Big Brother

Remember as you read the material on this page, that we were told by all western governments that "our enemy" is out to destroy our liberty... This page will help you identify that enemy. But first, we've included the quote for you....

All western leaders at United Nations defined "terrorists and their allies" as:

The device [shown] is first proclaimed as a solution to the "billion dollar" car theft ring, which last month consisted of primarily 10 teens and young adults in the entire City of Vancouver, and is then changed to an "applications are endless" solution for enforcing all government regulation and tyranny. You really need to wake up to what is happening.... or you will lose what is left of your Liberty.

See how the police are scanning HUNDREDS of vehicles per hour with expensive hi-tech cameras and software in order to set up the globalist control grid.

Just imagine what Hitler, Stalin or Pol Pot would have done with this kind of power? Just imagine what is shortly in store FOR YOU AND YOUR CHILDREN? Or are you convinced mankind has "evolved" in just a few decades, and it can't happen again?

Oh but it will be great for reducing theft of property right? Well maybe.. a police state can be much more free of crime [and lawful liberty too] ... assuming they actually use this technology for returning your property. However drinking and driving roadblocks soon turned into more than a hunt for drinking drivers, and only a handful of intoxicated drivers are ever found at road checks; while tickets for not wearing seatbelts, or having expired decals, has gained the government a good deal of money and power. Now they can take away your mobility if you don't pay your taxes, or are deemed 'a security risk' for your political views. This is the main objective, with 'crime reduction' merely the pitch angle to the lowly sheeple. [Keep reading this page.....]

Click below to see how they are marketing the Police State... [note the line "the applications are endless"]

So what is the real purpose of the "papers please" road check program? Fact is, they hardly ever catch more than a few drunks, and they do much more than simply ask you if you've "had anything to drink". These checks are really to accustom the sheep to getting use to police state roadblocks.

Most apprehensions of dangerous drunks are done by citizens phoning in complaints via cell phone, or by police doing routine patrols.... The Road Check program is also the single leading common reason for the rising costs of policing across Canada and the United States.

Clip from 'Island Briefing' section of Times Colonist paper - April 2/07 section B3.

Only problem with the theory that overtime budget increases are due to "murder investigations" is that Victoria has the lowest crime and murder rate of almost all Canadian cities, and Victoria's mayor freely admits in the article that the Victoria department "exceeds its overtime budget almost every year".

This department did, however, spend an earth shattering 17 million on a radio system that doesn't work. [Click above headline clip for more details]

OTTAWA - The Conservative government is preparing sweeping new eavesdropping
legislation that will force Internet service providers to let police tap
exchanges on their systems [Read full report here]

Undercover police to nab drunk drivers, belt scofflaws - G Wood, Canwest, October 29, 2008 Stealth traffic cops will patrol at night on accident-prone roads, RCMP says

Undercover police officers may be coming to a busy street corner near you. The B.C. Solicitor General's Ministry and the RCMP announced a new program yesterday to curb drunk drivers and unbuckled vehicle occupants.

The program is called the Impaired/Intersection Nighttime Seatbelt Traffic Enforcement Project or Instep.

Police officers in civilian clothes equipped with radios will look for suspected traffic violators at night on the most accident-prone roads and intersections in RCMP-patrolled jurisdictions.

When stealth officers spot a suspected violator, they will radio to a marked police unit up the road, which will stop and check the suspects.

Const. Dave Hay of RCMP Vancouver Island Traffic Services said the program is a variation of what has been done with seat-belt and traffic enforcement from time to time by police. [Full Report]

Child support spies to watch parents - AAP, June 23, 2008
PRIVATE investigators will be used by the Child Support Agency (CSA) to spy on parents who are not meeting their child support payments. [full report]

Privacy watchdogs are crying foul over an attempt by the Public Safety Canada to come up with legislation that will force telecommunications providers to cough up personal information about their clients to [alleged] authorities [aka civil servants.

A consultation document obtained by CTV News reveals the government is planning to hold talks to "address the challenges faced by police, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and the Competition Bureau when seeking timely access to basic Customer Name Address (CNA) information." [full story]

New York’s Total Snoop Grid Moving Forward - Dec 24/2007
NY1 News reports: “New York City police are moving forward on a multimillion-dollar counter-terrorism initiative, installing more than a hundred license plate readers and eventually thousands of cameras in Lower Manhattan.”

Big surprise... big brother is going global....... and the sheep seem to be ok with it.

ABC states that 71 percent of Americans favor the increased use of surveillance cameras, while 25 percent oppose it.

The Department of Homeland Security is funneling millions of dollars to local governments nationwide for purchasing high-tech video camera networks, accelerating the rise of a "surveillance society" in which the sense of freedom that stems from being anonymous in public will be lost, privacy rights advocates warn.

Since 2003, the department has handed out some $23 billion in federal grants to local governments for equipment and training to help combat terrorism. Most of the money paid for emergency drills and upgrades to basic items, from radios to fences. But the department also has doled out millions on surveillance cameras, transforming city streets and parks into places under constant observation.

The department will not say how much of its taxpayer-funded grants have gone to cameras. [full story]

Big Brother Hits The Beach - AP July 31/2007
Visitors will wear wristbands that automatically debit their bank accounts or credit cards to pay for beach access, food and parking. Garbage cans will send e-mail to cleanup crews when they’re ready to be emptied.

And people won’t even think about trying to sneak in: Beach checkers could scan the sands with handheld devices and instantly know who didn’t pay. [full report]

Airport-style x-ray cameras which see through clothes, could be installed on street lampposts in a bid to combat terrorism, it was claimed last night.

The measure was suggested in a memo sent last week to one of Tony Blair's working groups at the Cabinet Office, the Sun newspaper reported. The move comes amid growing concern about Britain's "surveillance society".

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The FBI is embarking on a $1 billion project to build the world's largest computer database of biometrics to give the government more ways to identify people at home and abroad, the Washington Post reported on Friday.

In a modest 200-square meters enclosure, the National Citizen Identity Information Center (NCIIC) in Beijing hosts the world's biggest ID database, with over 1.3 billion entries.

We need only look to Britain. In the name of security, they are pushing for a national ID card; to get the card you must surrender extremely onerous information to the government for whatever nefarious uses they might find.

But don’t worry, the program is optional. If you don’t want to give them the information, you don’t have to. But you’ll never leave Britain again.

It seems that “Big Brother” is gaining ground in Great Britain. Starting in 2009, in order to apply for a passport, Britons will be required to register their fingerprints, facial scans and a host of personal information such as second homes, drivers licenses and insurance policy numbers. If they do this, they will receive a national ID card and then their passport...

