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Reverend Blair
Forum Super Elite   Posts: 2043  Posted: Fri Sep 30, 2005 10:43 am <strong>Written By:</strong> Reverend Blair
<strong>Date:</strong> 2005-09-30 10:43:00 <a href="/article/144307540-information-age">Article Link</a> <p>The war on terror is being used as justification for increased information gathering on private citizens and as justification for releasing information that the government has. In Canada, we have people being held on Security Certificates. They are not allowed to see the evidence against them. <a href="http://www.zerra.net/freemohamed/news.php">Mohamed Harkat</a>, like others we are told pose a grave threat to us, has never been charged. <a href="http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20050918&articleId=969">Mohammad Mahjoub</a> has been in prison for five years without seeing the evidence against him and also without being charged. Most Canadians know the story of Maher Arar, but more frightening than the brutal injustice suffered by Arar is how closely the information about him has been guarded by both Canadian and US authorities.</p> <p>The Canadian government continues to seek new ways to gain information about Canadians under the guise of national security. They are currently pushing for police and national security agencies to have more power to watch over our <a href="http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=FOG20050824&articleId=853">internet and cell phone activities.</a> Given their past records, it is unlikely that anybody accused of wrongdoing because of this type of surveillance will be allowed to see the evidence against them.</p> <p>Canada is not the only country engaged in spying on its own citizens. Britain has being setting up cameras since the 1990s. Most of these cameras were installed in the name of fighting IRA terrorist bombings, but the cameras are also used for issuing parking tickets. The cameras have helped police piece together what happened in the July 7 bombings, but they did not prevent those bombings. Nor did the multitude of security cameras prevent the second, failed attacks. Even the Netherlands, noted for respecting individual freedoms, has approved biometric identification cards. </p> <p>In the United States, the security issue has driven a multitude of information gathering initiatives that infringe on civil rights. The Patriot Act and Patriot Act II have given police and intelligence services unprecedented powers to spy on American citizens, landed immigrants, and those in foreign countries alike. Combined with the ability to hold people without trial and the institution of anti-dissent initiatives like the so-called free speech zones that keep protestors away from the government, it is doubtful that the average person living or travelling in the United States has ever been less free.</p> <p>The collection of biometric data is becoming commonplace and no-fly lists, often based on erroneous data, can make travelling challenging for infractions as simple as having the wrong name or being a member of the anti-war or anti-globalisation movement. The amount of information being collected is immense. So immense that errors are common and people who have done nothing wrong find themselves accused.</p> <p>The media, who are charged with both disseminating information and being critical of the government have remained largely silent, aiding the US government in the control of information.</p> <p>As if all of the present information gathering isn’t enough, there is now a wish for a <a href="www.wpherald.com/storyview.php?StoryID=20050926-015942-8503r">intelligence agency.</a> The rational for this new agency is that the CIA cannot operate in the United States and the FBI does not concentrate enough on intelligence gathering.</p> <p>Meanwhile disinformation is being used as a weapon against threats both real and perceived, as well as being a tool to control people. In her recent Slate article <a href="http://slate.msn.com/id/2126479/">You Can’t Handle the Truth</a>, Sharon Weinberger covers a service being offered by a small, UK-based company called Strategic Communication Laboratories (SCL). The service SCL offers is, to put it bluntly, lying to the public.</p> <p>While the company spokesman, Mark Broughton, tries to downplay the deception by claiming to save lives, <a href="http://www.scl.cc/">SCL’s website</a> proudly states, "Governments and Military forces worldwide are realising that communication can be a very powerful force. Those countries without the ability to control and respond to communications in a strategic capacity will be at a serious disadvantage in political and military terms.</p> <p>"SCL is providing governments and military forces all over the world with the power to control their own communication messages and manage perceptions on the world media stage. Furthermore, it gives governments greater access to their own publics in time of crises and the military greater power to influence enemy disengagement in time of conflict."</p> <p>Strategic Communication Laboratories understands the power of information. They also understand that one way of keeping real information from the public is to offer them false information.