Surveillance and Fear

A few weeks ago I received a notice from Swansea U.--a new policy was in place to monitor and track all of its International students. A two-fold program, students are required to present themselves monthly at the library to prove they are 1. doing their programme, 2. not breaking any employment laws, 3. haven't moved their address. And also, monthly attend "all" the required department meetings, lectures, etc. Thus proving oneself on two counts (at least) monthly. It's not just Swansea of course, following new regs that C & I encountered while applying for our visas (it was rigorous), all international students in the UK will be facing such attendance monitoring. In fact all Muslim students were required to register with the police on arrival.

That is not unfamiliar. While at UC Davis, in the tidal wave of proclamations and realignments that followed the "state of emergency" declared on Sept 14, 2001--all the students from particular countries (read Muslim) were required to appear at the school's administration to register themselves.

I don't have to report to the police, but having to check in and prove myself innocent of any sort of misbehavior on a 2x monthly basis doesn't really make for a warm and welcomed feeling. But then this is a state of affairs I likely should have expected from the CCTV cameras that form a network across the whole of Britian. The UK, like the US, is a surveillance state.

And, apparently, the US is still in a condition of fighting off imminent invasion, because on Sept 10 Obama renewed that very order Bush began back on Sept. 14 2001--keeping the US under a "State of Emergency". (Did that make the news in the US? Not likely--go to Commondreams.org to read the article). Effectively that means that the president maintains the power to do a variety things without reference to votes or checks, including seizing property, declaring martial law, regulating travel, deploying troops, seizing transportation and communications, etc. Now, by law, congress is required to review such an order every 6 months. But it never did so from 2001 to 2009 ...

A colleague said to me once that surveillance didn't bother him because if you were innocent and had nothing to hide you were fine. Only those who were guilty would worry about surveillance. But what is guilt in a "free" society? Friends of mine in Pomona were held at gun-point in the middle of the night, had their home ransacked and computers taken because of a suspicion, never substantiated, that one of the house-members had set a lot of SUVs on fire. The FBI was never required to give proof. The young man was held in jail for over a year before finally being set free, innocent, but with his life damaged. Why were they targeted? Because they were different. I maintain its because they were deviants from the norm--vegans, peace-niks, environmentalists. They offered free classes to their neighbors on organic gardening, vegetarian cooking, and solar-panel installation.

On paper, in theory, only the guilty should have to worry about surveillance--but of course it all depends on what the state, and all the fallible individuals within it, decides to deem a "guilt-worthy" infraction. Violence? sure. Going to Anti-War meetings? ahhh.... Going to Animal Rights conferences? ummmm. Practicing a certain religion? hmmmm.

It's a fine line. Our fear allows us to bend our heads just a little, just enough. It lets the state gather up that much more power, to centralize infrastructure and information to make it just that much easier to take the next step. And how many steps are there between a free society, a surveillance society, a benevolent dictatorship, and a totalitarian state? It's all for our own good, after all. To protect us. To keep us safe. The way the German government protected its people by making sure that all the dangerous intellectuals, deviants, and followers of a certain religion were locked away. The way the U.S. kept its people safe by locking up all the descendants of a particular race in wartime as potential enemies--even the children.

To me it begs the question of just what exactly is being protected ... If you think that the people as voters have power, remember the political coup that reigned from 2001-2009 in the form of 2 terms of a NON-elected president. And it might be worthwhile to look back at history and remember that the US government was structured exactly the way it was (a system of 3 co-equal branches sharing and checking power) because the men who wrote the constitution and the bill of rights knew that government would always tend towards consolidation of power. Of course just because Obama has the power to declare martial law, seize your house, or re-channel the means of production to some purpose that he deems necessary doesn't mean he is going to do it. Because we are all protected by something greater than those potentialities ... one thing standing between us and a totalitarian state--the notion that Obama is a man of conscience ....

Yes, I feel much better, too.