The Big Brother nightmare of George Orwell's 1984 has become a reality - in the shadow of the author's former London home.

It may have taken a little longer than he predicted, but Orwell's vision of a society where cameras and computers spy on every person's movements is now here.

According to the latest studies, Britain has a staggering 4.2million CCTV cameras - one for every 14 people in the country - and 20 per cent of cameras globally. It has been calculated that each person is caught on camera an average of 300 times daily.

Holyoke Police Chief Anthony R. Scott said, "(Closed circuit television) is another law-enforcement tool like the radio or sidearms. It's another tool to combat crime."

[It's also another tool to enslave peaceful free individuals who refuse to be slaves to legislation that violates their fundamental AND constitutional rights - we all know that government agents are crooks and idiots, so we hardly can trust them to only go after murders, thieves and thugs.

Springfield Police Officer Carl Prairie, tapped by Chief Paula C. Meara to research a surveillance system for the department, said they help deter crime.

However, Northampton lawyer William Newman, head of the Western Massachusetts chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said the increase in surveillance systems nationwide represents "an unprecedented invasion of privacy."

So much so that the ACLU in a 2003 report warned that law enforcement's embrace of cameras and other developing technologies has the United States on the fast track to becoming "a surveillance society," similar to what George Orwell envisioned in his novel "1984."

The book, written in 1948, details a totalitarian state in the future, where privacy does not exist. Even those who have not read the book are familiar with the line "Big Brother is watching you."

Holyoke turned on its five surveillance cameras March 15, and began sending the first footage from high-crime areas over fiber-optic cables to the police station. There are plans for at least two more.

Springfield is in the planning stages for a more ambitious system using wireless technology. Initially, nine cameras will be installed throughout the city and will be capable of transmitting footage to the station or to individual police cars.

The cameras are able to record in low light or even no light and are capable of zooming in as much as 22 times. They cost as much as $17,000 each, Prairie said, meaning the cost for the initial nine cameras alone would be at least $153,000.

Chief Paula C. Meara said much has to be worked out before the system can be installed, not the least of which is how to pay for it.

She said Mayor Charles V. Ryan has endorsed the concept, but said the city can't pay for it. She said she expects to apply for grant funding.

Dozens of other cities across the country, including Chicago and New Orleans, either have developed or are developing similar surveillance programs.

Still, several others have discontinued their closed curcuit systems after seeing little impact.

Chicago recently linked some 2,500 cameras in public areas and private businesses throughout the city in a citywide surveillance system that is monitored from a central command center.

Police in Baltimore, Philadelphia, Boston and Chelsea are exploring surveillance networks.

Scott said police should adapt new technologies to fight crime.
"Especially since the Supreme Court says (cameras) do not violate your Fourth Amendment rights," he said.

Scott said a 1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that individuals have no expectation of privacy while in public opened the door for surveillance cameras in public spaces.

The court decision notwithstanding, Newman said the cameras are a bad idea, very costly and ultimately very ineffective.

"From a civil liberties perspective, most of what is being recorded is totally law-abiding citizens doing completely innocent things," he said.

He said study after study shows the cameras do not prevent crime as much as cops on the street do. "It's a false promise," he said.

Scott said Holyoke's cameras began preventing crime even before they were operational.

He said he has heard from business owners who said they noticed that from the time the cameras were installed, the usual troublemakers do not seem to come around much anymore.

The system was credited with one of its first arrests March 12, eight days after being turned on, when Chief Scott happened to notice footage from the camera at Sargeant and Walnut streets showed a man acting suspiciously.

Officers were dispatched, which led to the arrest of a 20-year-old Chicopee man for carrying a .25-caliber handgun without a license.

The cameras cost between $2,000 and $4,000 each, not counting the cost of the software to run them, he said.

Springfield is looking to start off with nine cameras, although many businesses with their own systems have offered to tie their video feed in with the department system, Prairie said.

Prairie, who has been studying the technology for at least six years, said that with a wireless system, an unlimited number of cameras could be added.

A dozen years ago, Springfield installed cameras at some intersections that snapped pictures of cars running red lights.
Prairie said that was horse-and-buggy stuff compared with the modern technology.

"Say we have a camera at State and Main and we've got something happening at Court and Main; we can zoom in," he said.

The department may opt for cameras that react to gunshots, he said.
They would automatically turn and focus within 10 feet of the point where the shots originated.

Nowhere are more people watched in their daily lives than in Great Britain where there are an estimated 4 million cameras - one for every 14 people - on streets, shops, banks, bars and just about every other public space.

The average person in Britain is caught on tape some 300 times a day, according to some estimates.

The British public has been enamored with closed circuit television since 1993, when a single camera led to the arrest of the killers of a 2-year-old child who had been lured away from his mother at a shopping center.

Although the number of cameras has skyrocketed in England since, some studies have questioned whether cameras as a crime-prevention tool are as effective as working street lights.

A February report issued by the British government said that the cameras have done little to fight crime or to make people feel safe, despite an investment of more than $325 million spent on surveillance systems between 1998 and 2003.

Some U.S. communities are reaching the same conclusion.
Detroit, Miami and Oakland have discontinued their surveillance cameras after finding them ineffective.

And in Tampa, Fla., the police department, which made headlines in 2002 with cameras programmed to scan crowds to identify known felons and people reported missing, quietly shut the system down less than two years later.

The controversial system during that time failed to recognize a single face that was wanted by authorities.

Joseph J. Hanrahan, professor emeritus of criminal justice at Westfield State College, said that because of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and continued warnings of terrorists, the American public is more willing to accept police surveillance video today than a decade ago.

"Fear of crime is often more disturbing than crime itself," he said.
Hanrahan, a retired New York City detective, said most people nowadays will put up with police surveillance as long as it is "a general thing" and not too intrusive.

The cameras may prevent property crimes, like purse snatchings and car thefts, he said, but would likely have little impact on the murder rate.

To do that, he said, "You'd need one on every street, in every house."

http://www.masslive.com

Cameras scan license plates for "stolen cars".. oh, and non-criminal offences which help build government coffers, and increase the government command and control grid.

As her marked car crawled through the parking lot, Detective Kelly Tibbs' new laptop beeped like a supermarket scanner. Two cameras, positioned like crab eyes on the cruiser's roof, snapped digital pictures of hundreds of license plates, and with each beep, the laptop checked the images against an FBI list of stolen cars.

Howard and Anne Arundel counties deploy one each. Prince George's County and the District of Columbia have ordered

more than a dozen of the cameras, which have been in use in Prince George's since August and the district since January.

