State's Eyes.

 

 

                                        Image courtesy of Natoinal Technology News.

           We all accept that Big Brother society is already here, and it is for ever tightening its grip on our everyday movements. Unseen, the eyes of the state are on your daily life, from shopping to work, from your leisure activities to your daily chores. Then of course there is Stingray the phone data vacuum. IMSI-catchers, also known as Stingrays, allow police forces to track mobile phones and intercept text messages, calls and other data within their radius in real time. The devices can capture the private data and phone calls of anyone who happens to be in range, whether they are a suspect or not.

                                                    Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

An interesting article from Wired.

          

           A Beyoncé gig, the coronation of King Charles, and the British Formula One Grand Prix all have one thing in common: Thousands of people at the events, which all took place earlier this year, had their faces scanned by police-operated face recognition tech.
          Backed by the Conservative government, police forces across England and Wales are being told to rapidly expand their use of the highly controversial technology, which globally has led to false arrests, misidentifications, and lives derailed. Police have been told to double their use of face searches against databases by early next year—45 million passport photos could be opened up to searches—and police are increasingly working with stores to try to identify shoplifters. Simultaneously, more regional police forces are testing real-time systems in public places.
          The rapid expansion of face recognition comes at a time when trust in policing levels are at record lows, following a series of high-profile scandals. Civil liberties groups, experts, and some lawmakers have called for bans on the use of face recognition technology, particularly in public places, saying it infringes on people’s privacy and human rights, and isn’t a “proportionate” way to find people suspected of committing crimes.
          “In the democratic world, we are an outlier at the moment,” says Madeleine Stone, a senior advocacy officer with Big Brother Watch, a privacy-focused group that has called for a ban and “immediate stop” on live face recognition, a proposal backed by 65 UK lawmakers. The EU, which the UK left in 2016, may ban the real-time use of face recognition systems, and one of its highest courts has called the technology “highly intrusive.” Various US states have banned police from using the technology.
          Cops in England and Wales can hunt for potential criminals using two main kinds of face recognition. First, there are live face recognition systems (LFR): These usually include cameras mounted on police vans that scan people’s faces as they walk by and check them against a “watchlist” of wanted people. The LFR technology is deployed for some big events and announced in advance by the police. Second, there’s retrospective face recognition (RFR), where images from CCTV, smartphones, and doorbell cameras can be fed into a system that tries to identify the person based on millions of existing photos. Police use of both systems is increasing.
          Two police forces in England and Wales—London’s Metropolitan Police and South Wales Police—have embraced LFR, using the technology for multiple years. (Police in Scotland, where policing is overseen locally, don’t use live systems but are reportedly increasing their use of RFR). So far this year, the Met and South Wales Police have used LFR on 22 separate occasions, according to statistics published on their websites.

Visit ann arky at https://spiritofrevolt.info   

Fawkes V.

         Surveillance keeps spreading its ever refined net over our world, apart from companies wanting to know what your up to, so they can target you with crap ads, and the state ever fearful that you are a bad apple, wants to build a very complete profile of you, from your habits, whereabouts, friends and what you actually look like. So anything that can hamper that process has to be welcomed. 

      A recent article from The Verge offers you free software that can go some way to making your facial recognition that bit more difficult. It's called Fawkes, after the Guy Fawkes mask worn in V for Vendetta.. Surely anything that might in some small way stick to fingers up at our surveillance masters is worth spreading around.

      The following is from The Verge:

