> By Erlingur on Oct 30, 2009
> The European Union is providing funding for human behaviour-watch
> programmes in the war against terror, sparking fears that the EU
> community itself will foster suspicion. Airports are among areas that
> attract the most suspicion including increased surveillance of bathrooms
> and express check-ins, as the common belief is that terrorists tend move
> quickly, need privacy and almost never stop for coffee.
> "We monitor all deviant behaviour", according to the Dutch research
> institute TNO Defence and Security member Maarten Hogervorst. New
> technology will also be used to monitor heart rates because a terrorist
> is nervous as hell, according to fellow TNO official Frank Kooi.
> TNO is a partner in the ADABTS (Automatic Detection of Abnormal
> Behaviour and Threats in Crowded Spaces) programme, one of several
> hundred security projects that operate under the EU Security system.
> Following the terrorist attacks of 9/11, a European-wide directive was
> issued by Brussels calling for new techniques under fears that the
> market may be dominated by US security firms.
> Hogervorsts team receives funding from the EU for investigating human
> behaviour via security cameras in inner cities, airports and football
> stadiums. "We define what constitutes suspicious behaviour through
> interviews with security staff and we develop software accordingly",
> Hogervorst stated. "If security staff think someone moving rapidly
> through a crowd is suspicious, then that's the kind of images they're
> going to get".
> However, in a report by Danish newspaper Politiken, a spokesperson for
> the progressive research group Trans-national International, Ben Hayes,
> warned that the increased security may lead to Orwellian tactics which
> could make everyone a suspect. The concern is that increased awareness
> of the technology will lead to changes in human behaviour and that big
> brother tactics will create a loss of innocence as the public evolves
> its common actions to appear less suspicious.
> - - - - - -
> Islamic terrorism was the greatest gift The Orwellians could have
> received.
> It "justifies" a surveillance state where everyone is treated like a
> criminal, like a terrorist, and anyone who isn't happy about it is
> surely WITH the terrorists.
> Amazing how easy it is to sell il-liberty, isn't it ?
> Restrictions/eliminations of liberties can always be 'justified'
> using numbers, stats, antedotal examples and nightmare scenerios.
> But how do you justify "freedom" ? It is a much more etherial,
> subjective concept ; the value of which is difficult to frame into
> hard figures. Kind of like "porn", you know it when you see it, you
> know you want it ... but try to prove WHY in 50 words or less and
> you'll fail miserably.
> Ben Franklin once remarked that those who would surrender liberties
> in exchange for the perception of "security" would have, and deserve,
> neither.
> IMHO, he was being too soft on the subject. Those who push to
> eliminate liberties under the banner of "security" should be DEPORTED
> to whichever nation at the moment best fits the Big Brotherish mold.
> Ie ... send 'em to the very hell they wanted everyone else to help
> them create at home.
> One Icelandic wag commenting on the above article asked simply -
> "Much simpler and more effective to profile by race, age and sex for
> enhanced searching at key check-points. How many Nordic female
> 60-year-old terrorists are there ?". :-)
> But, of course, that wouldn't give the State license to stick a
> camera up *everyones* ass, would it ?
> A few years back, I happened to run into an old east German who had
> lived under the benevolent protective eye of the Stasi. As mentioned
> in the last paragraph of the article, he said that nobody could
> really live a life there ... they all had to put on a false front,
> play the "good, trustworthy Marxist/Leninist citizen" pretty much
> 24/7 because, literally, the Stasi had roughly one third of the
> population informing on the others. DO read-up on the Stasi ... we're
> talking about a 'police' force that actually had warehouses full of
> glass jars containing bits of stolen clothing ... so sniffer dogs
> could track down anyone who suddenly fit this weeks definition of
> 'counter-revolutionary'.
> Of course TODAY we don't need the little jars ... we have
> face-recognition and 'abberant behavior' software that can pick you
> out of a crowd in an instant should you land on Big Bros shit list.
> Oh, and what qualifies you for the shit list CHANGES ... so, Mr. Good
> Citizen ... what you're doing today could be 'suspicious' or worse
> tommorrow if it suits the political needs of the almighty State.
> Hmmm ... maybe computer technology/networking was the greatest gift
> the Orwellians could have recieved ? After all, once you have the
> tools to keep tabs on everybody all of the time, it's a piece of cake
> to find an 'enemy' to protect against ... any one will do .....
enemy. They create and enable idiots with backpacks, then stick cameras
"protect". Of course, "They surely wouldn't do that to /us/?"
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