Surveillance yesterday and today

I think you've got that backwards. The old DDR had much more of a surveillance apparatus than the former Soviet Union. It was a great drain on state coffers.

An interesting film on surveillance in the DDR is "The Lives of Others".

Oh good lord.

Had some Hungarians as neighbours for many many years...they fled in 1956.....and they absolutely hated the RCMP, told us the RCMP reminded them of first Hitler's SS,  and later Russian KGB.

How 'bout International News and Politics for this?

Not that I'm an apologist for him, thanks, but nobody "lived under" Lenin for very long. The Bolshevik Revolution occurred late in 1917; Lenin had the first of his strokes in early 1922, and he was dead by 1924. Before he died, he warned that Stalin would be capable of just the surveillance state you describe, as indeed he was.

I agree with N.Beltov, though. From all I know, surveillance systems in the DDR were a fiendish combination of systems taken on from both the Nazis and Stalin. It was a society permeated by betrayal, just no trust possible. I certainly agree with your conclusion that such systems mean a disintegration of functional society. If it's any comfort to you, brave people who stayed sane while living through all those nightmares have left us some of the greatest written testimony to what it means to be human.

Yes, the U.S. national security agencies are mining everything. Congress is authorizing that, and the president wants it. There's pretty much no doubt about that now.

Good first point....

In respect to your last point, what do you feel this means to us all, given the implications?

At least there the Congress still quibbles whenever the executive does an end around and freelances with spying on the public. Very little in the way of checks and balances exist here in this regard, it's a gaping open pit mine.

Were the Stasi spending all of their time spying on East Germans? Was the wall meant to imprison East Germans, or did it also serve another purpose? Gehlen Org

Imagine the surprise among our former WW II allies when they realized that the west had essentially reconstructed Himmler's SS to to run the spy ops out of West Germany.

Well, Slumberjack, I've been following the Patriot Act/FISA debates in the Senate at least, and I can count the number of senators who are backing up any quibbles with a good vote on the fingers of one hand. I mean, sometimes we're down to Russ Feingold (yay, Russ!). In spite of all the elaborate courtesies, they're just letting it happen.

I used to think their executive was the major problem, but I'm beginning to think that Congress is worse, and money is the obvious problem. Most of them are so owned, so totally owned, that we're beyond serious democratic debate.

Excuse me, could you clarify what you mean by this, thanks?

KAOS has been spying on citizens in English speaking countries for many years. Google ECHELON. Same goes for the renditions and torture. The Gladio gang are only attempting to get it out in the open now, but they've been torturing and spying on and terrorizing civilian populations around the world for a long time.

Courtesy is what it amounts to, yes.  The fact that a critical mass of the citizenry do not see fit to at least take note of the proceedings in terms of protecting their own privacy and that of their neighbors doesn't alter the fact that they can if they choose.  We are not even provided the courtesy of a charade in that respect.

Telecoms' deep packet inspection tech helps Iranian gov't surveil the lives of others

Be careful what you say over your cellular phone or on the web, at work or at school. Because you're being KGB'd like few have been KGB'd before.

The US Homeland Security is now demanding fingerprints and retinal scan info from departing international travellers from the USA. Perhaps their logic is that a traveller may refuse on entry to the US but they have no recourse when trapped on US soil.

Am I alone in finding similarities between the paranoia and slavish devotion to 'security' by the security apparatus of a failing empire and the paranoia and slavish devotion to security of the Nazis during the period after the battle of Kursk, the Sicilian and Normandy landings?

The Berlin Wall was intended to keep individuals in, can Homeland security  use its vast intelligence gathering apparatus as a 'Berlin Wall' to control individuals' movements in the interests of the state but against the interests of a free people?

No, you're not alone.

I recall that one of my first discussions on babble was to address the issue of the Conservative Party database of Canadian voters. That kind of amassed personal information violates Canadian privacy laws, though there may be a loophole for political parties. There was also an indication that the CPC were compiling data not only from public sources but even from government records. It is known that any contact between a citizen and a Conservative MP is added to the database. People here informed me that all the parties do the same thing.