    Ubiquitous facial recognition is a serious threat to privacy. The idea that the photos we share are being collected by companies to train algorithms that are sold commercially is worrying. Anyone can buy these tools, snap a photo of a stranger, and find out who they are in seconds. But researchers have come up with a clever way to help combat this problem.
      The solution is a tool named Fawkes, and was created by scientists at the University of Chicago’s Sand Lab. Named after the Guy Fawkes masks donned by revolutionaries in the V for Vendetta comic book and film, Fawkes uses artificial intelligence to subtly and almost imperceptibly alter your photos in order to trick facial recognition systems.
       The way the software works is a little complex. Running your photos through Fawkes doesn’t make you invisible to facial recognition exactly. Instead, the software makes subtle changes to your photos so that any algorithm scanning those images in future sees you as a different person altogether. Essentially, running Fawkes on your photos is like adding an invisible mask to your selfies.
        Scientists call this process “cloaking” and it’s intended to corrupt the resource facial recognition systems need to function: databases of faces scraped from social media. Facial recognition firm Clearview AI, for example, claims to have collected some three billion images of faces from sites like Facebook, YouTube, and Venmo, which it uses to identify strangers. But if the photos you share online have been run through Fawkes, say the researchers, then the face the algorithms know won’t actually be your own.
            According to the team from the University of Chicago, Fawkes is 100 percent successful against state-of-the-art facial recognition services from Microsoft (Azure Face), Amazon (Rekognition), and Face++ by Chinese tech giant Megvii.
           “What we are doing is using the cloaked photo in essence like a Trojan Horse, to corrupt unauthorized models to learn the wrong thing about what makes you look like you and not someone else,” Ben Zhao, a professor of computer science at the University of Chicago who helped create the Fawkes software, told The Verge. “Once the corruption happens, you are continuously protected no matter where you go or are seen.”
          The group behind the work — Shawn Shan, Emily Wenger, Jiayun Zhang, Huiying Li, Haitao Zheng, and Ben Y. Zhao — published a paper on the algorithm earlier this year. But late last month they also released Fawkes as free software for Windows and Macs that anyone can download and use. To date they say it’s been downloaded more than 100,000 times.
In our own tests we found that Fawkes is sparse in its design but easy enough to apply. It takes a couple of minutes to process each image, and the changes it makes are mostly imperceptible. Earlier this week, The New York Times published a story on Fawkes in which it noted that the cloaking effect was quite obvious, often making gendered changes to images like giving women mustaches. But the Fawkes team says the updated algorithm is much more subtle, and The Verge’s own tests agree with this.
        But is Fawkes a silver bullet for privacy? It’s doubtful. For a start, there’s the problem of adoption. If you read this article and decide to use Fawkes to cloak any photos you upload to social media in future, you’ll certainly be in the minority. Facial recognition is worrying because it’s a society-wide trend and so the solution needs to be society-wide, too. If only the tech-savvy shield their selfies, it just creates inequality and discrimination.
       Secondly, many firms that sell facial recognition algorithms created their databases of faces a long time ago, and you can’t retroactively take that information back. The CEO of Clearview, Hoan Ton-That, told the Times as much. “There are billions of unmodified photos on the internet, all on different domain names,” said Ton-That. “In practice, it’s almost certainly too late to perfect a technology like Fawkes and deploy it at scale.”
          Naturally, though, the team behind Fawkes disagree with this assessment. They note that although companies like Clearview claim to have billions of photos, that doesn’t mean much when you consider they’re supposed to identify hundreds of millions of users. “Chances are, for many people, Clearview only has a very small number of publicly accessible photos,” says Zhao. And if people release more cloaked photos in the future, he says, sooner or later the amount of cloaked images will outnumber the uncloaked ones.
           On the adoption front, however, the Fawkes team admits that for their software to make a real difference it has to be released more widely. They have no plans to make a web or mobile app due to security concerns, but are hopeful that companies like Facebook might integrate similar tech into their own platform in future.
          Integrating this tech would be in these companies’ interest, says Zhao. After all, firms like Facebook don’t want people to stop sharing photos, and these companies would still be able to collect the data they need from images (for features like photo tagging) before cloaking them on the public web. And while integrating this tech now might only have a small effect for current users, it could help convince future, privacy-conscious generations to sign up to these platforms.
           “Adoption by larger platforms, e.g. Facebook or others, could in time have a crippling effect on Clearview by basically making [their technology] so ineffective that it will no longer be useful or financially viable as a service,” says Zhao. “Clearview.ai going out of business because it’s no longer relevant or accurate is something that we would be satisfied [with] as an outcome of our work.”

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Condemn Or Else.

         In today's society it seems that if something happens the state doesn't particularly like and you don't jump up and condemn the action, then your are a suspect. 