</p> <p>SCL certainly isn’t the only organisation that understands the importance of keeping the truth hidden from the general public. The US government and companies that contract for it like to control information as well. Consider <a href="http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/6890A8DA-AF79-45AD-BB4F-42C060978A07.htm"> Fallujah.</a> What really set off the American destruction of that city? What lead to the deaths of untold civilians, the use of banned weapons such as depleted uranium and napalm, and at least one <a href="http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/19/1524257"> execution of a wounded, unarmed insurgent?</a> </p> <p>The destruction of Fallujah was set off by the killing of some US contract workers. Contract workers. That makes it sound like they were cooks or truck drivers or maybe some low-level Halliburton employees there to rebuild a school at inflated rates. The information was never really given in the media. The contract workers were employees of <a href="http://www.alternet.org/story/18193/">Blackwater USA.</a> They were the kind of contract workers who kill for a living. The information that it was four mercenaries who were killed was not widespread. The information that the US is using loopholes in international law to employ mercenaries isn’t given out readily, so perhaps explaining that it was four contract killers in the videos would have been a little inconvenient. Ensuring that the public had all of the information may not have garnered the public sentiment necessary to go in and flatten a city full of civilians.</p> <p>A short time ago, we were treated to dramatic pictures of the British military rescuing a couple of their own from a jail in Basra. The military, for their efforts were pelted with rocks and Molotov cocktails when they jumped out of their tanks to rescue their captured comrades. What we were never told by the major press outlets of the world or the British government is that those comrades had been disguised as Arabs and carrying materials to make bombs with. They killed a couple of Iraqi policemen who tried to apprehend them. They were caught and jailed. It was a covert operation, itself designed to spread false information, gone wrong. </p> <p>Since the beginning of the war on terror, governments around the world have become enamoured with the control of information. <a href="http://www.privacy.org/pi/activities/idcard/">National identification cards</a> have been proposed in some countries and introduced in others. The implantation of biometric chips to track people with have been proposed. We accede to iris scans at airports and thumb prints on driver’s licenses. Security cameras have become the norm in many places and politicians talk openly about the need to be able to track citizens, landed immigrants, and tourists.</p> <p>We would all like to think that Canada is different, that we haven’t given in to the paranoia, but we have. In 2003 Denis Coderre, then Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, opened the debate on introducing a National Citizenship card for all Canadians. Apparently he was very happy with the information provided by the Permanent Resident card Coderre’s department foisted on landed immigrants in Canada the year before.</p> <p>The RCMP and CSIS partake in <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1357513.stm">Echelon</a>, a system that allows governments to sift through our electronic transmissions. The ability to do this, presumably more legally and more effectively, would be enhanced by the proposed expansion of electronic surveillance mentioned at the beginning of this article. While they cite national security as the purpose, such gathering of information can also be used to monitor and target legitimate political activism. </p> <p>At the same time the Canadian government wants more and more information about us, they are less and less willing to share our own information with us. We are often told that certain documents are being kept secret for reasons of national security.</p> <p>Our media outlets have been given censored documents on everything from Maher Arar to sixty-year-old UFO sightings. I don’t happen to be much of a believer in UFOs; but I do believe that if a government is censoring sixty-year-old documents, they are hiding something. Maher Arar has been found to have had nothing to do with terrorism. Why does our government consider details of his persecution still secret?</p> <p>Our government tells us that we are participating in the "war on terror." Really? Can we have some more information please? If we are aiding the US government in breaking international law, it is not a matter of national security so much as a matter of international criminality. That is information that every Canadian should have.</p> <p>Until we regain control over the information, we will be controlled by the information. Without control over our own information and assurances that the information we are given can be trusted, information will be a weapon to be used against us.</p> [Proofreader's note: this article was edited for spelling and typos on October 3, 2005] | |
 
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