EU Surveillance Studies Disclosed By Pirate Party 343
Spliffster writes "The German Pirate Party has disclosed some secret documents on how the EU is planning to monitor citizens. The so called INDECT Documents describe how a seamless surveillance could (or should) be implemented across Europe. The use of CCTV cameras, the Internet (social networks), and even the use of UAVs are mentioned as data sources. Two of the nine documents can be downloaded from the German Pirate Party's website (PDFs in English)."
It's interesting to see that.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Orwell (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder if forcing every single human being to read George Orwell's 1984 would prevent this sort of thing from happening.
Perhaps it's just that people don't realize what could go wrong with an Orwellian government in place. Perhaps they just don't see it, they don't think anything can go wrong if the government watches your every step.
Then again, perhaps people just don't care. As long as it's not them (and by "them" i mean the generations that currently live) who suffer it, they just don't give a damn.
I can tell from personal experience that many people don't care about stuff like that even if you tell them the consequences. Perhaps Big Brother is precisely what we, as a civilization, need in order to realize that it's a horrible thing to live like that. After all, experience is a good teacher.
Re:For what purpose? (Score:4, Interesting)
Would you rather see everyone as a criminal and with that screw the innocent or see everyone as innocent and allow crime to fluorish?
Regardless of what people say, any politician openly stating that they prefer the second option will have his carreer ended by the public.
What I just don't understand is why, if crime rates have been going steadily down for some decades now, do they feel like they need to be more invasive and offensive in their fight against crime. Maybe it's all related to politics (and that "maybe" answers only to scientific precision, though I'm pretty sure that's the reason behind it all).
Re:For what purpose? (Score:5, Interesting)
I've skimmed through the first pdf. It looks like they are trying to build an Event Control system. Designed to control and identify people at large events, like soccer games. Some countries in Europe have a real problem with soccer hooligans. Or just plain riots, like the ones in France last year. It's the cops who want a system to identify the rioters. Seems logical to me, Jim.
But the government could mis-use it for anything they want. And that scares me, as a E.U. citizen.
Wikileaks on INDECT (Score:5, Interesting)
Some deep ip, friend of friend of friend hunting software triggered by phrases, word use and IM connections.
Re:This is why we vote Pirate (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't see how you can equate CCTV in the UK with the mess that the US has got itself into. Firstly, the oft-quoted 4 million cameras is a figure made up by one of the far-right tabloid newpapers based on the number of cameras in about a quarter mile of the main street of a fairly rough part of London. If that figure was even remotely accurate, you'd pass a CCTV camera every 50 metres or so on every road in the UK right down to farm tracks.
Here's the kicker. Every major city in the US has got just as much CCTV surveillance as London! Yes, you're "spied on" just as much in New York as you are in London, and you've got armed police ready and willing to shoot you, too. It must be awful living in the US, with that constant threat over you all the time.
Re:For what purpose? (Score:5, Interesting)
What happened to innocent until proven guilty? A system like this makes anyone a suspect (a potential criminal), this is very 1984 like!
My government is not allowed to survey me until a judge order so. The described goals are to survey everyone. The authors of INECT are absolutely aware that they would trump human rights (and they see it more as an annoyance than an problem), this is why INECT is trying to keep this shit secret.
To some of the commenters above; this has not much to do with Germany itself but the EU. It was just the German Pirate Party which leaked the documents.
-S
Re:Orwell (Score:2, Interesting)
Perhaps Big Brother is precisely what we, as a civilization, need in order to realize that it's a horrible thing to live like that. After all, experience is a good teacher.
The problem is, once we have it in place it is very hard to get rid of it. When the government watches your every step you cannot form a successful resistance. Even today it is prohibited to assemble a great crowd without letting the police force know about it (at least in Germany).
Re:Orwell (Score:4, Interesting)
They also read Brave New World.
What they've found best is a mixture of Huxley and Orwell. Give the people their bread and circuses, and remove those who are unsatisfied by it.
Re:This is why we vote Pirate (Score:2, Interesting)
and you've got armed police ready and willing to shoot you, too. It must be awful living in the US, with that constant threat over you all the time.
Sadly, this is true and one of the main reasons I'm afraid to move back to the US. The police are horribly corrupt. Cops can beat you, shoot you, steal your things, whatever. There is absolutely no recourse either, and the worst that can happen to a cop is for him/her to get paid leave.
Re:This is why we vote Pirate (Score:3, Interesting)
Two things : 1) The UK is hardly alone in being under the umbrella of Echelon.
2) Echelon now has about the same level of secrecy as Area 51. i.e. it's virtually entirely public knowledge at this point, and has been superseded by systems you have never heard of.
