Liberty in the UK?

Twenty five years after George Orwell handed in the manuscript of 1984 to his publisher's office, several bombs exploded in the City of London, it was 1973. The IRA launched its campaign of terrorism, and together with the 9/11 attack of al-Qaeda on the Twin Towers in New York twenty eight years later, it has infected governments with a state of paranoia.

Those acts serve our governments as a justification of 'by any means necessary' policies and thus the power to strip people of their rights to privacy and the ongoing corrosion of their liberty. When our governments lie or exaggerate about the threat of terrorist attacks, we have indeed entered very dangerous times.

Clive Norris, Professor of Criminology at the University of Hull, estimated there are about three million functional cameras recording public behaviour in the UK. This has only risen since his research in 2005. The UK is without a shadow of doubt one of the most watched societies in the world, it also possesses the largest DNA database per person than anywhere else.

There are not many facets of life left that are not intruded upon by the state - and industry alike.

This indeed gives 1984's interpretation that it applied to the Soviet Union (whilst it targeted the Police State in general) an ironic touch - the Big Brother has come to its creepy life in the West rather than the East.

A spokesman for the Home Office and Ministry of Justice claims that "CCTV and DNA are essential crime fighting tools and along with new technologies have revolutionised police investigations and helped to keep the public safe." In other words, when it comes to fighting crime and terrorism, regard for public sensibilities concerning privacy becomes the sacrificial lamb. Suddenly the society as a whole is treated as criminal - without being proven guilty. It is a form of collective punishment - the majority is made to atone for the sins against the State by its minority - or the foreign minority.

Moreover, many cases of surveillance underline that in capitalist society protection of property means more than the protection of human life. Many of the CCTV cameras are installed for motoring criminals - motorists guilty of unpaid taxes and insurance or those suspected of being connected with terrorism. Weeding out the bad drivers is secondary. The system, that is being improved all the time, is now linked to Swansea's Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA) database, which holds the names and addresses of every owner of every car in the UK. This enables the police to pull in motorists for unpaid parking and speeding fines, but to also trace their daily movements.

The danger for us lies in the fact that this gives the police - and thus the State - an opportunity to draw an extensive picture of our movements and behaviour. It all feeds to a computer that constructs an in-depth analysis from a variety of sources. It is similar to the FBI's Carnivore system, which records reading habits, based on library records and book purchases, to gain an opinion on an individual's political credentials and opinions. It is a short step to end liberty if you're reading the 'wrong' book. Whether you're simply researching the book to form an informed opinion or not, it does not matter - it is the computer that makes the judgement that will blacklist you.

The use of CCTV becomes even more alarming when used in conjunction with wiretaps without the need to apply for a warrant from a judge. Arrest records, the Passport Office and other governmental databases, which require photographic identification can also feed into developing technology that identifies faces by comparing data captured on CCTV with those from the identification databanks. The accuracy of facial recognition is not as reliable as DNA and iris recording - thus those databases are being steadily upgraded to biometric photographical evidence and the DNA database is increasingly growing in its importance and usefulness to the State.

The data protection safeguards are disposable when it comes to times of national emergency. The terrorism of the IRA had made it easier for the State to deal with the Islamic extremists - to capture suspects and hold them jailed without trial. The period of this detention had been the burning issue of many rows in our Parliament. We have seen the pressure on the law by the politicians to intensify over the time - the jury system and the presumption of innocence for many crimes, both in the UK and in the USA - had been under attack remorselessly.

This brings us to the next State intervention in the lives of its citizens - or subjects of the British Monarchy - the proposals of the national Identity Card. What it means to us is that our movements and actions will be recorded and stored on security databanks, run by private security companies and our lives will become accessible to the State's mighty, watchful eye even more than ever.

It is unimaginable that this card will be any deterrent to a dedicated suicide bomber, nor will they prevent the borders being penetrated by the unwelcome intruders. Which is a paradox if we consider the open border between the Republic of Ireland and the UK. The national ID card will only give our governments an unprecedented ability to intrude into our private lives, rather than 'keep us safe'.

The world as we now know it is awash with our personal data being traced and traded by numerous companies, together with the State. The ID card will tie us down even more so - it will serve as the single, unified database of our personal history - the knowledge, which is power, will be available to the State at the swipe of a card.

What the ID card is in its intrinsic nature is an application to have one's existence permitted by the Government. Unless we never use any of the public services, give up watching TV, manage to be always in perfect health and avoid all possible accidents, have no need for state pension or security benefits, need not find and keep our jobs; unless we never keep our money in the bank, never drive a car, never register births of our children to obtain their birth certificate or enlist them in the schooling system or unless we choose to refrain from travelling abroad, etc - we will have to apply and buy our right to exist in the society.

The ID card will only bring to us another level of bureaucracy plaguing our existence with red tape - and expense. There will be gatekeepers at every step we make, comparing our details, scanning our eyes and matching them against the biometric information in our cards. The fines for forgetting to tell the State of your move may come up to £1000 fine. Of course this will only criminalise the poor - who can't afford it, whilst the rich will walk free, losing an amount that is negligible to the size of their wealth.

The Bill trying to introduce the card, also proposes that our neighbours, friends and relatives will be expected to pass information about us. Not just encouraged as it is with the benefit fraud - but we will be made to be the State's informers - regardless of our moral or familial loyalty.