Baltimore police are soliciting bids for a system that would work with the city's existing network of street surveillance cameras. And as early as this summer's vacation rush, Maryland Transportation Authority Police hope to add the cameras to the Bay Bridge as part of a pilot project with the U.S. Department of Justice.

Stationary cameras, such as those envisioned for Baltimore and the Bay Bridge, could alert nearby officers if an offending vehicle - one bearing a license plate registered to a wanted criminal, suspected terrorist or car thief - goes past.

"The uses are as limitless as your imagination," said Lt. John McKissick, director of Howard County's emergency preparedness division. "We're just in the infancy of this project, but already it saves us money and manpower."

Although proponents say the technology eventually will deny all but the most clever of criminals access to roads, privacy advocates warn that the plate hunters mark another step toward a society in which police can track a person's every move.

"Normally, your license plate number only becomes relevant when you're involved in an accident, pulled over by police or when your car is stolen," said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. "This technology changes that. ... It's a new form of surveillance."

The technology, which Tibbs demonstrated in the parking lot of Howard County police headquarters, was developed in Italy and used by the Italian postal service. Postcards would zip along a conveyer belt, the cameras would read them, and the computer would sort them.

"The engineers in Italy realized that if they could read Bulgarian postcards handwritten with pencil at high speeds, license plates would be a piece of cake," said Mark Windover, president of Remington-Elsag, a partnership between the U.S. gun manufacturer and the Italian postal-technology company, which sold a plate hunter to Howard County for $26,0000.

The plate hunters use infrared light to "read" as many as 900 license plates per minute zooming by at speeds of up to 120 miles per hour in the rain or dark, McKissick said.

Infrared light illuminates the plate, the camera snaps a picture and the computer converts it into digital characters - ABC 123, for example - using optical character recognition. Strapping two cameras to a roof allows the system to go through a mall parking lot, checking plates on both sides of the police car.

Each night, local police departments download FBI data to in-car laptops. When a scanned license plate matches one in the FBI database, the computer triggers an alarm, and the screen blinks red "alert" signs. Before officers can make an arrest, they must check the accuracy of the alert because the database lags a day behind, and the system does not distinguish among states.

"In one block in Washington, I recovered six sets of stolen tags and a stolen motorcycle using the reader," said state police Detective Sgt. George Jacobs, assistant commander of the Washington-area vehicle enforcement unit. "It's just amazing that there are areas out there like that. It's a great tool because manually, it would have taken me several hours to type in the tags."

Though the primary purpose of the technology is to recover stolen vehicles, Howard County and other jurisdictions plan to eventually use the cameras for surveillance.

McKissick said he envisions placing cameras around potential terrorist targets and linking them to neighboring counties' systems. For instance, if the same license plate passes emergency communications towers in Howard, Baltimore and Anne Arundel counties, the system could alert police in all three areas.

The technology also could be used to enforce laws or court orders that keep sexual predators away from schools or domestic abusers away from spouses.

Already, when Tibbs learns of an Amber Alert, she can enter the tag number manually into her laptop and search for the car. The system also is linked to the FBI's "violent gangs and terrorism organization file," though Howard County is not yet using it because the plate hunter is still new to the department, McKissick said.

"We want to be able to look at offenders with another set of eyes," said Chief Gary W. McLhinney of the Maryland Transportation Authority Police, which is working to secure a pilot program for the technology at the Bay Bridge.

McKissick and other officers dismiss concerns that the cameras invade drivers' privacy. McKissick said the machine is "strictly a numbers game," enabling officers to do more of what they already do.

Jacobs said the system does not discriminate and that the computer does not list a tag owner's information unless it sounds an alert on the car. Without the computer, officers choose which license plates they check, lacking the time to manually enter every one they see.

"There can be no discrimination," Jacobs said, "because the machine picks and runs every tag it sees."

Once again a predatory police state society is being created. Police policing everyone now? Searching Everyone will be the norm. What's the purpose for this? Mega income generation from catching everyone who has expired tags and or plates??

Of course they will be highlighting the car involved in the robbery, etc to get the public to support there own enslavement.

As the officer said in the short video: "ALPR is going to revolutionize the way we police in North America."

Notice he didn't say United States, but North America - yes my friends the North American Union where the Constitution will be shredded for a Treaty which is illegal and the American [Canadian] people don't have a clue.

Is this what will become of the "Land of the Free, Home of the Brave?"

And while this is being developed so is the use of:

1. Camera surveillance everywhere
2. RFID Tracker chips in cars
3. RFID tracking chips in things you buy at the store
4. Biometric ID cards which will become law in every state come 2008 which will contain all your biometric data, financial info including your credit and banking, your medical data, criminal record if any, education, and travel behaviors - if you do not have this card you will not be able to drive or travel and eventually will not be able to buy or sell or work.

5. Ground penetrating radar that can see through walls for law enforcement
6. Wiretapping all phones including cell technology using extensive keyword software
7. Bio and body scans at all airports, train stations, malls, etc
8. Eventual implantable micro-chips for tracking all people, buying patterns and travel patterns.

This is a cage, a prison being erected around us and sold as security. It is a huge Lie!

Of course there will be those feeble minded zombies who have bought into the propaganda that "this is all good and you shouldn't have a problem as long as you have nothing to hide!"

This is blasphemy to our nation's founding principles and the honor of our founders who fought tyranny and control.

We are throwing it all away in a little over 200 years since our independence was fought for by far braver men then we have today.

All of this technology will be used for control and tyranny as it always has. It is sickening and it is totally unconscionable, yet it is being erected all around us. The American people are cheering it on and those that work in these industries are selling out their neighbors and country to this predatory police state.

What will we do? Fight its implementation or roll over and be enslaved by the state?

Over 4 million cameras, being retro-fitted w/speaker systems. Yelling out orders to people like a concentration camp. Doesn't sound like V for Vendetta at all.

Vonn urged passengers travelling through Kelowna airport to express their enthusiasm for their right to decline being screened because such a pilot project hints that the screening will soon be mandatory.

Scanner that sees you naked going 'coast to coast' in Canada. - June 25/08

Full-body scanner arrives - By David Karp, Times Colonist July 11, 2010
Victoria airport passengers can choose screen or physical search

"The scanner, a circular structure resembling a telephone booth, uses low-level radio frequencies to produce a 3-D image of a passenger's body -- private parts included. The radio waves create an image by reflecting off a person's body and objects they are carrying.

The technology was introduced earlier this year at several Canadian airports -- including Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal and Halifax -- after the federal government decided to purchase 44 scanners in January."