The following article appeared on the site, finimondo, 

English version from Act For Freedom Now:

Lecce, Italy: A stupendous thought
August 2, 2020 by actforfreedom
        Some local news. We don’t know when, we don’t know who, we don’t know why, we only know where. And that alone is enough to open your heart, even if what happened seems not to have been very successful. But, as is well known, in some things it’s the thought that counts.
      A thought like the one someone left on the wall of a company in the outskirts of Lecce last weekend. It wasn’t a poster, or a slogan, no, it was a pot full of petrol with a couple of gas canisters attached to it, equipped with a rudimentary, possibly defective, fuse. There was a big blaze, but no explosion. The local media have no idea when it happened. Um, between the evening of Friday April 24 and the morning of Monday the 27th? They don’t even say who it could have been, or for what reason. Um, an act of intimidation or retaliation by some criminal or unbalanced element? On the other hand, they were very precise about where it occurred: in via del Platano 7, in the Castromediano district, headquarters of Parsec 3.26.
       But what is it involved in, this Parsec 3.26? It is a computer company specializing in digital technologies for the local authorities. For example, it created the software that is used by the police and the banks for the facial recognition of those filmed by video surveillance cameras. Ah, that’s all? Could it have been targeted because of, as we learn by browsing the site with the dreadful techno-Anglo-cretinising language, its “passion is E-Government”?
       Just because «it has started a division called Reco 3.26, active in the production of software systems in the field of smart recognition … in research in biometric systems and makes use of interdisciplinary teams that include Engineers and Scientists … The sectors in which it is currently introducing this technology are transport, finance, security (public and private). Growth is driven primarily by governments’ security initiatives. Companies belonging to sectors such as retail and banking are adopting facial recognition systems for identifying customers and monitoring their behaviour. To date, the solutions produced by Parsec 3.26 represent the state of the art of recognition technologies in Italy for public security. In fact, the company has distinguished itself for having created a biometric recognition solution currently used by the Ministry of the Interior – Central Anti-Crime Direction within the SARI system “?
        Is it possible that there is anyone hostile to this “distinguished” society just because it helps the State to fill the prisons and the banks to protect their safes? Whoever would have thought such a thing!
        Here, the fact that in times of confinement, checkpoints, self-certifications, tracking, surveillance with drones and so on … — stuff to shame those weaklings of the totalitarian regimes of the past — someone who had such a thought shortly before, during or after the anniversary of the Liberation from nazifascism, leaves us spellbound. Perhaps it was just a blaze, but how much splendid light amidst the darkness of today’s voluntary servitude.
        Light of revenge, light of dignity, light of freedom.

        Some time after the article was published the writers were paid a visit. The following is their report of the incident, again from Act For Freedom Now: 

Lecce, Italy: A little thought
        This is what the investigators looking into the unexpected blaze at the Parsec 3.26 on April 27, on the outskirts of Lecce in full lockdown, have had. And since Finimondo published a text which did not condemn what happened and were not outraged by it, quite the contrary, and as the animators of Finimondo live not far from the headquarters of that company whose social and economic reason for being is to embody Big Brother, you want to bet that 1 + 1 +
      So today, Monday July 27th, we were dragged out of bed early in the morning. No, it wasn’t the alarm clock, it was the Digos [political police]. They came to carry out a search and to give one of us a notice of investigation. They suspect he was the one who left “a pot containing petrol and two camping gas canisters” near the techno-cop company in Salento. The search, particularly attentive to computer equipment (which allows “understanding of the actual purposes of the act”) and clothing (being strangely attracted to multicolour, black must have gone out of fashion), had a positive outcome. No, but what are we saying, positive is too little, we would go as far as to say very positive. In fact, it seems they have discovered that there are traces of Finimondo’s text on the computer used by the suspect who has fired the Prosecutor’s imagination so much (you don’t say?). Moreover two camping gas canisters were seized (oh really?). Finally – you will never believe it! – they even found pots in his kitchen (seriously?). They didn’t seize them, only photographed them, for everlasting evidence. As we anticipated, 1 + 1 + …

Continue reading: 

 

       So just remember, when you see or hear of something the state doesn't like just whisper, "shame on you", you may be able to sleep longer in the morning.

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Surveillance Epidemic.