There has been a great opposition to the ID card, albeit the arguments concern more the question of the expense of setting it up and that it will cost an unreasonable amount to obtain it to cover those expenses.

It is nothing but a game to distract from the real fact - that whilst the ID card is being argued about and so far put to rest on the political shelf, the passport has become an ID card in all but name. The data in its electronic strip is to be supported by the fingerprint. The biometric photo shall be in its place.

The price we pay for the passport is increased and will be increased even more if the Government will incorporate its plans for an ID card into the passport. Since the introduction of the interviews to obtain the passports, the number of the Passport Agency offices and its staff is on the rise. The data fed into the electric strip are expanding in scope and number - very few know what and how much information it contains, and also how much of what the State knows about us is actually correct. Since the fate of the ID card and passport are so interconnected, much of the raised questions are still to be answered - honestly so.

Together with the huge NHS database being built, the police DNA database, the rising amount of information collected in the discreet slips of our passports and all the other 'watchers', we are more and more easily identified through our bodies health - or illness.

Furthermore, we are also betrayed by our loyalty cards that bear witness to our shopping habits, debit and credit cards that further elaborate about what we like, what we need and where we go to buy those necessities and/or luxuries - harnessed in the interests of the corporations and governments alike. All together with our criminal records that are available at the simple touch of a button - we stand barely dressed - in fact naked - and exposed before the State, who is a faithful sidekick of the Capital (the upper classes).

Government is also to compile and keep records - at least for ten years - of our travels anywhere else in the world, including details with whom we travelled, stayed with and met. As always the three triumph cards are held as explanation - they need to win the ongoing fight against crime, terrorism and illegal immigration.

Do we trust our governments enough to allow such an exposure of our privacy to their scrutiny? Do we want the global corporations and their likes to manipulate and be so hand in hand with the government when it comes to passing their collected data on us over to the police, which is only one arm of the octopus-like State?

How long is it before all the young will have to carry an ID card or even a chip like animals in the shade of the gigantic fear of children being kidnapped and trafficked, molested etc.? The technology is already 'out there'. It is only a question of time before its use satisfies all the legislation required.

What has also passed us by in the bliss of not knowing is the founding of casinos in UK and encouragement of it by the State itself - the vital point is that it's the gambling industry that has revolutionised the technology of surveillance. Casinos are as much the laboratory where the Big Brother and the Big Sister (a.k.a. the Corporation) does its testing as well as being a place to throw one's money down the drain or gain it for nothing but a game.

Biometric facial recognition software, the neural systems programmed technology, which detects and highlights anomalies in behaviour, were all first trialled by casinos in the USA and in the UK. In the USA it was soon picked up by the government in its anti-terrorist campaign.

Our secret services such as MI5 are recruiting more suitable candidates into its ranks of spies. Even the youth cannot avoid being brainwashed as one of the childrens TV programs now glorifies this activity. Spying is simply a fancy cover name for informing for money. These informants are another arm of the State and its covert apparatus.

The spy operation is multinational and technologically sophisticated, and our secrets are their secrets. Since the police force has been burdened by red tape, health and safety regulation etc. the rise of private security companies has increased with their technology of surveillance sharpened to perfection. The money is more free-flowing and bypasses public scrutiny, but it feeds access to information to the State nonetheless.

The Data Protection Act of 1998 heavily penalises anyone who unlawfully films an individual, yet it has seldom been tried in courts and the means by which it is to be enforced are not specified - conveniently so.

As a result of 9/11, governments worldwide increased the budgets for monitoring and intercepting electronic communication. As we chat on our home or mobile phones, as we correspond and talk to others on the internet, as we surf its various sites, make our purchases online we also leave traces that are automatically captured and held in computer logs.

The American military collects signals of conversations that take place over Europe, Western Asia and North Africa via its military bases in UK. They all require an incredible amount of clearance and are shrouded in secrecy.

The Menwith Hill complex in North Yorkshire is the largest monitoring station in the world, it is controlled by the NSA and employs over a thousand US civilians and servicemen with a small number of British civilian staff, carefully scrutinised and vetoed. It played a major role in the Iraq invasion, intercepting and channelling command information. The invasion was a refined way (refined from the Gulf War of 1991) to wage a war - it was a space war. It relied on about fifty satellites and its supporting systems, be it technology or human power. This station is not only gathering military intelligence, it mines data, harvests and analyses civil and commercial intelligence. As more space-based fighting systems are developed, this will be expanded.

We are also thus stripped of the illusion that it is our State's eye that watches us, we have another eye - that of the global superpower watching us too.

This time of economic crisis, which is inevitable in this stage of global capitalism, will sharply crystallise the polarity of the classes and it will dispossess vast numbers of the already struggling population. This crisis also threatens the middle classes. This section of society in periods of prosperity help manage the status quo for the upper classes, but with a threat of being swept into the lower classes as a result, they will have their loyalty severely tested and will also join with 'the enemy'. The government, whether it calls itself Conservative or Labour, acts as the protector of the upper echelons of society, who will be forced to part with their property if 'the mob' will take to the street and wage a revolution. The more a threat to the property is present, the more the protector of the Holy Capital will guard it - by any means necessary.

Thus, one of the remaining questions we must ask ourselves is for how much longer we will allow the State and the powers that be to intrude upon every moment of our lives even though we stand innocent in front of its questioning. And as we ask ourselves that question, we do so in awareness that we have been watched reading this.

Knowledge is power, the State knows it, do we?


Petra Whiteley

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