrorists. At the Fairford air base, for example, the police used the act to terrorise the peace campaigners protesting against the Iraq war. The protesters were repeatedly stopped and searched: often one team of police would let someone go after a full body search, and another one would immediately seize her and repeat the whole procedure (this happened to one
protester 11 times in one day). On March 22 last year, the police seized three coaches carrying people to a peaceful demonstration at Fairford, held them for two hours, confiscated their possessions, then sealed off the entire motorway network between Gloucestershire and London, and escorted them back to the capital. The police and the home secretary knew full well that these people were not terrorists. They also knew that the law allowed them to be treated as if they were.

It doesn't end here. The civil contingencies bill, which permits the government to suspend parliament and ban all rights to assembly whenever it decides that it is confronting an emergency, passed its second reading in the Lords last month. It could become law later this year.

A similar clampdown is taking place all over the world. The US Patriot Act, passed by Congress before any representative had read it, allows the state to treat dissenting citizens as if they were members of al-Qaida. For the past three years, the European Union has been seeking to reclassify the protesters who travel to European gatherings as terrorists. This is the contract the powerful have struck with each other: to agree to a single set of neoliberal policies, and to criminalise all those who seek to challenge them.

We are often told that the passage of laws like this is dangerous because one day it might facilitate the seizure of power by an undemocratic government. But that is to miss the point. Their passage is the seizure of power. Protest is inseparable from democracy: every time it is restricted, the state becomes less democratic. Democracies such as ours will come to an end not with the stamping of boots and the hoisting of flags, but through the slow accretion of a thousand dusty codicils.

By the time we have lost our freedoms, we will have forgotten what they were. The silence with which the new laws were greeted last week suggests that the forgetting has already begun.

<http://www.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,12780,1274831,00.html>

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Blair's 'frenzied law making' : a new offence for every day spent in office

            [alternate link to above]

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Police to get power to spy without warrant - Andrew Clennell, Sydney Morning Herald - October 25, 2007
POLICE and other investigative bodies will be able to bug or track people for up to five days without needing a warrant, under legislation the State Government describes as "the biggest ever shake-up of surveillance laws in NSW law enforcement history".