UK: Totalitarian threat looms

[mandy]

Totalitarian regimes teach us important lessons about the consequences of letting nosy state authorities use surveillance to keep their people in check, delegates were told at the Data Protection and Privacy Commissioner's conference in London yesterday.

Stalinist Russia and the former German Democratic Republic, which suffered a stifling life under the surveillance of the Stasi secret police, were drawn on for examples to ignite the imaginations of people who remember the fall of the Berlin Wall, but might not be vigilant enough to spot where the surveillance state might be heading.

"What happened to those countries could happen here," warned Dr Benjamin Goold, lecturer in law and criminology at the University of Oxford, noting how totalitarianism has a habit of creeping up on people...

full article: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/11/03/...an_threat/

[BellisimaJ.]

totalitarianism has a habit of creeping up on people...

And it sure as hell is creeping up on us here.

[BellisimaJ.]

A related topic:

http://community.tuliptools.com/index.ph...729.0.html