wilwheaton:

wilwheaton:

So any journalist passing through London’s Heathrow has now been warned: do not take any documents with you. Britain is now a police state when it comes to journalists, just like Russia is.

In this respect, I can say this to David Cameron. Thank you for clearing the air on these matters of surveillance. You have now demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt that these anti-terror provisions are capable of rank abuse. Unless some other facts emerge, there is really no difference in kind between you and Vladimir Putin. You have used police powers granted for anti-terrorism and deployed them to target and intimidate journalists deemed enemies of the state.

You have proven that these laws can be hideously abused. Which means they must be repealed. You have broken the trust that enables any such legislation to survive in a democracy. By so doing, you have attacked British democracy itself. What on earth do you have to say for yourself? And were you, in any way, encouraged by the US administration to do such a thing?

“If a system is ripe for abuse, history tells us the only question is not if such abuse will occur, but when.”

I am hoping against hope that this profound and clear abuse of power will wake up a critical mass of people, but since most of our modern “journalists” identify with the rich and powerful instead of the rest of us, I’m not especially optimistic.

So any journalist passing through London’s Heathrow has now been warned: do not take any documents with you. Britain is now a police state when it comes to journalists, just like Russia is.

humanrightswatch:

The Stoic philosopher Epictetus warned of the dangers of casually bad-mouthing the ruler in ancient Rome: “A soldier, dressed like a civilian, sits down by your side, and begins to speak ill of Caesar, and then you too, just as though you had received from him some guarantee of good faith in the fact he began the abuse, tell likewise everything you think, and the next thing is you are led off to prison in chains.”

History has a knack of repeating itself. The Internet and the social media it spawned initially offered safe spaces for citizens in closed societies to express their views. Yet authoritarian rulers unaccustomed to criticism were quick to monitor and infiltrate those virtual spaces and whisk critics and malcontents off to the physical confines of a jail cell.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the hereditary monarchies of the six Gulf states, where rulers are struggling to come to terms with the concurrent rise of social media and increasing desire of emboldened citizens to speak their minds. A recent spate of convictions for bloggers, tweeters and Facebook users across the region is part of an emerging trend that reflects the Gulf rulers’ fear of free speech and open debate.

Read more.

Control, Halt, Delete: Gulf States Crack Down on Online Critics

thedreadexhibition:

Doubts about the rulers’ right to rule and what it is they are in fact defending, have been raised ever since it became impossible for the king (or any ruler) to rely divine right. When God granted the King his right to rule, the requirement of total obedience had its natural explanation. The…

DREAD: State of Alarm (is Edward Snowden in Elgaland-Vargaland now?)