       There is a lot of concern by several states over the coronavirus in China, with fear that it could become an epidemic, and rightly so, but there is another epidemic that most states are willing and trying to spread, it's called surveillance. This particular virus is spread by authoritarian states and seeps into ever aspect of our lives. From a few CCTV cameras it has now spread to every pub, shop, street, public transport, hospital, bank and a multitude of other places we frequent. This particular epidemic has morphed from a simple camera to an extremely complex system among its tentacles are number plate recognition, monitoring and profiling individuals as they do what ordinary people do. The latest development in this particular epidemic is "facial recognition". This new phase has been silently developing in cities across the UK, waithing for the moment it can be set among the people, and we now learn that London will be hit with a full blown version of this anti-human rights virus.

       The Met in London have just announced that they will unleash this new phase on the general public in that city. This despite the fact that EU lawmakers are mulling over a temporary ban on this part of the epidemic, to safeguard individuals rights, as part of their risk assessment to regulate AI

      When it comes to the abuse of human rights we can always rely on the UK government to go it alone.
     This technology is lurking in cities across the UK all waiting to flip the switch and and get a good look at your face as you go about your daily chores.
     I don't know if it would work, but perhaps before we go out we could all wear very large sunglasses, a large nose from a joke shop, plus very large ear muffs and paint our face various colours, and finish off with a large floppy hat. Might be worth a try, at least it would brighten up our cities and towns.
The following From TecCrunch 

       The Met says its hope for the AI-powered tech is that it will help it tackle serious crime, including serious violence, gun and knife crime and child sexual exploitation, and that it will “help protect the vulnerable.”
     However, its phrasing is not a little ironic, given that facial recognition systems can be prone to racial bias, for example, owing to factors such as bias in data sets used to train AI algorithms.
       So in fact there’s a risk that police use of facial recognition could further harm vulnerable groups who already face a disproportionate risk of inequality and discrimination.

         Yet the Met’s PR doesn’t mention the risk of the AI tech automating bias.
Instead it makes pains to couch the technology as an “additional tool” to assist its officers.
       “This is not a case of technology taking over from traditional policing; this is a system which simply gives police officers a ‘prompt’, suggesting ‘that person over there may be the person you’re looking for’, it is always the decision of an officer whether or not to engage with someone,” it adds.
        While the use of a new tech tool may start with small deployments, as is being touted here, the history of software development underlines how potential to scale is readily baked in.
       A “targeted” small-scale launch also prepares the ground for London’s police force to push for wider public acceptance of a highly controversial and rights-hostile technology via a gradual building out process… AKA surveillance creep.

Read the full article HERE: 

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Public Being Groomed To Do Cops' Work.

     Facial recognition is the new eyes of big brother, and in this society big brother  is co-joined twins, one the state, the other big corporate business, they are joined at the hip. Each piece of technology sold to the public finds itself firmly linked to the state surveillance wing, and the public are the unsuspecting assistants in the control and monitoring of the population. Your are monitored and profiled every where you go, from the CCTV in places indoors and out, and there is always the cop in your pocket, the smart phone. Believe we it is smarter than you could believe.

      Now their is a new toy being sold by big business that is being incorporated into the state surveillance system, the door bell camera.

This from325:

      Report from insurrectionary anarchist publication Anathema on the growth of networks of surveillance being developed by Amazon and local police departments.
     In November, The Intercept reported that internal documents at Ring, the home security company owned by Amazon, reveal that the company is planning to create automated neighborhood “watch lists” by incorporating facial recognition technology into its increasingly vast network of “smart home” doorbell cameras. The feature would alert camera-owners via smartphone when someone deemed “suspicious” pops up on their cameras. Like the old-fashioned “neighborhood watch” that Ring wants to replace, the feature would extend the power of the police and as well as make certain areas of town more dangerous for anyone Ring camera owners deem “suspicious.”
      Ring’s documents do not define what “suspicious” means. In practice, this will likely be defined by gentrifiers and cops, whose systemic racism is well documented. At its core, the watch list would identify people who “don’t belong” in certain areas; this means black and brown people, poor people, and anyone whose appearance deviates from social norms. Ring’s Neighbors program — an online discussion forum between camera owners — is already well known for its aggressive racism and for generally heightening distrust and paranoia within neighborhoods. For many people, Ring’s new feature would make it dangerous to be in certain neighborhoods at all — a victory for the forces of gentrification everywhere. Ring doorbell cameras have already allowed police to significantly expand their operations, simply by appropriating private citizens’ technology for no additional expense. The technology therefore has immense “value,” not only for the company, but for the state. For decades it’s been steadily expanding policing in order to keep its increasingly immiserated people under control, while struggling to balance its own budgets.