Re:This is why we vote Pirate (Score:3, Interesting)
People everywhere are under attack by the armed gangs otherwise known as government.
Argh! Get a life already. You sound like one of those Tea Party Tossers who can see nothing good about society - in the "good old days" you guys seem to be longing for, you would have been called misfits or weirdos.
Try using your brains for once, assuming you've got some: Being seen by others is part of life, unless you are a recluse on a desert island. "Surveillance" as you call it gives you many benefits: if you crash with your car, chances are that you'll be helped by those nice folks known as paramedics; if you get mugged somewhere or your business is broken into, having a few CCTV cameras around can help put the bastards away, and so on.
It is not the monitoring that should worry you, it is the secresy. When information is kept away from public scrutiny, that is when criminals start infecting things. IMO monitoring is OK, but make the information freely available to the public; seeing how crap like Big Brother, Twitter and Facebook attract crowds, such a scheme might prove hugely popular.
Re:This is why we vote Pirate (Score:4, Interesting)
The royal family don't really have anything to do with government. They're more of a tourist attraction. I prefer the zoo, myself.
I don't know about the UK but here in Australia the constitution is a thin booklet which basically says The Queen is in charge of Australia and may or may not decide to take advice from a Parliament which may or may not exist.
Brave New World (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:For what purpose? (Score:4, Interesting)
Guarding certain events and proforma data monitoring of anybody is not the same. Did you read the PDF files (well this is slashdot)? I am the original poster, I did before submitting it to slashdot.
Re:This is why we vote Pirate (Score:3, Interesting)
The royal family is a 'family' and no control can be exerted over them - they marry whomever they marry...
... unless of course they marry a Catholic [legislation.gov.uk] or an American divorcee [wikipedia.org], in which cases they lose their claim to the throne...
Re:Wikileaks on INDECT (Score:3, Interesting)
And what happens when by average you are only 7 "friendships away" from anyone in the world?
At 3 levels looked upon that probably corresponds to 1/5th of population, or even at 1/10th of whole global population, you are bound to have "terrorist friends", making every human being on this planet guilty of terrorism, and earth a giant jail....
Oh wait a moment.... A) We really can't leave jail.. ehrm, earth B) We are already slaves of either money or religion
Damn it happened already
Re:This is why we vote Pirate (Score:3, Interesting)
It doesn't matter what you do to get the police to trample all over your rights. The problem is that the police can trample all over those rights in the first place, and can do so with practical impunity. That makes the country essentially a police state. (Whether it's effectively a police state depends on to what extend the police actually makes use of that power.)
It's coming, I've seen it (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:This is why we vote Pirate (Score:2, Interesting)
Are you suggesting that the British public somehow force a non-white person into the family?
I don't know what he was suggesting, but I'd suggest getting rid of the royal family. The cost tons of money and provide zero benefit to society. Essentially, they have the ultimate form of welfare - only instead of getting paid a marginally above poverty salary to not work they get paid billions to not work.
Oh and before someone tries to twist my words, I'll clarify - I mean "get rid of" as in telling them "You're fired and all your wealth that's been stolen from the people of the UK for hundreds of years is being confiscated".
Re:This is why we vote Pirate (Score:2, Interesting)
Yes, it's so awful that millions of people immigrate here every year.
Well, the US is pretty bad - it's just that the rest of the world is even worse off. You know the saying - "In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king".
Re:wow (Score:4, Interesting)
In addition, by some strange coincidence, any time the police in the UK have been accused of misdeeds, (such as brutalising innocent members of the public) the relevant CCTV cameras have always been found to have been wiped/malfunctioning/looking in the wrong direction.
If street criminals have even 10% of the luck of these accused police officers, then the CCTV system is basically useless and pointless. We'd be better off relying on members of the public and ubiquitous phone cams. At least *they* have caught the occasional police brutality incident. That makes them superior to the CCTV system in my opinion, and cheaper too.
Well, that statement is complete bollocks, I can think of several high profile cases where a police officer has been caught 'brutalising innocent members of the public' on CCTV in cases that made it all the way to court. Here's one that happened within the past week:
"A police officer has been jailed for six months after he was caught on CCTV throwing a woman into a cell, badly injuring her.
The footage also shows Sgt Mark Andrews dragging Pamela Somerville, 59, through Melksham police station in Wiltshire."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-wiltshire-11214026
Another one from last year...
"A police watchdog is investigating an alleged attack on a man by three officers in Wigan, Greater Manchester.