Massive Surveillance Net Keeps Track of Americans' Travel -- Even the Size of Hotel Beds - ROCCO PARASCANDOLA Newsday Monday September 24, 2007
The Bush Administration has been collecting detailed records on the travel habits of Americans headed overseas, whether you fly, drive or take cruises abroad -- not simply your method of transit but the personal items you carry with you and the people you stay with, according to documents and statements obtained by the Washington Post.

On the New Jersey side of the Goethals Bridge, her followers pulled away. But later, when Flynn pulled up in front of her Flatbush home, she spotted another car, with two men inside, both with laptops. At 4 a.m., they were still there. [full story]

"It's beyond censorship, it is killing the biggest ecosystem of free
expression and freedom of speech that has ever existed," [read full report]

Texas PC Repair Now Requires PI License - July 3/08
...A recently passed law requires that Texas computer-repair technicians have a private-investigator license, according to a story posted by a Dallas-Fort Worth CW affiliate.

In order to obtain said license, technicians must receive a criminal justice degree or participate in a three-year apprenticeship. Those shops that refuse to participate will be forced to shut down. Violators of the new law can be hit with a $4,000 dollar fine and up to a year in jail, penalties that apply to customers who seek out their services.

New Bill Gives Obama ‘Kill Switch’ To Shut Down The Internet - June 17/10

Government would have “absolute power” to seize control of the world wide web under Lieberman legislation

Regulate internet, CRTC told - Feb 17, 2009, Joanna Smith - Ottawa Bureau
GATINEAU, Que. - Canadian actors made a case for new media funding at a hearing today before the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission.

The performers helped kick off the first day of hearings on regulating online content by urging the CRTC to make Internet service providers follow the same rules as television and radio broadcasters and protect Canadian content online.

"This is a battle for the future. What we want is a place for Canadian storytellers and our stories," said Richard Hardacre national president of ACTRA, the union representing 21,000 English-speaking artists across all media platforms. "We want to share our talents with Canadians and with global audiences. We need to get it right now. Tomorrow is too late."

The CRTC first looked into licensing new media in 1999 but with few households at the time having access to high-speed Internet it decided that licensing would not contribute to its development and that exempting it would not make it difficult for licensed broadcasters to follow the rules.

With 93 per cent of Canadian households having broadband access and anyone being able to watch videos and television shows, play games and listen to music online, the CRTC has decided to revisit the issue. [Read full report]

Internet Doomsday Creeps Closer June/07
Big government pushes for total taxation and restriction on the last great outpost of free speech

AT&T whistleblower: I was forced to connect 'big brother machine'
David Edwards and Jason Rhyne, Raw Story - November 8, 2007
A former technician at AT&T, who alleges that the telecom forwards virtually all of its internet traffic into a "secret room" to facilitate government spying, says the whole operation reminds him of something out of Orwell's 1984

Now Europe Targets Bloggers As Terrorists

UK, EU crackdown on "spreading propaganda," mirrors U.S. assault on Internet freedom

Paul Joseph Watson/Prison Planet.com | October 26 2006

Bush administration efforts to infiltrate, misdirect, regulate and pollute the Internet with Neo-Con propaganda, as well as their openly stated agenda to target American bloggers as terrorists, is now being aped by the British government across the pond as well as other major European countries.

Home Secretary John Reid met with ministers from the six largest European Union countries and, according to a BBC report, "agreed to work together to make the internet a "more hostile" place for terrorists."

How will they accomplish this? By initiating a crackdown on people who use the Internet to "spread propaganda." The very website you are now reading would be considered propaganda by these neo-fascists- no matter the fact that the criminal syndicates Bush and Blair front for are the most deceitful progenitors of lurid propaganda since the third reich.

The purge also aims to use the Internet and other media to target young audiences with state approved indoctrination PR spin on how the war on terror is really not about imperial hegemony and crushing liberties at home.

Reid himself is no stranger to the strong arm tactics of despots, a former hardcore Stalinist, member of the Scottish Communist Party and an alcoholic bully with a penchant for thumping people in the face - he could also become the next Prime Minister.

The British government's paranoid fear of anyone "spreading propaganda" that could compete with their own is perhaps one of the reasons why they outlawed the right to protest under the 2005 Serious and Organized Crimes Act. Now Brits are only allowed to protest against the government with the government's permission - in other countries they would call that a police state and in others besides - like Zimbabwe or China - it's the de rigueur of tyranny.

Similarly, the Glorification of Terror legislation is so broadly defined that disagreeing with the government's "official explanation" of a terrorist event could be seen as enemy propaganda.

The only remaining outlet for the groundswell of dissent in opposition to the Neo-Fascist takeover of the west is the Internet, and it keeps these jack-booted bastards awake at night to think you can sit in front of your computer and broadcast your outrage to the four corners of the earth on a whim.

The fact that the U.S. government demanded access to the Google search queries of around 150 million Internet active Americans under the umbrella of the NSA eavesdropping program (recall the surveillance trucks in V For Vendetta that tuned into home conversations) proves that the elite are deliriously nervous about the last remaining outpost of freedom and its potential to influence change.

In addition, the European Union has moved to completely regulate Internet freedom. The first step is the introduction of licensing laws where you would be required to register, pay tax and only receive permission to operate a website if your material didn't violate the broad ranging "hate speech" laws legislated by the EU - win hich criticizing the EU itself is deemed "hate speech."

The development of "Internet 2" is also designed to create an online caste system whereby the old Internet hubs would be allowed to break down and die, forcing people to use the new taxable, censored and regulated world wide web. If you're struggling to comprehend exactly what the Internet will look like in five years unless we resist this, just look at China and their latest efforts to completely eliminate dissent and anonymity on the web.

Last week we highlighted similar efforts in the U.S. to mobilize resources in the war on terror to target bloggers as terrorist sympathizers and propagandists.

The White House has made it perfectly clear that it will target American citizens for propagating information harmful to the interests of the U.S. government and classify them as enemy combatants. This is codified in sub-section 27 of section 950v. of the Military Commissions Act of 2006.

Bush's own strategy document for "winning the war on terror" identifies "conspiracy theorists," meaning anyone who exposes government corruption and its lies about major domestic and world events, as "terrorists recruiters," and vows to eliminate their influence in society.

In a speech given last Monday, Homeland Security director Michael Chertoff identified the web as a "terror training camp," through which "disaffected people living in the United States" are developing "radical ideologies and potentially violent skills."

Chertoff has pledged to dispatch Homeland Security agents to local police departments in order to aid in the apprehension of domestic terrorists who use the Internet as a political tool.

A program on behalf of CENTCOM is also underway to infiltrate blogs and message boards to ensure people, "have the opportunity to read positive stories,"presumably about how Iraq is a wonderful liberated democracy and the war on terror really is about protecting Americans from Al-CIAda.