Corporations also use amassed information, much of it I believe from loyalty cards, to target consumers. Companies also share information between divisions. A good friend of mine used to work directly with Ted Rogers and one of their initiatives involved the telecoms' efforts to get into the insurance business, partly if not mainly in order to be able to use information in insurance records for telecommunications sales and marketing purposes.

Police use extensive data banks. The US retina scan is a disturbing addition. It also sounds like these will be greatly supplemented if protesters will now be required to give fingerprints on request, even without any charges being laid, as recently discussed here in another thread.

Fidel, you have pointed out that it is technologically possible to monitor all internet and telephone communications. In your link, China does this routinely of its own citizens, and Iran has apparently now purchased a similar system. It is also said that the security branches of NATO and other governments cooperate to share information obtained through telephone and internet monitoring.

However I believe it is a giant leap from that information to the conclusion that we in Canada are all being personally surveiled every minute of the day, by government, corporations and "any hacker who has time to kill".

Is it possible to responsibly outline the degree of the intrusion of our privacy, here in Canada, before we start comparing our own situation to that of the citizens in Nazi-occupied countries and totalitarian regimes?

Not only departing visitors but also any visitor who has the unfortunate "lay over" stop in the US. A German friend of mine flew from Germant to Canada and because there was a layover in the US for an hour or so he had to get the same treatment. Why should foreign people who simply land at an airport be subjected to this?

For me, I prefer to spend my vacation money and time in better places. I'm boycotting our backwards neighbours to the south until they actually get democracy (I know, I'll be waiting a long time).

Me too. I differentiate between the American elitist agenda and the American people but it is frightening how the people are sleepwalking through a period when elitist banksters and politicians are stealing their future via debt and asset manipulation while the propaganda machine plays on their patriotism to sacrifice their children to the megalomania of global adventurism. 

The greatest fear I have is how certain interests in the US may use the threat of a failed US state to project security paranoia outwards and raise global tensions to take the focus off their self-inflicted financial predicament.  Calling the sheeple to arms to fight an imaginary enemy is a tried and true method to default on debt and obscure the fact of a peoples' stolen standard of living, much the same way Hitler rallied the Germans using the Treaty of Versailles as a strawman.

A more likely outcome will be a reduced ability to project power due to a crushing public debt but what will it take to force the American security establishment to reduce military and security spending to concentrate on rebuilding their standard of living? Will the power of democracy triumph as American individuals rise up to say 'enough' or will the vested interests triumph over a people sleepwalking toward a failed state?

Or CSIS recruitment of individuals within Labour organizations, Non Profit organizations in Canada with which we may ascribe too. Montebello was an activate example of polce infiltration is what these recruits signed on for?

But in all areas as Thanks has put up, what can one do in regards to human rights to privacy in face of what a company intends to do while you use secured lockers, internet emails. A company scans them declaring them as their own? Sign a waiver that you admit and if not, face being fired based on a condition of your employment. Are letters signed under duress legal?

All of us are reasonable here to understand what is apropriate and not, so you want to move forward here again to sideswipe fear mongering to adjustment in conduct, understanding an Orwellian experience is being moved forward and appears to me to be  the decay of those rights and freedoms.

So how to respond given the circumstance?

Your a Union Executive. Are the rights of dissemination of information in "doing one's job" warranting discipline according too, by providing benefit to a third party, while giving an open declaration to invitation. Go into your locker without you present?

We had assurances in the beginning,  that only under a police request, but now,  the opinion has changed to one of entitlement  to what is owned as property and our leaving things in those supposedly secured locations.

We are asked to appeal to the owners "righteousness of the law,"  but as we have seen, this has changed.

Best,

I know for sure that anyone who is actively involved in any activist area whether it be labour or environmentalism or social justice has always been subject to Canada's "security" agencies.  What makes you think that our fascist spies would not use the same techniques as used routinely in the USA?  

Have they spent the money to listen to everyone or only people who are active or know someone who is active?  Too me the answer is irrelevant if you are talking about what constitutes a police state. We are like the proverbial frog in the water who can't jump put out of the pot as the water temperature rises.

The Vancouver police have a new sonic crowd control weapon.  This like the taser is about control not justice. The police get to assess the situation and decide how much pain a citizen should endure because they will not obey a police order.  It is an instantaneous process of charge, conviction and punishment for the protectors and is the hallmark of a police state. 

