On September 12th, the anti-surveillance rally Freedom not Fear 2009 – Stop Surveillance Mania! took place in various European capitals. Protesters from many political parties, social and human rights groups took to the streets to voice their concerns about the post 9/11 Orwellian laws that are still being pushed and implemented all across Europe and the world. Many protested against Internet Censorship as well.
I totally and wholeheartedly agree with the protesters: state and corporate surveillance have gone way too far, and need to be rolled back, lest we lose all freedoms. Unfortunately, the current Big Brother-ish zeitgeist won’t prove easy to defeat. In a typical case of moral panic, Orwell’s Nineteeneightyfour model is here to stay… and is extremely popular among conservative and socialist control freaks alike. Expect more of the same insanity to come.
One aspect of this insanity is that such peaceful anti-surveillance pro human rights rallies still generate incidents of wanton police brutality. One such (minor) incident has been caught on film by a protester in Berlin, and has been quickly mirrored all over the Internet. IMHO, we have here a perfect case of Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? While police openly films protesters (which is more often an attempt to intimidate them than to document illegal behavior), the reverse seldom occurs. In this particular case, protesters were lucky to film typical riot police behavior, and the video was so clear and undeniable, that Berlin Police had no choice but to open an investigation against one of their own.
This incident is in a twisted way quite ironic: on a rally against surveillance where police and protesters have been filming each others, the only way to gather evidence against this brutal Berlin police squad was… a surveillance video. Perhaps surveillance, if done by the right people, isn’t so bad after all? If it could deter violent acts, doesn’t it have its legitimate uses? Amazing, isn’t it?
Anyway, while the Chaos Computer Club (CCC) is pushing for legislation that would force police officers to wear ID numbers, let me predict here that quite the contrary will happen: we’ll soon get laws forbidding people to film police forces (some countries certainly have such laws in place already); and leaking such proofs of police brutality will be a criminal offense. Oh, and of course, police will adapt to the new age — if they didn’t already — by wearing masks and helmets to remain unidentifiable, a right that some states (like Germany) deny their citizens.
Oh well, isn’t it wonderful how skewed the laws are?