Salon exclusive: Two former AT&T employees say the telecom giant has maintained a secret, highly secure room in St. Louis since 2002. Intelligence experts say it bears the earmarks of a National Security Agency operation.

Many cities use surveillance cameras to deter vandalism and theft, but a Metro Parks proposal to aim lenses into three Nashville parks to stop public sex acts would break new ground.

Melissa Ngo, staff counsel with the Washington-based Electronic Privacy Information Center, said she knew of no other city in the country using cameras for this purpose.

But Metro Councilman Michael Craddock of Madison said there is good reason to try it here. Some parks, he said, have become well-known havens for open sexual activity, including oral sex, masturbation and men exposing their genitals to passers-by.

"What turned the tide for me was that a lady complained," said Craddock, whose district includes Cedar Hill Park. "She and her small young son were at Cedar Hill Park" and saw "a man masturbating. She was shocked beyond belief."

But Hedy Weinberg, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee, believes there are better ways than cameras to deal with the problem.

She believes the cameras will be ineffective and costly while diminishing the privacy of all parkgoers.

"This is a Big Brother surveillance program that threatens not only our privacy but chills our speech and associational activity," Weinberg said.

She said the plan, even on a small scale, "begins an inevitable slide toward an expansive surveillance system.

"Frankly, it makes a lot more sense to spend scarce resources on community policing rather than surveillance cameras, which will only move crime from one corner of the park to another."

The Metro Council in November asked the Metro Board of Parks and Recreation to install camerasat Cedar Hill Park, Two Rivers Park and Hamilton Creek Park as well as the Percy Priest Dam recreational area.

Parks Director Roy Wilson said his staff estimates the project would cost $20,000 for 10 to 15 cameras and related equipment. No money has been allocated.

The ACLU had strenuously objected to cameras that could capture conversations as well as pictures. Wilson said the parks board decided to use video-only cameras after its legal counsel agreed that capturing conversations would be too intrusive.

• Where would the cameras be placed in the parks and would they be adequate to view all areas?

Wilson said a Parks Board subcommittee would be assigned to address such questions.

Meanwhile, Craddock says something must be done, and he cites arrest reports and a proliferation of Internet sex sites to buttress his view.

As are other places across the country, some Metro parks are listed on several Web sites as opportune places to meet strangers for sex. The sites list rendezvous points, warn of police scrutiny in certain areas and allow Web users to post messages about their experiences.

"My main concern has been with our parks being listed on national Web sites as the place to connect for this type of activity," Wilson said.

One result: Parks police and Metro police cited almost 300 people last year for indecent exposure in Metro parks.

"A lot of times," said Metro Police Sgt. Steve Brady, "our undercover officers can walk off in the woods by themselves, someone will approach them, and without saying a word expose themselves to them and start masturbating.

"The times we have involved ourselves in conversation, it's usually casual conversation and has nothing to do with sex at all: 'Hey, how are you doing? Do you come out here much? ... And the guy will expose himself and start masturbating.

"It's almost implied that if you are a male and you're in that area, that's what you're there for."

Simone Willabus, 38, of Madison said she thinks cameras could deter such sex acts in the parks and would like to see them installed. She and her daughter, Shakari Sawyers, 2, go to Cedar Hill Park to feed the ducks.

"It's for safety," she said. "I'm not doing anything wrong. … I think if the camera's there, people will be more cautious."

But Hermitage cyclist Greg Ruff, 43, had reservations, even though he has avoided Hamilton Creek Park in favor of other parks after seeing a sex act there.

"If it eliminates the problem, makes the park safe, I guess that's part of being an American in the 21st century. You have to give up some of your rights," Ruff said.

"You go out there to get away from the computer and the telephone and all that kind of stuff. No matter what, as long as the camera is there, whether you see it or not, it's going to be in the back of your mind that it's there. We used to joke in the '80s about Big Brother. I think Big Brother's here."

Chattanooga reports success in using cameras to deter vandalism at some parks and recreation facilities, as does Metro's public works department in deterring illegal dumping.

Chattanooga uses surveillance cameras on the Walnut Street Bridge, a pedestrian walkway across the Tennessee River, to reduce vandalism, said Chattanooga Parks Director Dan Kral.

"We installed them originally" to reduce "the vandalism and the damage that was done to the bridge, both to plant life … and the actual bridge structure itself," Kral said. "And it did do that."

The wireless cameras cost up to $10,000 each, and the city plans to spend more, he added, saying by e-mail that "about $150,000" would go toward another phase of camera equipment along the city's waterfront.

In Nashville, the public works department spent $10,300 for 20 real cameras and 32 less-expensive "dummy" cameras to monitor roadsides and alleyways where people dump trash.

But using cameras to catch vandalism or illegal dumping, which leave physical evidence, may be easier than monitoring sex acts. If something is found vandalized, or officials find old furniture dumped by the roadside, they can focus their review of videotapes on those specific sites, at specific times, and grab the images of the offenders.

Cameras aimed at deterring sex acts would be aimed at people who don't leave such evidence.

Still, Craddock said he believes simply having a surveillance presence in the parks would discourage people from public sex acts.

He said he will propose funding the project with money set aside for infrastructure projects in his council district and will ask other council members to do likewise. Each council district has such a fund.

WATKINS GLEN - “Big Brother" may soon be keeping a closer eye on you as you enjoy a nice day at the park. Watkins Glen leaders are considering putting surveillance cameras in Clute and Lafayette Parks.

U.S. researchers say they are creating an intelligent airborne fleet of small, unmanned vehicles for military use. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientists and their colleagues at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the Boeing Phantom Works in Seattle say such unmanned aerial vehicles would require little human supervision and could automatically monitor their own condition.

The existing UAVs can be easily carried in a backpack and launched by hand, but they typically require a team of trained operators on the ground, and perform only short-term tasks individually rather than in coordinated groups.

However, the prototype of the fleet under development would automatically maintain the "health" of its vehicles -- for example, vehicles would anticipate when they need refueling, and new vehicles would automatically launch to replace lost, damaged, or grounded ones.

MIT Aeronautics and Astronautics Professor Jonathan How, who heads the research team, believes such a fleet of UAVs could one day help U.S. military and security agencies in difficult or dangerous missions, such as search-and-rescue operations, sniper detection, convoy protection and border patrol.

The test platform under development consists of five miniature helicopters, each a little smaller than a seagull.

A junior high school in Indiana threatens parents with police and child protective service involvement if they fail to pick up their child on time after mandatory Friday classes for missed homework.