___________________________________________

Soothsayers had a better record of prediction than economists

I wouldn't suggest that each of us are specific targets of eavesdropping by the feds. They've had data mining software to sift through phone calls and picking out interesting words or phrases for a long time. And it's a lot more sophisticated today. Apparently Echelon began as a secret program to focus on cold war spying with the Soviets the objects of their attention along with invading their airspace with high altitude spy planes, then satellites etc. Today most phone calls in the western world are digitized for transmission over fibre trunkline bundles and routed over land and undersea. Not just any hacker can do what the NSA and telecoms have been doing apparently for some time according to whistleblowers working for telecoms in the US.

The technical capabilities of US telecoms for invading our privacy is far more advanced today than the Nazis or Stasi, KGB, BRAC, DINA, Savak etc ever dreamed of possessing. I am not a legal beagle, and I've only been casually following the news items in the state regarding FISA ammendments and telecoms lobbying. The way I look at it is that if the Yanks have been pulling renditions and torturing etc for a lot longer period than what the newz media have been told and are revealing to the public today, then the NSA, and Canadians, Brits etc will have been spying on the public without regard for the law for many years, too. And this is why I think a new 9/11 investigation should be pushed for at every turn. Millions of Americans and Canadians are for it happening. They've been using the events of 9/11 terrorism to justify enacting all kinds of security apparatus and rolling back civil liberties in the US. And our weak and ineffective leaders in Canada will want to shadow their policies sooner or later if they haven't already.

"The illegal we can do now. The unconstitutional will take longer" - Henry Kissinger making with cocktail party humour

Okay, so I think that's an important point to note -- that surveillance is in fact not within the bounds of feasibility for "any hacker with time on their hands", nor any corporation other than perhaps telecoms, contrary to the suggestions in the opening post.

Also, not to minimize the significance of illegal spying by any government, but Nazi-occupied countries and totalitarian regimes use the information gathered in this way to persecute dissidents. Is there evidence that this is happening in Canada, and if so, on what scale?

I think the Stasi were also interested in prosecuting Nazi war criminals in addition to dissenters. Our side welcomed such war criminals with open arms while spying on socialists and communists here, union activists etc. And yes, the west was also spying on the East at the time, and that the side of virtue and truth were also doing illegal wiretaps of western citizens, pereptrating false flag terrorism on west as well as eastern citizens and infrastructure, and carrying out political assassinations of European politicians both sides of the iron curtain. I think it would be folly to believe that it was only the Stasi and KGB who were spying on their own citizens. Avi Lewis says he is thankful today for Canada's secret service agency. The meticulous records they kept on his grandfather have allowed him to know things about David Lewis he never would have known otherwise. Apparently the feds took great interest in Tommy Douglas and many others as well.

not that i want to dwell ad nauseum on this issue when there are other critical issues, but

re:

"nobody "lived under" Lenin for very long. The Bolshevik Revolution occurred late in 1917"

Nobody, particularly the thousands of ordinary Kyiv residents who were slaughtered by Bolsheviks in 1917, lived long under Lenin.

The years that he was in power were years of terror for the majority of ordinary Ukrainians.

Those in the media who allow statements upholding his reign as some sort of model to pass without question in an interview do the entire left in this country a major disservice. 

that's why i raised the issue initially.

today it seems there is so much surveillance going on that it starts to feel somewhat like being under Soviet rule, or Nazi rule.

that was the second point.

implications for now or future are a separate issue.

Fair enough about Lenin, but again, this is no reign of terror for Canadians.

Canada wasn't even considered a frontline state during the cold war. And yet they still felt the need to spy on a number of leftists.

And during FLQ, it was PET's muscle, the little guy from Shawinigan who insisted that war measures be used. Hundreds of socialists, nion leaders and social workers were rounded up, interrogated for days on end and civil liberties violated.

Um, yeah, 40 years ago. Like, before the internet.

In 2006, Hillary Clinton asked former General Michael Hayden and head of the NSA just how many warrantless wiretaps of US citizens the shadow government had carried out. Hayden's answer was, "I'm not going to tell you." And there are black budgets allocated for these kinds of domestic spying programs that will never see the light of day.

