WAR: EU Agrees On Tough New Security Measures

The UK Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, has chaired an emergency EU summit on anti-terror measures. The summit has produced tougher security measures including the compulsory retention of phone and internet records by European phone and internet companies. The European Parliament's civil liberties committee raised concerns over citizen's privacy. Mr.Clarke said civil liberties had to be treated "proportionately". "I argue that it is a fundamental civil liberty of people in Europe to be able to go to work on their transport system in the morning without being blown up and subject to terrorist attack," he said.



Just what are these terrorist laws meant to protect? Our way of life or just our life? If we were all hearded into secure camps our lives would be safe but would it really be a life worth living?

If our civil liberties are to be treat "proportionately" by those in control of our security, then it really is a police state. Whether the connotations surrounding police states have been over exaggerated over the years is another debate, but the fact remains that our current push for security over civil liberties has created a police state in Britain.

I dont want to just have a life whereby I am safe but not free to do what ever I choose, when ever I choose. When those who dictate whats "legal" and "illegal" are also all-seeing the stage is set for complete enslavement of us all. Even if our current leaders are truly acting in our interests now, whats to say that future administrations will too?

What if a Hitler style politician comes to power in Britain in the future? How can you rebel against them when control orders limit any ones freedom of movement and communications on the single say so of a minister? How can your right to criticise the government be defended if a fascist leader outlaws dissent?

Its all happend before throughout history. We would be completely naieve to even entertain the notion that creating unlimited power over us, in the name of saftey, will not be exploited and abused later down the track.

[edit on 13/7/05 by subz]

Just storing this information doesn't create a police state -- it's how it's used. If it ends up being used only for antiterror intelligence and prosecution, I have no problem with it. But if it ends up being used to crack down all sorts of plain vanilla criminal activity or worse to monitor peaceful political dissent, then we will have become police states.

police state: A state in which the government exercises rigid and repressive controls over the social, economic, and political life of the people, especially by means of a secret police force.

I think Britain qualifies for that definition.

Goes hand-in-hand with this:
London's Push For Surveillance Plan.

Under the proposal, dubbed the communications surveillance plan, telephone and internet companies would retain records of all private telephone calls, text messages and e-mails for a period of one to three years from all UK citizens, according to The Guardian.

What is also mentioned is that this will allow the UK government to monitor all UK citizens. The UK proposal is now being laid at the feet of the EU. If such a proposal gains approval, would that mean that all citizens of the EU will become monitored, making the UK, along with the EU, the most monitored of all developed nations? Probably will make old Soviet communism look sick. That is one hellva' large Orwellian 'police state'.

And to think that many within ATS placed this label on the US.
Oh, contraire.....






seekerof

[edit on 13-7-2005 by Seekerof]

British citizens are already being monitered by GCHQ and Mendwith Hill so no change there. If all this spying on us has made Britain safer , im a alien, must be boring listening to the rants of Little Britain.

Tony Benn himself on question time said we are becoming a Police State.