Stay safe, pplz…

From Cryptohippie, where a PDF report with rankings is available:

How's that security blanket working out for ya?

How can you sleep at night?

Merry Christmas, you fucking tool.

It is time — arguably, it is past time — for you to get your family and your wealth safely outside the borders of the United States. America has become a police state that is moving quickly toward total surveillance and, in typical American fashion, the resulting society will almost certainly be the “the best and the biggest” tyranny in the world.

From The Times Online:

Terror law turns thousands of council officials into spies

Thousands of middle managers in local councils are being authorised to spy on people suspected of petty offences using powers designed to prevent crime and terrorism.

INGSOC logo patch created by lademocracia.es @ flickr.com

Even junior council officials are being allowed to initiate surveillance operations in what privacy campaigners likened to Eastern bloc police tactics.

[...]

Councils are increasingly allowing anyone of a “service manager” grade rather than high-ranking officials with a legal background to authorise surveillance operations. Relatively junior council officials are giving permission for operations to spy on people, their homes, obtain their telephone records and discover who they are e-mailing.

[...]

Last year, councils and government departments made 12,494 applications for “directed surveillance”, according to figures released by the Office of the Surveillance Commissioner. This was almost double the number for the previous year. Applications from police and other law enforcement agencies fell during the same period, to about 19,000. Councils have admitted using the Act to spy on people committing minor offences such as fly-tipping, failing to pick up dog mess, and littering.

[...]

“It’s all part of the increasing surveillance state.”

From the Times Online:

‘Big Brother’ database for phones and e-mails

INGSOC logo patch created by lademocracia.es @ flickr.com

A massive government database holding details of every phone call, e-mail and time spent on the internet by the public is being planned as part of the fight against crime and terrorism. Internet service providers (ISPs) and telecoms companies would hand over the records to the Home Office under plans put forward by officials.

The information would be held for at least 12 months and the police and security services would be able to access it if given permission from the courts.

The proposal will raise further alarm about a “Big Brother” society, as it follows plans for vast databases for the ID cards scheme and NHS patients. There will also be concern about the ability of the Government to manage a system holding billions of records. About 57 billion text messages were sent in Britain last year, while an estimated 3 billion e-mails are sent every day.

From Reuters:

Four Philadelphia police fired over filmed beating

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) – Four Philadelphia police officers were fired and four others demoted or suspended after a video showed them beating three suspects after a drug-related shooting, the city’s police chief said on Monday.

The eight officers were among 18 who surrounded a car in North Philadelphia on May 5 after a shooting between two groups of men during police surveillance of a suspected drug-dealing operation.

Related: Philadelphia police beating restrained suspects: video

The U.S. Government has, almost certainly, established a database and tracking system for something like eight million Americans who have been designated as threats to national security. The system is called MAIN CORE and it is being run under the auspices of highly classified Continuity of Government (COG) operations. MAIN CORE uses a variety of intelligence sources as inputs, including your email, web activity, telephone and private financial information. In the event of a major national security crisis, it is alleged that Americans listed in the MAIN CORE database, “Could be subject to everything from heightened surveillance and tracking to direct questioning and possibly even detention.”

It’s all paranoia, of course. It’s all for protecting against terrorists, of course. It would never be used, say, to round up critical journalists, spy on anti-war activist groups or “disappear” people that the administration has decided it doesn’t like, of course. And of course it will never be exported and integrated into an overarching international pan-EU, pan-NAFTA surveillance network.

Of course not. And don’t you dare think that.

Between the plane’s doors and the portal, everything is serene. A placid line of fellow passengers trudging up the jetway, into the terminal, though the camera-lined corridors and past the garish signs proclaiming the various indignities that await ahead at passport control. Eventually, the rat-trap tunnels converge on the intake room, the great cleansing filter which promises to keep the UK clean. The signs, now ever more strident, warn of the harsh penalties for threatening an immigration officer, failing to produce proper documentation, or lodging one’s asylum request improperly. It’s all quite official.