  Read the rest of this entry

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

The World's Largest Concentration Camps.

        I, like so many others, refer to Gaza and the West Bank as the largest open air prisons on the planet, well I think we should rename them as the largest open air concentration camps on the planet. These two parts of the planet are controlled by a regime of racist, Zionist, brutal, ruthless guards, lacking in any humanity and under the direct control of the apartheid Zionist state of Israel. The aim of this regime is the elimination of the people of Palestine and the taking over the ethnic cleansed land.

 

Photo courtesy of Jewish Voice For Peace.

       Apart from, all the glaringly obvious injustices, brutalities and sadistic cruelties and the vicious attacks that kill and maim thousands of Palestinians, there is another more sinister attack on the people of the West Bank. The West Bank is festooned with a secret network of hidden cameras that is linked up to the latest Israeli state cutting edge facial recognition software. There is no such thing as privacy for Palestinian people in the West Bank. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, these cameras track and log every Palestinian face they can trace. All the information is logged and profiles built, from lovers holding hands to mothers feeding the babies, from kids at play, to people at work, where and when you were at a particular spot and for how long, all the faces and this information are noted and logged for future reference by the Zionist apartheid state of Israel in its end game of grabbing the last of the Palestinian lands. Incidentally, Microsoft is a major partner in this technology, you have been warned.
       Despite this glaringly obvious savage cruelty and inhumanity being directed at the Palestinian people to further Zionist fundamental ideology, the world looks the other way and invites the perpetrators into the marble halls of power. Sups with them at the financial Mafia's banquet and considers profitable arms deals worth more than human justice and dignity. How else would you expect capitalism to work. This gross injustice will continue as Israel is doing the job of the West's policeman in the Middle East, and is a profitable member of the capitalist club. Only the will of the people can end this festering cesspool of capitalist/nationalist/religious insanity. When will we come together and exert that will? 

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Your Choice, inevivable Fascism, Or A Fight For Freedom.

     Today freedom, justice, equality and democracy are fast becoming a chimera, a distant illusion on a far horizon. There has been talk of America being a state governed by the secret police, the FBI, that answers only to itself, and allows the corporate world to function untrammeled by public interference. The UK is now a well developed Big Brother state, where the population is monitored in its every move and sorted out into who merits further surveillance who should be arrested on the assessment of what facial recognition and computer profiling suggest. Both systems being a draconian nightmare for the population, where the word freedom is regarded as a terrorist expression and a desire for privacy is seen as a cover for devious activity. Further to this, there is something rotten at the heart of Europe, here Fascism spreads like some poisonous deadly epidemic. Unchecked and backed by other states in Europe, states who see nothing wrong in Fascism as it keeps the population on tramlines that allow the capitalist system to flourish. The only resistance to this nightmare must be the people themselves, their is no messiah or knight in shining armour standing in the wings ready to lead us to the promised land. We the people will have to find our own way out of this nightmare of corporate and state bondage. We have to take on the whole rotten system head on, with no illusions the the powerful and wealthy who control this festering cancer will abandon their powerful and privileged positions without a bitter fight. That is the only way out of this road we are walking, a road to human bondage and destruction of humanity.

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

The Many Eyes And Ears Of Big Brother.

       Ah democracy, that illusion that persists in the West, and probably elsewhere in the capitalists world. America, that defender of the free democratic world, has probable moved further from democracy than any other country in the West. And without a doubt is the world's most avid and brutal crusher of any semblance of  democratic awakening, any rise of social conscience and co-operation among the people. It is in the eyes of those who can see, the Fourth Reich. In the US of A, the FBI rules, given free reign and unmanageable power after the 9/11 event. America is policed above the beyond the machinations of its legislators and its legal system by the secret uncontrolled power of the FBI.

