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Berlin ‘Love Parade’ Protests Surveillance Society Up to 15,000 protestors attended an anti-surveillance society rally in Berlin last weekend which was joined by ‘a loudspeaker-equipped float, reminiscent of the Love Parade’, German newspaper Heise de reported. Speakers at the ‘Liberty instead of Fear’ themed parade attacked Germany’s creeping ‘surveillance madness’, in particular new laws allowing authorities to store people’s phone calls and emails and even make secret searches of computers. “If the measures are not stopped but instead managed to establish an uncontested precedent, then a Big Brother system with cameras prying into even our toilet habits would become a reality,” Patrick Breyer of the German
Working Group on Data Retention warned. The demonstration coincided with a report in the Washington Post on America’s traveller ‘Automated Targeting System’ which revealed that authorities there are storing electronic data on passengers’ companions, addresses where they stay, books they read and ‘even the type of bed requested in a hotel.’ "The federal government is trying to build a surveillance society," respected civil liberties campaigner John Gilmore told the newspaper, “They may be doing it with the best or worst of intentions. . . . But the job of building a surveillance database and populating it with information about us is happening largely without our awareness and without our consent." The paper’s revelations matched the assessment of ACLU Technology and Liberty Project chief Barry Steinhardt who last year warned that the system will generate ‘terrorist rating’s of all travellers which will be stored for at least 40 years. "Never before in American history has our government gotten into the business of creating mass 'risk assessment' ratings of its own citizens," he said, "That is a radical new step with far-reaching implications – but one that has been taken almost thoughtlessly by expanding a cargo-tracking system to incorporate human beings, and with little public notice, discussion, or debate “Innocent people are going to get caught up in this program, and they will have precious little recourse under it,” said Tim Sparapani, an ACLU Legislative Counsel added, “When some unknown government computer, using unknown sources of information, tags you as a ‘security risk’ and begins circulating that label around the government, you will have no meaningful way of finding out why you were given that label, let alone challenging its validity,” he predicted. Article by Jonty Skrufff Subscribe to Skrufff music newsletter at www.skrufff.com
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