Outraged parents forwarded us a letter from the Tell City Junior High School in Indiana in which they were given a days notice that their child had to attend a Friday class to catch up on missed homework.

The letter stated in bold that if a parent didn't arrive at the agreed time to pick up their child, "arrangements have been made with the Tell City Police Department to have them housed at the police station."

The letter then states that intervention by the police will also necessitate involvement of the Perry County Office of Family and Children.

This is basically a mandate for the government to snatch your kid - all for the horribly abusive act of arriving 5 minutes late to pick them up from a mandatory extra curricular class that you have been given just 24 hours notice of.

The school threatens immediate suspension of the child if the mandatory homework class is missed.

"I guess it is ok to take a child to jail if their parents only have one car," the parents told us.

"Fortunately my wife was working third shift at the time, had she not been, our kid would have been taken to the police station, and DCFS would have been called on us, simply because we only have one car and I would have
not been able to get my child after being held hostage at school, by the school."

The parents immediately withdrew their child from Tell City High and have begun home schooling.

This case is similar to programs nationwide where children are forced to attend "truancy court" if they skip a day of school or are late three times and are barked at by police and judges. Drug testing and probation then follow if the child misses another day without a doctor's note.

"I can put you under oath and if you lie to me it's called contempt and I can lock you up," froths Texas Judge Jeanne Meurer as small children are threatened with prison in the clip you can watch above (alternate Windows Media link).

You can e mail the school by clicking here or call and fax them at the numbers listed on the letter. Please be very polite and urge them to reconsider this atrocious and intimidating policy. Having social services and police grab children because their parents get stuck in traffic or only own one car is an absolute abomination and anathema to a free society.

A plan to fingerprint elementary school pupils when they buy lunch has some parents worrying that Big Brother has come to the cafeteria.

The Hope Elementary School District has notified parents that, beginning this month, pupils at Monte Vista, Vieja Valley and Hope elementary schools will press an index finger to a scanner before buying cafeteria food. Read full report HERE

The Mother's Act - Mandatory Screening of Moms - April 20/09The Mother's Act legislation has already passed in the US House of Representatives. A majority vote in the Senate would represent a major coup for a multibillion dollar industry.

"Like many of the acts of Congress, the real beneficiary will not be the
mothers and their children but the "mental health" workers who will be
handsomely paid and the drug companies that are behind this legislation,"
says Steve Hayes, the director of he Novus Medical Detox Center, in the
center's July 31, 2008 newsletter. [full report]

OTTAWA (CP) — The federal government has introduced legislation to toughen laws on money laundering and terror financing, and give more teeth to the agency that monitors suspicious money movements.

The bill, if passed, would extend the reach of the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada, better known as Fintrac.

It would strengthen “know [spy on] your client” Standards, extend Fintrac’s reach to money Service businesses which wire money or issue travelers cheques, increase requirements for compliance, monitoring and enforcement, and expand Fintrac’s intelligence role.

It would also mean that banks, insurance companies, securities dealers and money service businesses would be required to identify and monitor the transactions of foreign nationals and their immediate family who hold prominent public positions.

They would also have to report people who even attempt suspicious transactions.

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said the bill will help in the fight against dirty money.

‘One of the best ways of putting these criminals out of business is to starve them of the funds they need to finance their activities,” he said yesterday.

[Suggest “taxpayers” consider this as an option as well. Otherwise you're knowingly funding criminals and terrorists.]

The law already requires organizations and people who handle major transactions — from banks and credit unions to securities dealers, foreign exchange dealers, real-estate firms and even casinos — to keep labs on who is using their services and report questionable transactions.

They must also report any electronic international transfer of more than $10,000 and any cash transactions over $10,000.

The new legislation follows recommendations by several reviews of the five-year-old money laundering law, including some issued this week by the Senate banking committee.

It stopped short, though, of following the Senates suggestion that Fintracs reach extend to jewellers, cheque-cashing and payroll-loan offices and the so-called white ATMs not attached to a hank or credit unions.

The legislation would also remove a clause from the law hat tried to force lawyers to blow the whistle on suspicious transactions by their clients. Law groups won a court injunction against that provision, saying it threatened solicitor-client privilege.

The new legislation sets out ways for the government and law organizations to negotiate improved record-keeping and tighter self-regulation.

Fintrac last year uncovered morn than $5 billion in suspicious deals, including $250 million in suspected terrorist financing.

Fintrac tipped police and the federal intelligence service to 168 suspicious cases, up from 142 the year before.

On new year's day 1990, three days after becoming president of Czechoslovakia, Vaclav Havel looked his people in the eye and spoke to them as no one had done before. It is difficult to read his words without feeling the vibration of history of both the liberation and the horrors of the regime that had just expired, leaving the Czech people blinking in the cold sunlight of that extraordinary winter.

This is what he said. "The previous regime, armed with its arrogance and intolerant ideology, reduced man to a force of production. It reduced gifted and autonomous people to nuts and bolts of some monstrously huge, noisy, stinking machine whose real meaning was not clear to anyone. It could do no more but slowly and inexorably wear itself out, and all the nuts and bolts too."

That perfectly defines the true tyranny, where the state takes all liberty and bends each individual will to its own purpose. And here is the interesting thing that Havel put his finger on: no matter how brutal or ruthless the regime, the act of depriving people of their freedom starts the stopwatch on that regime's inevitable demise. What he was saying was that in modern times a state can only thrive in the fullest sense when individuals are accorded maximum freedom.

I agree. Individual liberty is not just the precondition for civilisation, not just morally right, not just the only way people can reach their full potential, live responsibly and have fun; it is also a necessity for the health of government. Ten years ago I would have felt silly speaking about liberty and rights in Britain with the very real concern that I have today. But I am worried. And it's not just me. Last month Le Monde asked "Is Democracy Dying in the West?". In the spring of this year Lord Steyn, the distinguished former law lord, made a speech despairing at this Government's neglect for the Rule of Law, which was followed by Baroness (Helena) Kennedy's alarm call in the James Cameron Lecture.

The inescapable fact is that we have a Prime Minister who repeatedly makes the point that civil liberties arguments are not so much wrong as made for another age [my italics]. We have a Government that has ignored the Rule of Law, reduced rights and has steadily moved to increase the centralised power of the state at the expense of the individual.

The relationship between the state and individual is really at the heart of any discussion about democracy and rights. In Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union it was the state's mission not just to prevent people from expressing themselves, from moving about freely and unobserved, from pursuing their chosen careers and acting upon their religious and political convictions, but to stop them from thinking freely. It needed to occupy people's thoughts - to take up a kind of permanent residency in the mind of the average citizen. And as the many psychological studies published in the Nineties make clear, this led to psychic disrepair on a massive scale - paranoia, clinical depression, chronic internalised anger and learned helplessness.