In video obtained by the Sunday Mirror the man - said to be Lance Corporal Mark Aspinall - is shown being pinned to the ground and repeatedly punched. "
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/manchester/7757229.stm
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:This is why we vote Pirate (Score:1, Interesting)
I got arrested not so long back, for a victim less crime - an accusation of growing a plant.
There were no plants when the pigs turned up, and they were clearly annoyed at the lack of evidence, and my gloating over it. So they arrested me anyway for cultivation, but the arresting pig put the first hand cuff on 90 degrees round from how it should be done, causing me pain. I complained, and immediately got threatened with resisting arrest. I told him the cuff was on incorrectly, but he didn't care, and continued to cause discomfort. I tried to resolve the situation myself by moving, and it went down hill fast: I was also arrested for resisting arrest, pushed down, and threatened with CS gas!
When trying to get me out the property, I remembered that it is legal to go limp. Not resisting arrest, just not helping. As soon as I went limp, I was told "do you want to fall down the stairs?". To me, that sounded like a veiled threat to be pushed down the stairs, or to be beaten up and they will claim I "fell down the stairs".
In the van on the way to the station the pigs were trying to provoke me further, with their institutional sarcasm and attempts at bullying that even most school children would think is childish. They dragged me to their level, but I won! One of them asked if I had a girlfriend, and I fired back, immediately, with "your mum's my girlfriend". The pig shut up, and didn't say another thing!
I also found whilst in the back of the van that I am flexible enough that if I am handcuffed behind my back, I can get my hands around in front of me.
The police performed a punitive strip search of me, and I did not cooperate - well, I wasn't cooperating with anything. No cavity checks, but presumably they decided to look in my boxers to try to humiliate me. I'm not insecure about my dick, so don't actually give a shit, but the police justified the search with "you're a drug addict". Nice to see they understand what they are meant to be policing! Perhaps they though the evidence they hadn't got was in my boxers?
When on the floor of a cell, after being searched, they were trying to spread me out flat to remove the cuffs, so they could leave me in the cell. One pig was purposefully twisting the cuffs against the bones of my forearm, which was painful. I asked him to stop doing what he was doing, as it was painful. His response was:
"You deserve to be punished".
That was his reply to my accusation that he was purposefully causing harm to me. If he wasn't trying to hurt me, he would have denied the accusation and changed his hold. But his actual response was one where he clearly saw himself as judge, jury, and executioner.
There was no doubt other pigs witnessed this exchange and events, though I'll never know as I didn't complain to the sarge. I kinda wish I had, but that would have meant cooperating with the police, which I wasn't doing. I haven't done so for a long time, and will not be doing so in the future, mainly because of this interaction with the police, though every other interaction with the police I have had has showed them to be a bunch of incompetent shites.
The thing is, I live just round the corner from a pig and his piggie family. He's put away some nasty pieces of work, so if the police want to pick on people for victim less shit, and provoke other "crimes" out of people just to justify their call out, I will have to take steps of my own. A simply publication of this pig's name and address, and he'll be having to move house!
Re:This is why we vote Pirate (Score:1, Interesting)
The government is fully aware of how the purpose of a protest can be undermined in the public eye if it turns violent. Agents provocateur [wikimedia.org] are a problem, as are the other staged events that sections of the establishment pull at things like the London G20 protests.
Remember the picture from G20 of a masked dude putting an object through the window of a bank? Ever notice how there was a semicircle of cameramen around him? That incident stunk of being staged.
Re:This is why we vote Pirate (Score:3, Interesting)
You're thinking of when they executed the King in the mid-1600's (executed in 1649) and replaced him with a Lord-Protector, a King in all but name. True that parliament was in charge in theory but their army kept the opposition party out. I guess you could call it a republic but puritan dictatorship would be more accurate.
In the late 1600's was the glorious revolution where parliament kicked out the current King (James II) and replaced him with a Dutch man and his Wife, the daughter of the King.
This was when Parliament became supreme, the coronation oath was changed to one where the monarch swore to upheld the laws of parliament and they even passed a bill of rights in 1689.
Since then the monarchy has has very little actual power.
This is why it is always funny when Americans talk about George III being a tyrant, it was Parliament that created the laws by then.
Re:This is why we vote Pirate (Score:3, Interesting)
If you had the courage of your conviction you'd eliminate your regency altogether.
What, so we can replace it with a politically motivated head of state? Fuck that! The queen is our last line of defence against corrupt politicians, should things get bad enough she can refuse royal assent and the shit hits the fan. At that point if she doesn't have the overwhelming backing of the populace the monarchy is over, if she does have the backing then we can expect a general election. That's why it's a better system than an elected president likely to metaphorically wave his dick around for political purposes, it's irrelevant for day to day affairs but when you really, REALLY need it it's there.