11th October day of action against surveillance — Freedom not Fear + ANPR news for car drivers

Call to mass action Sat­ur­day 11th Octo­ber against the sur­veil­lance state in sol­i­dar­i­ty with activists around the world http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/content/view/242/144/

A broad move­ment of cam­paign­ers and orga­ni­za­tions is call­ing on every­body to join action against exces­sive sur­veil­lance by gov­ern­ments and busi­ness­es. On 11 Octo­ber 2008, con­cerned peo­ple in many coun­tries will take to the streets, the mot­to being “Free­dom not fear 2008”. Peace­ful and cre­ative action, from protest march­es to par­ties, will take place in many cap­i­tal cities.

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Sur­veil­lance mania is spread­ing. Gov­ern­ments and busi­ness­es reg­is­ter, mon­i­tor and con­trol our behav­iour ever more thor­ough­ly. No mat­ter what we do, who we phone and talk to, where we go, whom we are friends with, what our inter­ests are, which groups we par­tic­i­pate in — “big broth­er” gov­ern­ment and “lit­tle broth­ers” in busi­ness know it more and more thor­ough­ly. The result­ing lack of pri­va­cy and con­fi­den­tial­i­ty is putting at risk the free­dom of con­fes­sion, the free­dom of speech as well as the work of doc­tors, helplines, lawyers and jour­nal­ists.

The man­i­fold agen­da of secu­ri­ty sec­tor reform encom­pass­es the con­ver­gence of police, intel­li­gence agen­cies and the mil­i­tary, threat­en­ing to melt down the divi­sion and bal­ance of pow­ers. Using meth­ods of mass sur­veil­lance, the bor­der­less coop­er­a­tion of the mil­i­tary, intel­li­gence ser­vices and police author­i­ties is lead­ing towards the con­struc­tion of “Fortress­es” in Europe and on oth­er con­ti­nents, direct­ed against refugees and dif­fer­ent-look­ing peo­ple but also affect­ing, for exam­ple, polit­i­cal activists, the poor and under-priv­iledged, and sports fans.

Peo­ple who con­stant­ly feel watched and under sur­veil­lance can­not freely and coura­geous­ly stand up for their rights and for a just soci­ety. Mass sur­veil­lance is there­by threat­en­ing the fab­ric of a demo­c­ra­t­ic and open soci­ety. Mass sur­veil­lance is also endan­ger­ing the work and com­mit­ment of civ­il soci­ety orga­ni­za­tions.

Sur­veil­lance, dis­trust and fear are grad­u­al­ly trans­form­ing our soci­ety into one of uncrit­i­cal con­sumers who have “noth­ing to hide” and — in a vain attempt to achieve total secu­ri­ty — are pre­pared to give up their free­doms. We do not want to live in such a soci­ety!

We believe the respect for our pri­va­cy to be an impor­tant part of our human dig­ni­ty. A free and open soci­ety can­not exist with­out uncon­di­tion­al­ly pri­vate spaces and com­mu­ni­ca­tions.

The increas­ing elec­tron­ic reg­is­tra­tion and sur­veil­lance of the entire pop­u­la­tion does not make us any safer from crime, costs mil­lions of Euros and puts the pri­va­cy of inno­cent cit­i­zens at risk. Under the reign of fear and blind action­ism, tar­get­ed and sus­tained secu­ri­ty mea­sures fall by the way­side, as well as tack­ling peo­ples’ actu­al dai­ly prob­lems such as unem­ploy­ment and pover­ty.

In order to protest against secu­ri­ty mania and exces­sive sur­veil­lance we will take to the streets in cap­i­tal cities in many coun­tries on 11 Octo­ber 2008. We call on every­body to join our peace­ful protest. Politi­cians are to see that we are will­ing to take to the streets for the pro­tec­tion of our lib­er­ties!

There are plans for a demo with music and noise at New Scot­land Yard. Are oth­ers else­where up for doing demos else­where in the UK at oth­er police sta­tions?

Wiki for info and dis­cus­sion re Lon­don / UK actions
at http://wiki.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/Freedom_Not_Fear_2008/London
and http://wiki.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/Diskussion:Freedom_Not_Fear_2008/London

It would be good to have a con­ver­sa­tion about this as we need to get some­thing good start­ed. Octo­ber 11th Vid-Fly­er http://www.ecln.org

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Vehi­cle spy-cam data to be held for five years

Author­i­ties will store details of car jour­neys sur­veilled by the new nation­al Auto­mat­ic Num­ber Plate Recog­ni­tion (ANPR) sys­tem for five years, the Home Office has revealed.

Senior police offi­cer had said the data on mil­lions of vehi­cles would only be kept for two years, the Guardian reports. The Infor­ma­tion Com­mis­sion­er’s Office (ICO) is exam­in­ing a com­plaint by Pri­va­cy Inter­na­tion­al over the extend­ed reten­tion peri­od. The pri­va­cy advo­ca­cy group described it as “unnec­es­sary and dis­pro­por­tion­ate”.

The ICO said: “Pro­longed reten­tion would need to be clear­ly jus­ti­fied based on con­tin­u­ing val­ue not on the mere chance it may come in use­ful.”

The ANPR sys­tem, head­quar­tered in Hen­don, north Lon­don, will be ful­ly oper­a­tional in the new year. Half of Eng­lish and Welsh police are already sup­ply­ing it with data from their upgrad­ed CCTV net­works.

Forces are being encour­aged to “ful­ly and strate­gi­cal­ly exploit” its poten­tial for track­ing sus­pects and vehi­cles by the Asso­ci­a­tion of Chief Police Offi­cers. It’s envis­aged that ANPR will be used as part of “main­stream polic­ing”, rang­ing from clamp­ing down on unin­sured dri­vers to counter-ter­ror oper­a­tions.

Cam­paign­ers have called for the gov­ern­ment to more clear­ly define which oth­er agen­cies will be allowed to inter­ro­gate the data­base and for what rea­sons.