Naomi Wolf wrote:

National security means whatever they want it to mean. Today it's the phony war on terror. And anyone who questions the legitimacy of phony war is labelled a heretic.

This is absolutely unacceptable, it is maddening, it is frightening and governments need to answer for this. However none of this adds up to the conclusion that our situation is analogous to that of the citizens of Iran, China, the former Soviet Union, or under Nazi occupation.

The difference is that the secret polizia in those countries could not possibly have eyeballed every single citizen in those countries, just targeted dissidents and maybe some percentage of the general population for good measure. In fact, our governments were doing a pretty good job of spying on those countries with U2 and SR-71 spy planes, spy satellites capable of incredible image resolutions down to one square foot on the ground etc.

The secret polizia of DINA in Chile and BRAC/CIA in Cuba  were feared among the general populations. Uncle Sam's bosom friend, General Pinochet once said that there wasn't a mouse stir in Chile that he didn't know about. Not all of Allende's telexes intended for information economy were destroyed by the fascists. They kept and maintained some of it for spying on Chileans.

Today our governments with the help from their telecom friends really do have the technical capability to sift through tens of millions of phone calls, emails, PDA and web activity in general. They have the ability to track your every move on the grid. Pablo Escobar didn't stand a chance of evading Dope Inc. and the shadow feds when they finally surrounded him.

when people had their neighbours, in very small villages, watching their every move, tech superiority in the past just added insult to injury.

Spy on your competitiors! Profit from their success!

Surveillance is profitable.

"this is no reign of terror for Canadians."

It's all bad and has to stop.

It's no reign of terror for Canadians, but it is for people in countries where our are autocrats have shmoozed with at cocktail parties and signed trade deals with. People are being terrorized by those governments in this very hemisphere. Murder, torture, rape, etc Our elected stooges rub elbows with the scum of the earth when doing favours for Uncle Sam.

In this hemisphere for a long time and much worse than the Stasi and even KGB were guilty of. I can't ever have high opinion of our lap dogs in Ottawa. It would be impossible for me. Because it doesn't happen to me doesn't excuse our stooges and our largest trade partners next door for orchestrating the torture and the terror, and least of all the gross human rights violations and atrocities happening in "the backyard" for a long time running.

Welcome Home, War! Creating the "Domestic Surveillance State" How America's Wars Are Systematically Destroying Our Liberties

CMRF? It sounds like the ruling class are fearful of street rebellions to restore law and order.

Vancouver, Quebec City, Seattle and Philadelphia are examples of our state police breaking up demonstrations with every bit as much force as in supposed totalitarian governments.  Look at the footage recently from Philadelphia. The Iranians only wish they had the sophisticated police apparatus of control that an American city can mobilize. 

The security agencies are interviewing every single person they know of with any history of dissent and also anyone who knows them.  Unless you are Moslem I will grant you that arbitrary long term detention is not very prevalent but only if you accept our government structure as is and do not try to change it.

I love the stories on the CBC about Christian "dissidents" who refuse to meet in the normal churches and instead insist on meeting in private homes and talking about things like Christianity and democracy.  We bitterly complain about how their rights are being infringed. So tell me if I am a Moslem and I refuse to meet inside a normal mosque but instead meet in private homes and talk about the evils of capitalism and the wonders of a Shia law based system what is my government going to do to me.  I doubt anyone will dispute that just as in China we will have the security people all over and infiltrating any group they become aware of.  But that is for our peace and security not like the evil Chinese right?

Or Iran's terrible treatment of those poor young Americans who just happened to "wander" across the Iranian border in a remote area. Imagine they were arrested and held for such an act.  I am sure that if one of my Iranian friends in Cranbrook had cousins visiting from Tehran who spoke little or no English and they went hiking in the mountains and inadvertently wandered across the border into the US the US would not detain them or arrest them let alone convict and sentence them for a border breach right?

http://www.aids.org/atn/a-348-01.html

On August 6, Kate Krauss of ACT UP Philadelphia wrote to AIDS Treatment News:

"Readers should know that individuals' health is in danger. Demonstrators are being dragged, kicked, beaten, hog-tied, and slammed against walls head first. Beaten arrestees have gone untreated and jailed demonstrators have been unable to obtain important drugs, including HIV medications.

