to what extent are we running from ghosts the terror industry has created over the last 10 years?
Watching the overwhelming response by police and security personel, I couldn’t help thinking this is what’s come of the war on terror—the militarization of our communities and home. And in the atmosphere of more terror and more fear we seem to have lost a sense of measure in our response to the other, which includes a degree of compassion even for those who’ve inflicted harm.
Yeow! A pretty strong message of don’t fucking try it again!?
Glenn Greenwald talks about the pervasive nature of surveillance in America, its growth in recent decades and why it is critical for movements to subvert surveillance so they can be successful in organizing.
Much-loved Canadian novelist Rohinton Mistry delivered the convocation speech to graduates at Ryerson Polytechnic in Toronto, in the form of a fairy-tale based on A Christmas Carol, by way of a critique of the Canadian swing to a neoconservative right, where social spending exists only to promote “moochers” and society is a fight between bad guys (who need to be surveilled all the time in every medium) and good guys (who don’t mind being surveilled in such a way), and where no amount of “security” is ever enough.
The Globe and Mail has a transcript and an (unembeddable) video, which is rather good.
Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing.
My medium-sized Canadian town has approved funding for police surveillance cameras in the downtown. Generally, it seems people don’t understand how these technologies of surveillance tear the social fabric. One example: ostensibly to combat drunken brawling these cameras and similar technologies divert attention from questions regarding why drinking and substance abuse is so prevalent in our society. Simultaneously funds and resources are directed toward the state security apparatus, the ever-growing military industrial complex which, in the post-9/11 world, is increasingly directed inward toward domestic affairs—Foucault’s panopticon writ large. Slowly, ever so slowly, people begin to act as if they’re being watched all the time—the paranoid who believes they’re in some version of the Truman show.
tetw:
by Naomi Klein
With the help of U.S. defense contractors, China is building the prototype for a high-tech police state, and it’s ready for export.
![theatlantic:
How Western Tech Firms Are Helping Arab Dictators
The communications devices activists use are not as safe as they might believe, and dozens of companies — many of them based in North America and Europe — are selling technology to authoritarian governments that can be used against democratic movements. Such tools can exploit security flaws in the activists’ technology, intercept a user’s communications, or even pinpoint their location. In many cases, this technology has led to the arrest, torture, and even death of individuals whose only “crime” was exercising their universal right to free speech. And, in most of these cases, the public knew nothing about it.
Read more. [Image: Reuters]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m0h3cg9oIG1qcokc4o1_1280.jpg)
How Western Tech Firms Are Helping Arab Dictators
The communications devices activists use are not as safe as they might believe, and dozens of companies — many of them based in North America and Europe — are selling technology to authoritarian governments that can be used against democratic movements. Such tools can exploit security flaws in the activists’ technology, intercept a user’s communications, or even pinpoint their location. In many cases, this technology has led to the arrest, torture, and even death of individuals whose only “crime” was exercising their universal right to free speech. And, in most of these cases, the public knew nothing about it.
Read more. [Image: Reuters]
