Source: Boiling Frogs Post
James Corbett
TRANSCRIPT AND SOURCES:
James Corbett
TRANSCRIPT AND SOURCES:
With TSA abuses back in the headlines, continued concern over the NDAA and other legislation codifying martial law, President Obama’s unchallenged use
of his self-proclaimed authority to assassinate American citizens
without trial, and an increasingly bewildering array of tracking,
tracing and pain-compliance technology
being used against law-abiding citizens, more and more people are
becoming aware of the police state that currently exists in the US, and
indeed throughout much of the so-called “free world.”
With this understanding comes a certain amount of apprehension: after
all, the enemies of liberty are organized and persistent, and they
inhabit positions of authority. The defenders of liberty, meanwhile,
seem few and far between, and more time seems spent convincing others
that the police state even exists than in working to dismantle these
systems of control.
What these concerns obscure, however, is the simple fact that the
police state constitutes a mental prison as much as a physical one, and
that part of its power is in convincing the public that it is
all-seeing, all-knowing and all-powerful. Once that illusion is
shattered, the police state can be seen for what it is: a system of
coercion that can only function if a majority of the people go along
with it.
In recent years, an increasing number of people have been revolting against police state authority, some with light-hearted humor, others with nothing more than a camera and the courage
to use it, but all with the understanding that rights can only be
safe-guarded by a vigilant population that refuses to submit to
arbitrary and intrusive authority.
Ironically, it is the very technological development that has allowed
the progenitors of the police state to create their databases, cameras,
and Big Brother surveillance state systems that is increasingly
enabling the average citizen to fight back against that system, a point
so obvious that it has even been addressed by the bought-and-paid-for establishment mouthpiece “news”:
With the realization that more people are wielding and using their
cameras as a tool to keep the so-called authorities honest has come an
inevitable backlash by the system.
In 2009, the UK went so far as to pass a law
deeming anyone so much as suspected of taking a picture of a police
officer as a criminal. When confronted by a massive backlash against the
law, including a protest
in Trafalgar Square in January 2010, the London Metropolitan Police
attempted to assure the public that it was there policy to allow filming
or photographing of public places and police personnel. As late as last
month, however, a photographer in Mansfield was threatened with arrest by two “police community support officers” for having taken photographs in a public space.
In the US, police around the country have tried again and again to arrest citizens for photographing or filming their actions, and these cases have been thrown out again and again
by judges. Although laws vary from state to state, the vast majority of
states have unambiguous laws that allow for the filming of public
officials in public spaces.
One person campaigning for greater awareness of these laws is Carlos Miller, proprietor of the website “Photography is Not a Crime.”
He has twice been arrested for filming the police and has twice beaten
those charges, and has engaged the Miami-Dade metrorail security on
multiple occasions despite the metrorail’s stated policy of allowing
photography at its stations.
Earlier this month, I had the chance to talk to Carlos Miller
about the ways that an informed populace can help in the fight to keep
public spaces open to photography and video by simply arming themselves
with a camera.
Another key aspect of the police state control grid are the myriad
tracking technologies that are used to keep the population docile and
compliant. With just 1 percent of the world’s population and over 20
percent of its CCTV cameras, it is difficult for the average UK resident
to escape the all-seeing eye of Big Brother. But with the help of
organizations like No-CCTV, the
public is increasingly becoming informed about strategies for engaging
local councils and having the cameras removed, sometimes with remarkable
results.
Earlier this month I talked to Charles Farrier of No CCTV UK about the work his organization is doing in helping British citizens combat the police state in the UK.
Emboldened by their growing numbers and empowered by new
technologies, more and more copwatch groups, independent news websites,
citizen action campaigns and individuals are resisting the police state
through a variety of means. As always, the number of people who are
actively involved in protecting our waning civil liberties may not be a
majority, but the numbers are growing by the day and the technology for
disseminating information has leveled the playing field between the
oppressor and the oppressed like no other time in human history.
And as with so many struggles, those struggling against the power of
the police state are realizing that their greatest power lies in merely
resisting the system and refusing to go along with the arbitrary
dictates of the so-called rulers. And with that simple act of mental
liberation, the understanding that the system requires our cooperation
in order to proceed, the masses are once again discovering that behind
the pomp and circumstance, Big Brother is not so frightening after all.