The intake hall is a sterile room, festooned with CCTV cameras. The EU passport holders dutifully and effortlessly slide into a swift-moving queue which gobbles them up as quickly as can be noticed. A glance at the traveling papers, a friendly question, a nod, and they’re off. I, however, must stand in the other line, the one for the non-EU visa-free travel exemptees, the tourists, the immigrants, and the sternly-warned asylum seekers.

I seem to be the very last in line, somehow. Ah yes… while the budget airline opened both doors, front and back to me in Bratislava, only the front door opens in Birmingham. Perhaps the cost of CCTV and police monitoring for two doors of a passenger-carrying aircraft is too high in the UK. I don’t question, but trundle into position behind a Bahraini family with two bickering youngsters and an impassive yet obviously distressed teenage daughter and a small group of Slovak college students and their parents who haven’t realized the practical impact of their recent change of status. The line crawls forward, millimeters at a time.

After about 5 minutes and 5 centimeters a young, dark man emerges from the labyrinth behind us all and strides up to the decision point: EU passport holder or not? He hesitates, and turns to the appropriately diverse pair of airport staff waiting to guide newly-arrived hopefuls into the proper queue. I overhear his conversation only superficially, but it’s essentially this:

He: Good day, here is my travel document. Which line should I stand in?

They: Uhhh… let me have a look… Hmmm… Somalia, but what’s this? Er, <brief walkie-talkie conversation> you’re best over there.

He: Thank you.

And he comes to stand behind me. He’s a shorter man than I, dark skinned but of indeterminate origin, someplace between 25 and 30 years old. Racially, a mix of African, Arab and central-Asian features that quite escapes categorization. He fumbles a bit with his passport and fishes out his immigration declaration form, then asks me if I have a pen.

So I lend him a pen and ask him where he’s from. “Somalia”, he says, “but I live here in the UK.”

“Somalia!?” I ask. “An interesting place to be from.”

“Well…”

I tell him that I overheard his conversation, and that I’m curious about his passport. He says briefly that it’s something special, and allows me to look at it.

It’s a 1951 Convention Travel Document, dark blue passport-like cover and the requisite 40 or so watermarked pages inside. It’s in English, issued in the UK, prominently displaying the fact that it doesn’t grant the bearer rights to employment or public assistance on the forceful pages, and bearing a variety of entry and exit visa stamps from France, Germany, Egypt and Spain, along with several residence visas from Tanzania.

It was a trusting and innocent maneuver on his part, and I hand him back his ticket to life beyond the intake hall reverently.

We chat a bit, as we slowly advance in the queue. Turns out he came to the UK seven or so years ago, renounced his citizenship and is now waiting for a UK passport. Works as a sales agent for one of those new-fangled almost-actually-deregulated energy utilities that has government-mandated access to the national gas distribution network trying to convince people to switch gas providers, all the while recognizing that if the gas supply and the distribution pipes are all still owned by the same people, it’s all kind of a wash. Still, it’s GBP 500 a month, and the money’s damned good in Dar-es-Salaam, where he operates a business with his brother.

As the conversation moves on, I ask him about his history a bit, Somalia, how he came to the UK, the taxes here and the surveillance they pay for, and how he ended up in this line. We talk briefly and cursorily of Somalia’s internationally much-reviled “anarchy”, the Islamic Courts Union, the breakup of the country and the fraudulent imposition of a false, foreign government on his country. I share with him my dismay at the US-backed Ethiopian invasion and slaughter going on in Somalia today.

I realize, slowly, that the little blue-bound book he handed me earlier is a declaration that he has no citizenship, no nationality, no country. Can that be right?

Me: So you are a stateless person?

Him: Yes, that’s right.

Me: I must ask you… hasn’t it caused you troubles in your life?

Him: No, it’s great being free.

Gears turn and tumblers fall into place. The door waits only to swing open.

Just before we separate for our own, individual inquisitions before the immigration officers, I ask him what he plans. “After I get my UK passport in November, I will leave here forever… this place is not good.”