"Readers should know that the very types of ACT UP-style demonstrations that sped up the FDA drug approval process and transformed the patients' rights movement in our country are being outlawed in Philadelphia. Police destroyed signs, puppets, and other props with visual messages that would have explained the issues during demonstrations. We believe that Los Angeles may follow suit during the Democratic Convention. The right to free speech and freedom of assembly are in the Constitution, even for controversial speech and assemblies. The Philadelphia police department is trying to criminalize dissent."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etv8YEqaWgA [39]

in terms of 'meaning' @6:

If the main cause of all social and ecological problems is financiers' control of money creation, giving  them ultimate power over democratic/ participatory decision-making,

and if the best process of resident action is at the base, within local communities as root and ground of any solid foundation of a movement for change,

then

the most useful initial step to address the main cause can be taken by local groups of residents talking and working together to inform eachother and neighbours about private banker vs. public/participatory control of money creation. 

Sites like www.comer.org or similar international sites on monetary reform, can be visited for information, and local discussion groups can form to start. 

Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich's partner Elizabeth has been active in this work, but without a ground base of informed people, the effort cannot be sustained given the bankers'/corporations'/politicians' opposition.  As Kucinich was kept out of televised debates by corporate media, good candidates can be side-lined or otherwise disposed of by current powers. 

There are already some Committee on Monetary and Economic Reform groups in Canada, or groups could start up different organizations with similar info.

None of this requires surveillance.  Existing banker and complicit powers are in the wrong for engaging in such.  There is no excuse for this behaviour by anyone. 

The past is over.  New options mean no surveillance, no heroics.

I think it was a drain on precious manpower, yes. The Stasi supposedly had files on six million people. The west tapped into East German telephone lines regularly and were planning to dig a tunnel toward a central office telephone switch in East Berlin. But I think the largest concern on the ground for the East Germans and Sovs was the fact that Himmler's SS intel agents were used to spy on them after the war. U2 spy planes were a going concern in the skies over the Soviet Union, but the Yanks managed to launch a spy satellite in 1960 which the public did not know about until after the end of cold war. It revealed more information about the former Soviet Union than all U2 and SR71 covert flyovers combined. Hundreds of US pilots were downed over North Korean and Russian air space and exacerbating cold war tensions.

The NSA now spies on the lives of Americans and citizens around the world with technical capabilities the Stasi never dreamed of possessing. Orwell's big brother surveillance is more true today than ever with globalizing US military bases, between 800 and 1000 US bases around the world. The manpower issue of maintaining soldiers on so many foreign bases is not what people think it is because many of them are sophisticated telecommunications installations designed for eavesdropping and wiretaps as well as for military purposes. Only a handful few people are needed to maintain and operate those installations. It's the most efficient surveillance system ever conceived of and growing constantly. They spy on millions by tapping wires and cables, under the ocean, over the air, and even from space.

Bamford Breaks Out: Shadow Factory exposes NSA, CIA, Hayden, Bush, 9/11 Book published 2008

so that gives the left justification to do the same thing?

shame.

harrass and intimidate to obtain, what, an agreement to allow illegal domestic surveillance, which continues whether or not permission is given?

morale doesn't improve under terror, of any kind.

nor does it trust that imposing power will change, especially given ongoing surveillance even when morale was positive.

Well I don't know about you, but if Himmler's SS were spying on me and my country's military, I'd be pissed. Afterall, those guys had just murdered tens of millions of Russian citizens in Hitler's war of annihilation against Soviet communism. As in, they weren't even invited into Russia, Ukraine etc. And lo and behold, guess who's looking at them real close all over again in the 1950s and 60's? I'd be trusting few on the other side and maybe even think about erecting a wall.

thanks, the Soviet Union doesn't exist anymore. And unlike the Stasi who tapped phone lines of some six million or so of their citizens, the secret police of today in North America don't even have to climb a telephone pole to do a physical wiretap of someone's telephone line. NSA spooks are able to do a wiretap from the comfort of a hotel room or government office and with just a lap top computer and a bit of hardware. The hardware and software for enabling government wiretaps in the US is now incorporated(integrated into all telecom switching equipment by order of spooky US law) into every telephone central switch, every college and campus computer network, and every ISP service in the United States.