Extract from an article by John W. Whitehead  

     ------Indeed, with every passing day, the United States government borrows yet another leaf from Nazi Germany’s playbook: Secret police. Secret courts. Secret government agencies. Surveillance. Censorship. Intimidation. Harassment. Torture. Brutality. Widespread corruption. Entrapment. Indoctrination. Indefinite detention.
     These are not tactics used by constitutional republics, where the rule of law and the rights of the citizenry reign supreme. Rather, they are the hallmarks of authoritarian regimes, where the only law that counts comes in the form of heavy-handed, unilateral dictates from a supreme ruler who uses a secret police to control the populace.
      That danger is now posed by the FBI, whose laundry list of crimes against the American people includes surveillance, disinformation, blackmail, entrapment, intimidation tactics, harassment and indoctrination, governmental overreach, abuse, misconduct, trespassing, enabling criminal activity, and damaging private property, and that’s just based on what we know.
      Whether the FBI is planting undercover agents in churches, synagogues and mosques; issuing fake emergency letters to gain access to Americans’ phone records; using intimidation tactics to silence Americans who are critical of the government; recruiting high school students to spy on and report fellow students who show signs of being future terrorists; or persuading impressionable individuals to plot acts of terror and then entrapping them, the overall impression of the nation’s secret police force is that of a well-dressed thug, flexing its muscles and doing the boss’ dirty work of ensuring compliance, keeping tabs on potential dissidents, and punishing those who dare to challenge the status quo.
        Whatever minimal restrictions initially kept the FBI’s surveillance activities within the bounds of the law have all but disappeared post-9/11. Since then, the FBI has been transformed into a mammoth federal policing and surveillance agency that largely operates as a power unto itself, beyond the reach of established laws, court rulings and legislative mandates.
       Consider the FBI’s far-reaching powers to surveil, detain, interrogate, investigate, prosecute, punish, police and generally act as a law unto themselves—much like their Nazi cousins, the Gestapo—and then try to convince yourself that the United States is still a constitutional republic.-------

       Of course we would be rather stupid if we sit back smugly believing that we here in the UK are different, we are a democratic country. In Wales and in Glasgow there are demonstration planned concerning the introduction of a facial recognition system to our over abundant intrusive surveillance CCTV system. It is bad enough to have a photo of your every move taken and recorded for further use, but now your mood, demeanor and attitude to be analysed and assessed by a small group of "specialists" and then catalogued as a "person of interest" to be followed up by further more intrusive surveillance. So you will all be expected to walk in a similar manner and have a similar passive submissive facial expression, or you could become that "person of interest" to the surveillance Mafia.

     And let's not forget "Stingray" an electronic method of syphoning up thousands of individuals' mobile phone data at one fell swoop, to be recorded and then sifted through, looking for that "person of interest". All your personal details and text messages and photos examined by that small group of "specialists" trying to see if your are that "person of interest". Then there is social media, FaceBook etc. where you personal data is thrown around like confetti at a wedding. This is democracy western capitalist style. Be afraid, be very afraid, Big Brother is watching you, and empathy is lacking.

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Glasgow, Home Of Big Brother.

      Glasgow has paid £1.2 million for a big brother facial recognition surveillance system, it is installed in and around our city centre. The council had no prior conversation with the people of Glasgow about the installation of this big brother installation. In the not too distant past the surveillance society was creeping into all our lives, now it is firmly established to watch your every move monitor and profile your characteristics and log them for future reference. A small team of individuals will decide on that information whether to log you as a person of interest and you could be further monitored, in a more invasive fashion by other methods, all without your knowledge. You were simply going about your business, perhaps you were harassed, flustered, in a hurry, that could mark you out for further surveillance. Any connection between this type of society and democracy is an illusion.

 Some links:

https://medium.com/asecuritysite-when-bob-met-alice/glasgow-and-the-onset-of-big-brother-ca66db96df29

https://theferret.scot/suspect-search-glasgow-surveillance/

https://www.commonspace.scot/articles/14262/mick-napier-after-whatsapp-hack-its-time-real-debate-glasgows-use-israeli-facial

      Join the demonstration in George Square against facial recognition on August 3rd.

Demonstrate against Facial Recognition Scanning in Glasgow

· Hosted by SPSC Glasgow and Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign

Details:

     

George Square at Glasgow City Chambers

Saturday, 3 August 2019 from 13:00-15:00 Next Week Thanks Loam for the video link: Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Our Quiet March To Fascism Continues.

