Navigation

Archive | Civil liberties

Enemies of the State, unite!

By on July 10, 2015 in Big Brother, Civil liberties, Democracy, Police state, Privacy, surveillance

Have you noticed that they kill people based on meta data? Not in the US and Europe. But people far away. With drones, the targets selected from among other things: meta data from telecommunications.

So… what phone calls did you make yesterday? Last week?

They can. They do. Maybe not where you live. But it is only a matter of time.

But you have nothing to hide — and for that reason nothing to fear, right? (Really? Nothing?)

First of all, it may be up to a machine to decide on that. Without involvement of human reason. Doesn’t your communication patterns appear to be a little… odd?

Frankly, everyones communication patterns look odd — if you look into them in detail and add this with information from other social charts. You almost certainly are only a few common friends away from some seriously bad people. (Phone books are gold mines for people who draw lines between the dots.)

And there are plenty of laws around to make something stick to you. You don’t have to be guilty. But legal trouble can incapacitate you for years and drain all your money away. (The wars on terrorism, drugs and “piracy” can be very useful for the government, in this regard.)

In the US, apparently the Obama administration use the IRS to make life hell for anti-Obama activists. (Link») Captivating.

But it dosen’t have to be party political. You can become an Enemy of the State just by telling the people what their governments and officials really are up to. (Manning, Assange, Snowden, Brown & Co.)

This perverted system is already connected to the killing machines. I sure hope all our leaders are wise, honest and fair people. Always.

/ HAX

0

Bring mass surveillance back on the EU agenda

By on June 22, 2015 in Big Brother, Civil liberties, EU, Human rights, NSA & Snowden, Privacy, Rule of law

At springtime last year the European Parliament was conducting hearings om mass surveillance. In parts, it was rather thrilling and tense. The hearings ended with a resolution, where the MEP:s stated (in a rather vague way) that they are ill at ease with what is going on.

Formally, they could do nothing more — as national security does not fall under EU competence.

But informally, it was important that the peoples elected representatives tried to get to grips with what is going on.

Then came the European elections, a new parliament was elected and mass surveillance was not an issue on the agenda anymore.

It’s about time to bring some new life to this issue, on the EU level.

Even though the European Parliament cannot interfere with national security — it has the authority to make statements when it comes to human rights. (The right to privacy is considered to be a human right, according to binding european statues.)

And the European Commission (the only EU institution that can submit real proposals) is formally the “guardian of the treaties” — including the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union and the European Convention on Human Rights.

Also, the European Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights can uphold our civil liberties, as stated in the documents above.

The problems with mass surveillance are still the same as a year ago. As a matter of fact new national laws in some EU member states have made things worse since then.

We need to figure out how to apply renewed pressure on our EU politicians when it comes to mass surveillance. And some judicial activism wouldn’t hurt either.

/ HAX

0