Unlike the former East German Stasi, the USSA's NSA aren't even denying that they spy on the lives of others. It's the largest domestic and foreign spying operation ever created. It's massive.

who's to trust when everyone is spying?  anyone with google earth can see what anyone is up to, down to the last square foot as has been said.  unionized communications staff of satellite corps can probably do that twenty-four seven.

where does this stop?

i don't think the surveillance stops at all.

Well I'm pretty sure it does not stop at email, or internet social forums, cell phone conversations, land line communications and so on. The NSA owns the encryption industry, so I'm not sure that even Skype service would be safe from the eyes and ears of government minders in the ECHELON group of countries.

What I am sure of is that they are not so afraid of their very own terrorist creations "Al-Qaeda" or other similar groups. The war on terror is a ruse. Al-Qa'eda is really Al-CIA'da. The Taliban are their creation as well.

What has the political right feared the most since the 1950's? Communism, yes. But what they fear the most is democracy. Democracy is the right's most hated institution and always will be. Their long game is to prevent outbreaks of democracy around the world. And destabilizing countries is their game. Dirty tricks is their game.

can you have a just democracy with non-stop surveillance?

repeated for lack of sufficient answer

After the world revolutions are finalized in the future and democracy placed in the hands of the people, all of the capitalist apparatus for production as well as spying on the lives of others will be owned and controlled by the large majority of people. I think the surveillance end of things could be used to create a highly technical cyber democracy.

See the web article 'Santiago Dreaming' One of the right's criticism's of left wing economics is that there was never a real loopback/feedback mechanism for socialist production methods. Socialist governments could not possibly identify the material demands of the people without utilizing supply and demand market mechanisms, or so they say. Supply and demand has become a runaway train here in the west without proper regulation or democratic input from communities and workers on a whole. The truth was that Soviet economies were forced to operate by different constraints than supply and demand, and it was mainly due to a lack of manpower in the FSU after WW II.

But I think that Dr Allende and cybernetician Stafford Beer were on to something before fascists destroyed their technical experiment for a modern information based socialist economy in 1970's Chile. I think that technology can be used for good as much as it can be used to undermine democracy. The means of production and information gathering has to come under control of the people though for it to happen. The struggle for democracy continues.

Let's get the democracy first, and then if the spying doesn't help, we'll get rid of it.

And when 99% of the world's population realize they far outnumber the one percent in control and force marching them down a road to global serfdom, it will happen.

"I think the surveillance end of things could be used to create a highly technical cyber democracy."

-highly scary.

"Soviet economies were forced to operate by different constraints than supply and demand, and it was mainly due to a lack of.."

human decency.

"The means of production and information gathering has to come under control of the people"

-ie) the elitist few on the left who have advanced coding skills.

re: "may even think about a wall"

-and the trade off for a high tech wall is permission to monitor all electronic communications and whereabouts, including by space satellite, along with permission to harrass through these channels?  a) there is no such thing as a secure wall- if it's not hacked today its hacked tomorrow. b) even if a secure wall was possible, the trade-off is unbalanced and unfair.

The awful part is the surveillance and harrassment are occurring in any case, by all sides, unremittingly.  all that leaves, the only shred of personal power, is to not give permission.

spying never helps.

Thanks, if democracy continues to elude the world, then it doesn't matter which technology is not under control of the proletariat. It's all there in Legs Diamond's book, Guns, Germans, and Steel. We can't reverse computer technology anymore than we can reverse the gun powder revolution, or the Newtonian discoveries of gravity that led to the industrial revolution. About the only way I can see a start from scratch happening is a very bleak sci-fi scenario where a handful few emerge from some kind of apocalyptic global disaster and everything is destroyed beyond recognition. We really hope that doesn't happen. What we really do want is to democratize everything in sight.