We fell morally ill, Havel said in that speech, because we became used to saying something different from what we thought. We learned not to believe in anything, to ignore one another, to care only about ourselves. Concepts such as love, friendship, compassion, humility or forgiveness lost their depth and dimensions, and for many of us represented only psychological peculiarities.

Why am I harping on about communism? It died and was buried 17 years ago, at least in Europe and Russia. We're into another century. We've got Google and speed-dating and globalisation and melting ice caps and reality TV and al-Qa'ida and al-Jazeera and Al Gore. We've moved on.

As a character in Alan Bennett's The History Boys says, there is no period more remote in history than the recent past. Indeed, but we need to remember that recent past a little more than we do. For one thing, our knowledge of what existed on the other side of the Iron Curtain meant we valued and looked after our own freedoms much more than we do today.

It is perhaps the absence of an obvious confrontation between freedom and tyranny that allows Tony Blair to say that civil liberties arguments are made for another age. I profoundly disagree with this. It is dangerous arrogance to say that the past has nothing to teach us and that all the problems we face now are unique to our time.

During his speech to the Labour Party conference, Tony Blair said: "I don't want to live in a police state, or a Big Brother society or put any of our essential freedoms in jeopardy. But because our idea of liberty is not keeping pace with change in reality, those freedoms are in jeopardy."

What in heaven's name did he mean by that? Liberty is liberty. You can't update it. You can't divide it. You are either free, or you're not. A society is either just, or it isn't. People have rights or they don't. The rule of law is upheld, or it isn't.

But Blair believes there is nothing that can't be modernised, updated, pared down or streamlined to keep pace with change. And liberty is no exception to the modernising fury which serves as New Labour's only ideological foundation. What the Prime Minister is saying in this cute little Orwellian paradox is that in the particular circumstances of the war on terror and the rash of crime and anti-social behaviour, we must give up freedom to be free.

What an odd idea! Who is to decide which freedoms are essential and which can be sacrificed to make us secure? Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Lord Falconer or the former Stalinist and now Home Secretary John Reid?

"Those who would give up essential liberty," observed Benjamin Franklin, "to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither freedom or safety." That's exactly right because you can't barter one for the other even though that has been the tempting deal on offer from the British and American governments since 9/11. The truth of the matter is that relinquishing our rights in exchange for illusory security harms each one of us, and our children and grandchildren. Because once gone, these rights hardly ever return.

But let's just return to the first part of that statement by Tony Blair - the bit about him not wanting to live in a police state, or a Big Brother society. Don't get me wrong, we do not live in either a police state or a Big Brother society - yet. But there is no Englishman alive or dead who has done more to bring them about.

The trouble is that it's happening so very quietly, so very discreetly that few really see it. You have to concentrate very hard to understand what's going on and put the whole picture together because so much has been buried in obscure corners of legislation.

We used to believe in innocence until guilt was proved by a court. Not any longer. That distinction disappeared when the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act came into force and police started taking innocent people's DNA and fingerprints and treating them as a convicted criminals.

We used to believe in Habeas Corpus. Not any longer. Under terrorism laws, suspects may be held for 28 days without being charged. Now the Home Secretary wants to make that 90 days, and Gordon Brown seems to share that view.

We used to believe that there should be no punishment without a court deciding the law had been broken, and that every defendant had the right to know the evidence against him. Not any longer. Control orders effectively remove both those rights and John Reid said recently that he wanted stronger powers to detain and control, and stronger powers to deport, which would clearly require the UK to derogate from the European Convention on Human Rights.

We used to believe that an Englishman's home was his castle. Not any longer. A pincer movement by the Courts Act 2003 and the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act 2004 put paid to the 400-year-old principle that entry into your home could not be forced in civil cases.

We used to believe in the right to be tried by jury. Not any longer. The Government plans to remove trial by jury in complicated fraud cases and where there is a likelihood of jury tampering. It would like to go further.

We used to believe there was a good reason not to allow hearsay evidence in court. Not any longer. The anti-social behaviour order legislation introduced hearsay evidence. The maximum penalty for breaking an Asbo can be up to five years in jail. Hearsay can send someone to jail.

We used to believe in free speech, but not any longer. People have been detained under terrorism laws for wearing anti-Blair T-shirts. Walter Wolfgang was removed from the Labour Conference for heckling Jack Straw about the Iraq war. A woman was charged under the Harassment Act for sending two e-mails to a company politely asking them not to conduct animal experiments. Her offence was to send two e-mails, for in that lies the repeated action that is now illegal. A man named Stephen Jago was arrested for displaying a placard quoting Orwell near Downing Street. It read: "In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act." And a mime artist named Neil Goodwin appeared in court recently charged under the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act for what? Well, doing an impersonation of Charlie Chaplin outside Parliament. His hearing was a grim comedy. Mr Goodwin's statement to the court concluded: "In truth, one of the first things to go under a dictatorship is a good sense of humour."
We used to believe that our private communications were sacrosanct. Not any longer. The Regulatory Investigatory Powers Act 2000 and its subsequent amendments provide such wide terms for the legitimate tapping of phones, the interception of e-mails and monitoring of internet connections that they amount to general warrants, last used in the 18th century under George III.

I could go on because there is much more, but I worry about boring you and I know I am beginning to seem obsessed. There will be many reasonable people among you who will argue that the fight against terrorism or some other compelling problem makes the removal of a fragment of liberty the best option available to us. A little bit here, a little bit there doesn't really matter, particularly when it involves somebody else's rights. Without thinking very deeply, we say to ourselves "if you've done nothing wrong you've got nothing to fear from these new laws". Not true. There is something to fear - because someone else's liberty is also your liberty. When it's removed from them, it's taken from you even though you may not be able to conceive of the circumstances when you might need it. A system of rights must apply to bank managers, illegal immigrant cockle pickers and every type of defendant otherwise it doesn't count.

Cumulatively, these small, barely noticed reductions in our rights add up to the greatest attack on liberty in the last hundred years. No wonder the Prime Minister dismisses traditional civil liberties arguments as being made for another age. With his record he can do nothing else.

In an e-mail exchange between him and me in the spring, he suggested a kind of super Asbo for major criminals. This is what the unmediated Blair sounds like. "I would go further. I would widen the powers of police to seize cash of suspected [my italics] drug dealers, the cars they drive round in and require them to prove that they came by them lawfully. I would impose restrictions on those suspected of being involved in organised crime. In fact I would harry, hassle and hound them until they give up or leave the country."