         The keystone of the Fascist doctrine is its conception of the State, of its essence, its functions, and its aims. For Fascism the State is absolute, individuals and groups relative.   Benito Mussolini

         About six years ago I wrote a wee piece, "Inch By Inch We Lose Control", about how I believed we were taking a quiet march to fascism, the following is just a rehash of that article, as I believe we are still taking that quiet march in the same direction, though we are now much closer to that destination.

      Like a tape-loop message, I keep repeating, that we are marching quietly towards full blown fascism. It won't be recognised by the jackboots on the streets, nor by people being locked up for not living to the laid down norms. No, the state has moved on from from those days, though that method will still be held in reserve to be used if needed. It will be much more subtle than that, just slowly bit by bit, the state introducing ever stronger legislation to control every aspect of your life. The establishment making more and more arbitrary decision over our heads. They have already neutered the spontaneity of the trade unions by legislation, and tied protesters in legal loops. There other things that pass almost unnoticed, but show state power acting out what can only be called dictatorial acts, unchallenged. The ever creeping CCTV surveillance, advanced facial recognition, trolling through your phone and internet activity. The interweaving of state and corporate bodies in the interest of “growth” and to the detriment of the people. The introduction of the “minimum wage” gave the employers a low legal standard to adhere to and moved the struggle for improvement away from the employer to the state. Wars are and will continue to be waged, despite the will of the people saying otherwise, remember Iraq, millions on the streets in protest, but the war went ahead. Hardly the hallmark of democracy.
      Surreptitiously and brutally, the all knowing, all powerful, all for your own good, state, reaches in and controls every aspect of your life, for no other purpose than to safeguard its own power and privileges, and it can do it at will, through its various agents, backed up by its own biased judiciary. Who do you believe has the right, the benevolent character, and the humanity to take control of your life? No doubt your answer will be nobody, then why do we tolerate the faceless ones, behind closed doors in their marble corridors of power, to control all avenues of our life?

And another quote from one of the masters of fascism:

       It is the State which educates its citizens in civic virtue, gives them a consciousness of their mission and welds them into unity.

Benito Mussolini

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

To Be Free In Our City Wear A Mask!!

       Once again Glasgow leads the way, we are the champions of surveillance. Our streets, transport network, shopping malls, pubs, etc. are festooned with CCTV. Now our fair city is going one better, "facial recognition" cameras. The new system has been installed but has yet to be activated. It is being sold as a possible aid in finding a lost child, but has many other possibilities. It will profile the face of someone who is "loitering" in parks, lanes or where they should not be loitering?? What is loitering, perhaps some one standing in a park just watching the ducks or swans, sitting on a bench longer than the powers that be consider acceptable. Who gets to decide who is loitering, who is where they shouldn't be, who is looking suspicious? This adds another draconian tool to the already big brother  society. No mater what you do, where you go, who you meet in our city, you are logged. Have pint, draw some cash from your bank account, pick up some grocers and you will have been monitored. Now stand "too long" in the one spot and you will be deemed to be loitering and you will have your facial features logged for further investigation. 

      This goes under the name of democracy in this society, a little band of state employees will probably know more about your movements than friends and family, and they will sift this information for anything they deem "dubious". Is this the type of society we wish to inhabit? 

Following Extract from The Herald:

--------“Standard” uses, it says, would be to detect intrusion in identified areas “such as parks (nights), Glasgow landmarks (fountains), or areas identified by communities causing concerns (lanes, play areas).”

The technology will also be used to set up cameras so they alert officers if someone enters a specified area, and to identify individuals deemed to be loitering. CSG also stresses the use of the system in locating criminals, identifying vulnerable people and tracking and locating missing children. 
       But Ms King is unconvinced. “They may not call it facial recognition but it is certainly capable of recognising faces,” she said. She is also not persuaded by the fact the document stresses any use will be logged, and “at no point will the system be used to track or monitor individual not involved in any crime or ASB”. 
     “What defines anti-social behaviour and who decides?” she said.----- 

 Read the full article HERE:
Read more: Row over proposal by councillors to install CCTV in classrooms

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