We would for sure want to trash and destroy any ability for anyone to wiretap communications so easily as the US feds are able to do today. Yes I agree with getting rid of CALEA wiretap and any other backdoor tech they've installed in telecom switching equipment since. There is no place for spying on the lives of millions across dozens of countries as is the case today. But communications technology will be our democratic friend some day. The whole world is counting on it. Tech will make owning the means of production for the proles infinitely more possible in the future. I'd bet the farm on it. In the distant future, material poverty and hunger will be eliminated. Deadly diseases of today will be cured by technological advances we can only dream of today. The future looks very bright for children of today and their children and so on. There has never been a better time in human history to have children than now and in the future. Children are the future, and they will achieve great things besides democratizing the world. I think those Scorpions song lyrics from back then are as relevant today as they were then:

Take me to the magic of the moment
On a glory night
Where the children of tomorrow dream away
In the wind of change

Walking down the street
Distant memories
Are buried in the past forever

I fallow the Moskva
Down to Gorky Park
Listening to the wind of change

Democratic participation has decided against use of torture, slavery, and other antisocial behaviour.

Spying on persons from space or through any channels, where there is no permission is antisocial behaviour.

At present spying on persons is a power trip for some. So you give the ability to spy on persons to everyone on the planet.  Useful?

Instead of harrassing civilians, why don't hackers leak bank transactions?  That would be useful.

at this point i'm prepared to accept any efforts to reverse the horrendous course directed by the G20.

I'm a supporter of dumb internet. This means that the intel is at the peripheries of the internet(ie. in your hands not their's) and not in the hands of governments or telcos. Experts say dumb internet makes more sense in several ways when considering everything from privacy to speed of communication. The fewer bottlenecks the faster and better it works for everyone.

That's illegal. And look at Gary McKinnon. The thing of it is, why should governments have secrets? The Sovs submitted to glasnost. It's time our governments do the same. The struggle for democracy continues.

Love that Orwell.

But what kind of citizenry is he relying on to buy into Big Brother?   What percentage of the citizenry have not studied/read   1984 by Grade 11?  Has the "intelligentsia" warned them of developments? 

What if they all just read more?

Triciamarie, Fidel is simply a big anti-American alarmist who enjoys looking for ways to put down the country he's a resident of with half-baked assertions, statements and falsehoods gleamed from spending too much time reading and re-reading the books in his bookshelf. He doesn't really know anything about the surveillance set-up in Canada, he just said what he said to rabble-rouse. If you want any real info on this topic that's not crazy conspiracy theories, I suggest you look elsewhere; he's not going to provide it for you.

Also, while he excoriates Canada and the United States for these problems, he forgets about a certain island nation and it's leader (who he's taken his cyber-name from) that has a security apparatus that's just as intrusive as ours might be.

EFF says:

The reality is that Al-Qa'eda is really Al-CIA'da. There are American patriots who've blown the whistle on the CIA-US Military's ongoing connections to their cold war era Islamic gladios. There is no legitimate need to spy on the lives of millions. Millions of Americans(and Canadians) have been mind-fucked by an invisible enemy of the CIA and US Military's creation.

Last I recall, Cuba had a different political system than Canada or the USA claim to have ... I believe that the Canadian and USian systems are claimed to be based on freedom ... could be wrong on that, but that's the rumour.

Is it your contention that as long as there are countries less free than Canada and the USA, that criticism of Canada and the USA is not valid?

The largest threat to human rights on the island of Cuba has always been Guantanamo Bay Naval base where hundreds of innocent people have been abducted from all over the world, detained, tortured and, denied access to legal representation.

More than 3000 Cubans have died over the years as a direct result of US sponsored terrorism.

There have been more than 600 CIA-mafia attempts to murder Cuban leader Fidel Ruiz Castro. Of course there is going to be security in Cuba, and they have the US CIA and Gusano terrorists to thank for this situation.

Pretty much the point; you can't use a dictatorship (and yes, I'm sorry, but Cuba is one) to beat up on the flaws of two democratic nations. I'm not going to be blindsided for not facing that fact. If Fidel wants to do so while saying some nebulous nonsense about surveillance that he can't really prove, that's his prerogative.

Bullshit they said they are spying on us. The government said the are spying on us. What more do you need you appologist of the state. They themselves have proven on many topics they are more interested in spying on us than abroad.

What difference did it make to East Germans who couldn't prove anything against the Stasi? Shadow feds hate whistle blowers as they are deemed un-American. It's not good to blow the whistle on corruption, kick-back and graft. Cubans were tired of being harassed by the CIA's extension of secret polizia in Cuba, BRAC. Tired of the invasions of privacy and brutality of US-sponsored torture. It's no good, and that's why the Americanos can use only one end of the island now for torture and vicious beatings of innocent people falsely accused of being Al-CIA'duh. Of course they are all guilty when the American inquisition comes calling.

