The Berlin Wall is gone, Long Stand the New Wall

The U.K metropolitan police has started a new (2008) Counter-Terrorism advertising campaign. It is frightening. Not because of what it says but because of what it doesn't say. It is turning the U.K into a country of suspicion. We are being encouraged to suspect and monitor our neighbours and to report actions that seem odd without using our own judgment of it.

The below quote is from The Register: It is a transcript from this radio advert (mp3)

Female Voice over:
How d’you tell the difference between someone just video-ing a crowded place and someone who’s checking it out for a terrorist attack?

How can you tell if someone’s buying unusual quantities of stuff for a good reason or if they’re planning to make a bomb?

What’s the difference between someone just hanging around and someone behaving suspiciously?

How can you tell if they’re a normal everyday person, or a terrorist?

Male voice over:
The answer is, you don’t have to.

The official campaign details can be found here.

It seems innocent enough but consider it in context with the paragraph below: the U.K government is forcing through "voluntary" ID cards for which the Home Secretary has stated they will need to find practical uses (ambiguity intended). The "voluntary" part is that we can have an I.D card, a biometric passport or effectively, without either the former, all of the following - limited access to government services, no entitlement to vote, be educated, be employed... and no ability to leave the country. The ID cards will be linked to a central database. Every time the ID card is read (the database will never crash or be inaccurate) the reading will be recorded. It will contain an RFID device which, as we know, could enable the monitoring of a person's movements.

I'm pretty much an avid supporter of responsible civil liberty and very much against any snooping on people without real justification. I am extremely against any turning of the general public into people who fear and snoop on their neighbours and other fellow citizens because their government bids them to do so. For crying out loud, the western democracies despised, feared and mocked the governments east of the Berlin Wall from East Germany to China because communist governments monitored and permit-ted the actions of their citizens. Many western people couldn't work-out why neighbour spied on neighbour. We fought for democracy for them. We encouraged them to dissent and defect. We nearly had a nuclear war to prevent them from placing weapons too close to us (remember the Cuban Missile Crisis). How have we allowed the situation to reverse - has East become West?

I read on another website that the people east of the Berlin Wall were told that it had been built to protect them from the West i.e it was built for their security and they believed it. Seeing the world now, I think they may have been right. But then, haven't our governments built a wall around us; and aren't we being told the same thing, namely, that it is for our security.

Please correct me if I'm wrong because I really do want to be wrong but I don't think I am, do you?

If you want to keep democracy alive you might want to read Ten steps to close down a society.

The key points are:

1 Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy
2 Create a gulag
3 Develop a thug caste
4 Set up an internal surveillance system
5 Harass citizens' groups
6 Engage in arbitrary detention and release
7 Target key individuals
8 Control the press
9 Dissent equals treason
10 Suspend the rule of law

I know that it is easy to see something that isn't there but if history has taught us anything it should be that it is important to be cautious.

Edit:

Message to mods: If you feel that this thread could be moved to a better place then please move it. I'm not always sure where best to post. Thank you.

[edit on 7/3/2008 by Rapacity]