Just not cricket

There’s a striking simultaneity about events in Britain and Pakistan in the last 24 hours. Yesterday in Pakistan, Imran Khan, current Chancellor of the University of Bradford, former captain of the Pakistan cricket team - one of the finest all-rounders the game has ever produced - and a graduate of Oxford University, attended a protest rally against the imposition of emergency rule by US-supported authoritarian military dictator President Musharraf. Within minutes of appearing Khan was seized by religious students and handed over to the police who charged him under anti-terrorism legislation. Penalties under the act include life imprisonment and death.

Yesterday in New Labour’s Britain, as the Governor of the Bank of England warned of increasing threats to the economyfrom the global financial crisis, Gordon Brown introduced new measures to counter the perceived threat of terrorism. These include hardening the physical protection for public buildings, offering guidance to those operating public buildings, strengthening regional counter terrorism units, and “training neighbourhood police teams to deal with radicalisation in their local communities”. In addition, a single senior judge has been nominated to manage all terrorism cases, whilst a single senior lead prosecutor will be responsible for cases relating to “inciting violent extremism”. Musharraf has cited “judicial activism” – opposition from the judiciary - amongst his reasons for locking up all political opponents. It certainly looks as through Brown is side-stepping any future judicial opposition in the UK by selecting those who can be trusted to toe the line.

A major, nationwide “hearts and minds” campaign of propaganda emphasising “our shared values” will be launched in every community through schools, colleges, mosques and sports facilities, amongst faith groups and criminalised youth, in fact anywhere where people might be influenced by “ideologues” proposing radical change. After ten years with personal responsibility for the British economy, it is clear that Brown shares his values with his financial friends in the City of London, so “updated advice for universities on how to deal with extremism on the campus” is highly likely to include the identification of students seeking changes to the status quo, and guidance on neutralising them and rooting them out.

Also yesterday contracts were issued for the intelligence infrastructure involving biometric technology and shared databases, to support the UK Border Agency which will have 25,000 staff, uniting passport control, and customs with new powers of arrest and detention. Together with a new legislative assault on the rights to privacy and confidentiality, these measures will enable a huge range of police and other agencies to share up to 90 separate pieces of information on all cross-border travellers. “Airline liaison officers” based abroad will have new powers to cancel visas.

As the global recession begins to hit hard, millions will be radicalised as they lose their jobs and homes. New Labour is in the forefront of governments preparing and implementing a wide range of authoritarian measures to deal not just with suspected terrorists, but all those opposed to the capitalist corporations and the consequences of globalisation. No wonder the government’s response to Musharraf’s suspension of the constitution and the removal of Pakistan’s top judges has been muted.

Gerry Gold

Everyone's a 'suspect'

Just in case you thought New Labour’s planned new anti-terror laws were bad enough, pay attention to what the European Union is cooking up. This undemocratic, bureaucratic organisation is bringing forward a raft of measures that add to the growth of a European-wide authoritarian state.

The workings of the EU are obscure but thanks to Statewatch we can just about fathom out what’s going on. In its latest bulletin, the independent monitoring group analyses new terrorism laws planned by the European Commission. These would create three new categories of criminal offence: provocation to commit terrorism, recruitment for terrorism and training for terrorism. The "provocation" offence is extremely broad, as it does not require a direct encouragement to commit terrorist acts but applies to any statements which create a "danger" of such acts being committed. Statewatch warns:

“The wording of this definition is clearly likely to result in the criminalisation of the expression of political views (for example on the situation in Middle East or on certain conflicts within Member States) even if that expression does not in any way include the advocacy of terrorism to support those opinions. It will be enough that the authorities deem that there is a ‘danger’ that this will happen.”

Then there are the plans to fingerprint all children over six for EU passports. The commission would have included even younger children but the idea was rejected because the under-6s don’t yet have fully-identifiable fingerprints! Finally, this week the European Commission announced plans for a PNR (passenger name record) scheme to monitor all travel in and out of the EU. Similar data is already being collected under a EU-US scheme that sailed through without parliamentary approval.