The Real Terror Network 1982

Meet the Friendly Dictators [64] Featuring 36 of America's Most Embarrassing Allies(Needs updating)

re: 'dumb internet'; i agree, and it seems public school kids today know how to code, high schoolers build computers..my concerns with internet probably are partly a reflection of my own limitations in computer tech.  

And you're right, kids today can write some fairly sophisticated programs to run on everything from homemade rudimentary robots to their cell phones to web pages viewed on cell phones. This is the beginning of something really big. What is it that can't be hooked up to the internet today? Lots of things, but that's changing. Some day your automatic dishwasher and toaster will be connected. For what reasons we can only guess, but the possibilities are endless for an information based democracy. But this is merely the beginning of a main era(channeling Raoul Duke here) that is seeing the means of production being placed into the hands of the proletariat where it should be. And I suspect it will be some day. And from failing hands we must pass that torch to future proles. technology can be our worst enemy. or it can be a useful tool for good purposes. The choice is our's.

“If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25 cars that got 1000 MPG” - Bill Gates

I think that some day in the future, there may actually be a need to control technology such as robots with AI that far exceeds human intelligence. It could be a scenario whereby the science fiction character in Terminator II(or is it III?) John Connor informs Sara Connor that the futuristic "Skynet" decided mankind's fate in a microsecond if such an AI perceives humanity as a threat. And, afterall, we have already threatened the existence of just about every living thing so far. I dunno, it's sci-fi.

out of control.  technology is out of control.  finance is out of control. 

if tech is out of control, and it seems to be, then i don't give permission for any surveillance.

the only thing i can do is advocate for financial control, because that determines tech and every other destruction.

so that's what i do, aside from trying to stay alive and help those i can, given current means at my disposal.

Yes I agree that finance has become a weapon of mass destruction. Believe it or not, countries like China and even India are showing the world that money can be controlled and used merely as a means of exchange and not just an industry unto itself for making money from money. Money doesn't achieve things, people and workers do. Everybody knows that except for financial capitalists who float trillions of dollars around the world while tens of millions starve to death and die in agony each and every year like clockwork. Capitalism is a monumental failure.

Technology is not yet controlled by proles, but it could be. Tech will lurch unpredictably out of control for everyone at a time when the theoretical technological singularity happens, which some scientific experts have predicted may occur in about 30 or 40 year's time, and if we don't blow up the world in the meantime. "There is no fate but what we make for ourselves" - John Connor, T-II: Rise of the Digital Effects

Interesting. Here is a similar stat about priorities in North America - one in four Americans is employed guarding the property of the wealthy:

http://www.boingboing.net/2010/02/05/santa-fe-institute-e.html

The link to the original article has been changed. Here it is:

http://www.sfreporter.com/santafe/article-5188-born-poor.html [70]

That's astounding, "guard labour." Thanks 6079_Smith_W. Worthy of a bookmark.

@ Fidel

Yup, that's why I held on to it too.

WRT the Stasi, it is interesting that even after the fall of the SED, the west used the Stasi as an excuse to suppress democracy in the former East Germany.

The assumption in the West was that after the fall of communism reunification was a fait accompli (it was part of the West German constitution, after all), but in fact East Germany still existed, and there were many there who wanted to continue as a separate democratic state. What clinched the deal was the offer to exchange East German marks at par for Deutschmark (I think they were worth about 1/10 at the time) as part of the deal for reunification. A friend of mine told me that the streets were littered with smashed up BMWs, Opels and Benz that people had bought with their shiny new western money, but which weren't built to handle eastern cobblestone streets.

Once reunification was a done deal, most community leaders and politicians found themselves shut out because of connections to the former government and Stasi (like deNazification after WW2). The irony was, in the DDR days you couldn't get to be dogcatcher without some connection to the Stasi. Gregor Gysi ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregor_Gysi ) was, if I remember correctly, for years the only politician actually born in East Germany who managed to get into office. The rest of them were west Germans parachuted in.

Another Cold War Myth The Fall of the Berlin Wall By WILLIAM BLUM