I'm sure that echoes many people's desire just to be rid of these awful people. But think about it for a moment: Tony Blair is a lawyer, yet nowhere is there any mention of due process or the courts. Apparently it will be enough for the authorities merely to suspect someone of wrongdoing for them to act. And the police won't be troubled by the tiresome business of courts, defence lawyers or defendants' rights. I wonder what Vaclav Havel would think of such a suggestion. Certainly, he would be all too familiar with the system of arbitrary arrest and state persecution that Blair seems to be suggesting.

Blair dresses up his views in a vocabulary of modernisation and inclusivity. Yet when he talks about rebalancing the criminal justice system in favour of the victim, it takes just a few moments to see that this will be achieved by doing away with the priority in our legal system of protecting the accused from miscarriages of justice. He simply wants to reduce defendants' rights in order to satisfy public demand for more prosecutions.

It is now plain that he intends nothing less than to open the ancient charters of British rights in order to tip acid into them.

The way cabinet ministers think of themselves today and what they do are at odds. They think of themselves as reasonable, tolerant, humane and liberal people, but their actions tell an altogether different story. This brings me to the Big Brother state that Tony Blair says he doesn't want to live in, but which has nevertheless rapidly come into being during his premiership.

Most people have very little understanding of what the ID card scheme will actually mean for them. They think that it just involves a little plastic identifier. But it is much more than that. Every adult will be required to provide 49 pieces of information about themselves which will include biometric measurements - probably an iris scan and fingerprinting. If you refuse to submit to what is called, without irony, enrolment, you will face repeated fines of up £2,500. The Government is deadly serious about this thing because of a simple truth. They want to know pretty much everything there is to know about you.

Personally, I find the idea of having a card repugnant and I cannot believe it will be long before policemen are stopping us on the street and asking for our papers. But this is by no means the most sinister aspect. Every time your card is swiped when you identify yourself, the National Identity Register will silently make a record of the time and date, your location and the purpose of the ID check. Gradually, a unique picture of your life will be built, to which nearly half-a-million civil servants are apparently going to have access.

But of course you will never be told who is looking at your file, or why. And nor will you be able to find out.

MPs must take responsibility for passing this invasive law but they cannot be blamed for the other half of the Big Brother society that is upon us. I refer to the total surveillance of our roads in a linked-up system of Automatic Number Plate Recognition cameras. These cameras cover every motorway, major dual carriageway, town and city centre and will feed information from billions of journeys into one computer, where the data will remain for two years.

The decision to put British motorists under blanket, round- the-clock surveillance was never taken by Parliament. It just happened. As the cost of processing enormous quantities of data came down, the police and Home Office just simply decided to go ahead. Traffic cameras became surveillance cameras. This, I gather, is known as function creep, and, as always, half the pressure comes from technological innovation.

We are about to become the most observed population in the world outside North Korea, and absolutely no work has been done on how this will affect each one of us and what it will do to our society and political institutions.

I worry that we are not alert to the possibilities of social control. No matter how discreet this surveillance, it increases the spectral presence of the state in the everyday consciousness of each individual. I grant that it is a slow process and that it is nothing like the leaden omnipresence of the Stasi in the GDR. But I think we're heading for a place from which we will not be able to return: the surveillance society where the state will crowd in on the individual human experience and threaten the unguarded freedoms of privacy, solitude, seclusion and anonymity. We may continue to attest to the feeling of freedom but in reality we will suffer more and more restrictions. Inexorably we are becoming subjects not citizens, units on a database that may be observed and classified by a Government which is taking control in areas where it has never dared in democratic times to trespass before.

Where this will all lead I cannot say, but I do know that it is neither good for us nor for the state. Humans work best when they have the maximum freedom, and so does government. As our Government gains more power in relation to us, confusing itself on the way with the entity and interests of the state, it will become less responsive to our needs and opinions, less transparent and less accountable.

Havel said of the Communist tyranny in that glorious but sombre new year's day speech: "None of us is just its victim. We are its co-creators." That is true of any society. And I believe we all need now to acknowledge what has happened to British rights and do something about it.

Firstly, there needs to be some kind of formal audit made of the rights which have been already compromised. An exact account. Linked to this should be a commission looking into the effects of mass surveillance. Second, we need a constitution which enshrines a bill of rights and places our rights beyond the reach of an ambitious Executive and Parliament. Third, we should be writing to our constituency MPs or clogging up their surgeries - asking what they are doing about the attack on liberty. And fourth, all schoolchildren should be taught about British rights and freedoms, what they mean and how they were won. History, as the National Trust is fond of saying, matters. Rights and liberties are as much a part of our heritage as St Paul's Cathedral and Shakespeare's plays.

This may all sound rather prescriptive but I have become certain over the last two years that we need to do something to save us from our Government and the Government from itself.

Did you know that if you are someone who defends the Constitution and your right to travel, that the Anti-Defamation League believes you are a "dangerous extremist" that needs to be monitored by police? So now you know where their loyalties are.

PS: They moved the above link on us once already, so here is part of the document to help you find it if they move it again.

Extremist Identifiers

A law enforcement officer needs to take safety precautions when dealing with situations involving members of extremist groups or movements. Sometimes the officer will be lucky enough to know in advance that he or she will be encountering such individuals, but this is not always the case. Many such encounters are unplanned and spontaneous; moreover, extremists are unlikely to explicitly identify themselves to officers as belonging to fringe movements or groups.

However, perceptive officers may often be able to detect visual and verbal clues that help them recognize that the person with whom they are dealing may adhere to an extreme ideology. These identifiers, especially if several are recognized, can act as important warning indicators.

It must be stressed that extremist identifiers should be used only to alert officers to take safety precautions. They are not indicators of criminal activity and should not be treated as such.

Visible extremist identifiers are often observed on motor vehicles and may be noticed at a person’s residence as well. Verbal identifiers may present themselves during conversations with such persons.

Vehicles belonging to extremists often display clues as to the ideological convictions of their owners or drivers. These include, but are not limited to, the following identifiers.

Bogus license plates or driver’s licenses. Many anti-government extremists do not believe the government has the right to require items such as license plates or driver’s licenses. Some even view such items as "contracts," the use of which implies consent to the authority of the government. As a result, many extremists create their own license plates, either to make a political statement or simply to fool law enforcement officers. These homemade plates range from crude cardboard plates sporting terms such as "Militia" or "UCC1-207" to realistic looking metal plates with fictitious countries on them........ [read full fear mongering rant here]

Which is more dangerous? Believing legitimate government requires the consent of the people... that you have a right to move freely and peacefully, or that government powers are absolute and above common law?

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