Are no personal messages off-limits from Government spying?
Michael Meacher, 5/10/08

Deep Packet Inspection may not mean much, but it ought to bring to a head the simmering tension over privacy between personal liberties and fighting terrorism which the Government has been dragging far too far in the direction of State control.

Deep Packet Inspection refers to equipment which the Home Office is planning to embed with internet and mobile phone providers (such as BT and Vodafone) so as to monitor and store the calls and emails of everyone in Britain all the time. This is a staggering project in every sense - cost, complexity, and unprecedented intrusiveness in ordinary people's lives and their most intimate communications.

It goes even further than the Government's other massive programmes of prying on citizens via identity cards, car number plate recognition, and increasingly universal CCTV. The scope of the new plan is mind-numbing. Last year there were 57bn text messages sent, mobile calls made totalling 99bn, and a trillion emails sent.

The ostensible purpose of this ultimate Big Brother surveillance programme is to fight crime and terrorism which it is said are aimed at destroying the values of our society. But there comes a point when the totalitarian methods deployed to root out crime and terrorism can insidiously undermine the fundamental values and principles of British society even more than the evil they seek to eradicate. With this latest Orwellian monstrosity, there can be no doubt we are well past that point.

Interception of calls and emails is already occurring on a far greater scale than is generally understood. Very few people realise that there are over 650 bodies which can already legally have their communications intercepted by the authorities, or that last year this was exercised in over half a million cases. I have put down PQs asking, for each of the last 10 years, how many of these calculated intercepts actually yielded information material to trapping terrorists and criminals. What is now proposed is a totally indiscriminate monitoring of the unimaginably vast database of all calls and emails by everyone everywhere all the time in this country, and the hit rate for gathering relevant information must decline to utterly infinitesimal proportions.

There are several reasons for stopping this latest venture in its tracks. The expected cost is £12bn, which on past experience of vast Government IT projects is all too likely to escalate dramatically. On the basis of the same evidence it is all too likely not to work. Nor, from several recent notorious episodes, can the authorities be trusted to keep all this personal data secure from being lost, stolen or even corruptly sold on. Nor again can we be sure that official snooping on this scale will not be used for quite other purposes than fighting crime and terrorism - like spying on companies or political opponents, or fishing expeditions to see what is turned up. It would transform Britain from a (relatively) free society into a Stasi-penetrated nightmare.

China & the West: A Story of Converging Authoritarianism at War with the People

China forsook Mao's socialism (really state capitalism) for unfettered 'neoliberalism' and the worship of market forces ruled over by a surveillance state. As Naomi Klein has observed there is a curious convergence between what is happening in China and in the West. The two are moving closer together.

But this is not taking place without resistance from the grassroots. China has its dissidents as does the US and Europe. That you don't hear about them through state-controlled mainstream media (MSM) doesn't mean they don't exist and that a battle is not going on.

Books like Red State Rebels provide us with an insight into the battle going on against the creeping fascism of the US corporate state. Europeans would do well to educate themselves with such books and to ask themselves exactly what lies behind the confrontations such as those we saw recently (on the Net at least) at the Democratic and Republican conventions.

And in China? These videos will give you a clue:

The New Left in China



The New Left in China, Pt II



Protest Movement Growing in China



Protest Movement Growing in China, Pt II



China's authoritarian Capitalism: A Global Trend?



China security tech supplied by US companies

Mindgames & BBC Breakfast TV

An old belief in the Soviet Union and east European countries was that if you wanted to know the truth about what was going on all you had to do was to believe the opposite of what the State media told you.

Although the BBC, in a typically middle class British manner, is less obvious hence far more underhand I find that the general principle still prevails. For when all is said and done either a piece of news reportage reflects the truth or it does not. Unfortunately for the likes of the BBC, the opportunity to tinker with facts is limited by what is actually going on in the real world and the people's received wisdom of same.

Of course, that doesn't stop it from trying to keep its masters in government and high places happy. Despite a snowball of increasing hysteria among its managers, matched only by another of despair among its staff (News Director, Helen Boaden, is quoted as saying she was aware that some staff felt "knackered and frustrated" because of their workload) the same old, mediocrities are daily trotted out to an increasingly jaded public.

Breakfast TV seems to be a good time to slip in a few subliminal messages into the communal subconscious. While folk are still half asleep, munching on toast and cornflakes, the verbal sleight of hand can have its maximum effect. Witness, for example, this morning's little foray into the land of BBC virtual reality.

With a burgeoning of CCTV spy cameras on every street corner, shop and motorway is Britain turning into a surveillance society? Now the answer to that should be obvious but that's precisely why the BBC is forced to treat the question. And treat it it does. Well, yes, but you see surveillance is really good for us because it cuts crime and terrorism, says the BBC, cashing in on a premium of fear, guilt and insecurity.

Although your data might be widely available to a score of agencies, don't worry, it's protected by the Data Protection Act. Besides which, the authorities aren't going to seek information on you unless you've done something bad.

Phew! You know, I was quite worried for a minute there. So that's all right, then, nothing to worry about. I can rest assured, knowing that my government is looking after my best interests. Big Brother is watching over me and Big Brother knows best.

And, hey, you know what? I'm comforted by a feeling that I believe in fairies at the bottom of my garden and Santa Claus too!

Notice how, in a manner Goebbels would have delighted in, the BBC uses moral guilt to hammer home the message: if you've done nothing wrong then you've nothing to worry about in a surveillance society. It's the criminals and terrorists that ought to be worried. Now you're not a criminal or a terrorist are you? Are you?

Am I?

Well, I don't really know. You've got me feeling Kafkaesquely guilty now. Maybe I am a criminal and a terrorist and don't know it? Or at least maybe potentially I might be? What about all those pathological hateful thoughts I have when stuck in a traffic jam for hours? And, you know, there's times I've felt almost sympathy for those terrorists. After all, it's a fucked up world and we're all guilty of a degree of terrorism, aren't we, by allowing our governments to go on mass killing sprees abroad?

It's just so difficult to know who's innocent and who's guilty. Nothing's simple anymore so perhaps we all deserve to be constantly surveilled by all these spy cameras? And if it's reducing crime and terrorism then it's gotta be good, innit? After all, Aunty BBC like Big Brother, knows best.

(Photo: Thanks to Stef Zucconi)