All passengers, including visitors from the USA, will be “profiled” to see if they constitute a “risk”. If they are, they can be refused entry. The "profile" will be updated and held for 13 years. This will involve millions of quite innocent people being kept on record. Tony Bunyan, Statewatch editor, comments: "This is yet another measure that places everyone under surveillance and makes everyone a ‘suspect’ without any meaningful right to know how the data is used, how it is further processed and by whom. We have already got the mandatory taking of fingerprints for passports and ID cards and the mandatory storage of telecommunications data of every communication, now we are to have the mandatory logging of all travel in and out of the EU.

“The underlying rationale for each of the measures is the same - all are needed to tackle terrorism. Yet there is little evidence that the gathering of mountain upon mountain of data on the activities of every person in the EU makes a significant contribution. On the other hand, the use of this data for other purposes, now or in the future, will make the EU the most surveilled place in the world".

Bunyan says that the "profiling" of all airline passengers has “no place in a democracy”. He is right. The trouble is that behind the façade of parliamentary democracy, a terrifying authoritarian state is nearing completion. It’s an EU-wide project in which the New Labour government plays the leading role.

Paul Feldman
AWTW communications editor

Midnight of a surveillance society

In the week that new laws requiring phone companies to keep records of ALL calls and make them available to a range of agencies came into force in Britain, a report from the United States gives a chilling account of the destruction of civil liberties in that other great “democracy”.

In 2003 and 2003, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) described in separate reports how new technology was feeding a surveillance “monster” and how the government and private sector were increasingly “mining” data about individuals. In a further report, the ACLU says the situation has worsened dramatically and warns: “We are far too close to the midnight of a genuine surveillance society, and the second hand has not stopped sweeping around the dial.”

The state is engaged in a series of illegal activities. The National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency have departed from their supposedly exclusive focus on overseas spying, and have “turned their eyes and ears inward upon the American people” in violation of existing laws and the Constitution. The ACLU report shows that:

• the NSA has gained direct access to the telecommunications infrastructure through some of America’s largest companies. It is using broad data mining techniques to evaluate the communications of millions of people within the United States


• some of the major telecom companies have granted the NSA direct, wholesale access to their customers’ calling records – once again, outside the law – and that the NSA is compiling a giant database of those records


• the Treasury Department and the CIA is secretly sifting through the records of the global financial cooperative SWIFT, without Congressional authorisation or judicial oversight


• The NSA is sifting through the sea of communications using keyword searches, link analysis or other techniques such as voice pattern analysis


• A system for tracking cargo, also generated terrorist ratings on tens of millions of travellers, including American citizens


• the FBI’s “Investigative Data Warehouse” appears to be soaking up a broad array of data on innocent individuals


• a national ID system scheduled for 2008 will take state-issued documents such as a driver’s licence and turning them into nationally controlled, full-fledged national identity papers


• a radical shift in the use of CCTV, in which private cameras are actually tapped into by centralised government systems is under construction. New York City police plan to link together thousands of police and private video cameras combined with licence plate readers and a central police monitoring centre


• in August 2007 it was reported that the Department of Homeland Security was planning to deploy the nation’s spy satellites for domestic security purposes


• the government is claiming sweeping new powers to check the results of people’s Internet searches.

The ACLU report concludes: “In August 2007, the Bush Administration pressured Congress into enacting a misnamed Protect America Act. While the NSA can already engage in mass untargeted eavesdropping overseas, this legislation for the first time allows the government to engage in mass, untargeted collection of Americans’ communications (specifically, any conversations between people in the United States and overseas)… It cuts the courts out of the process, and permits the U.S. Attorney General to unilaterally issue a new legal order… in which entire programmes of electronic surveillance would be authorised in one sweep.”

Many of the practices described in the ACLU report take place in Britain too. New Labour has spent a decade building its own version of the surveillance society. The Brown government is constructing an authoritarian, one-party state and should it win the forthcoming election, it will press ahead with the destruction of what remains of our basic rights and civil liberties. One more reason to withhold your vote whenever the election is called.

Paul Feldman
AWTW communications editor