United Kingdom - The national security and anti-terrorism state

David Allen Green (@JackofKent) wrote an article on his blog, 'The national security and anti-terrorism party.' In that he said that government oversight and overreach is inexorable and inevitable. No matter who is in government. In 2012 the coalition government announced it planned more email and social media surveillance. The plan echoed a similar announcement made in 2009 by the Labour Party. Later scrapped. David Allen Green cited the Home Office which said in that article:

"It is vital that police and security services are able to obtain communications data in certain circumstances to investigate serious crime and terrorism and to protect the public."

And David Allen Green said in response:

"But they may as well be saying: 

"It is vital that police and security blah obtain data blah serious crime blah and TERRORISM KLAXON blah and to protect the public."

Glenn Greenwald on abuse of state power, Ctd

Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) explained how the whole history of the United States has been a story of abuse of state power. One that begins as the state targets, infringes and erodes the civil liberties of feared minorities, and from their expands and employs those powers on the rest of society. He said in the video here:

"After the 9/11 attacks, the American people became convinced that one of our enemies was Islam, and muslims. And there was lots of talk about how not all muslims are a threat, but nonetheless the fear of Islam and muslims arose and pervaded the country because of the blame that was cast on that group for the 9/11 attacks. And so when it came to the time for government to get the power to do things like put people in prisons without any shred of due process, without the opportunity to be heard in court, or to be charged with a crime, the people they targeted were muslims almost exclusively because of the expectation, which turned out basically to be true, that the fear levels that Americans had of Muslims would make most Americans indifferent to that targetting and would make a lot of other Americans actively supportive of what was being done.