"London cops reach new heights of anti-terror poster stupidity"

[JohnyCanuck]

London cops reach new heights of anti-terror poster stupidity

The London police have bested their own impressive record for insane and stupid anti-terrorism posters with a new range of signs advising Londoners to go through each others' trash-bins looking for "suspicious" chemical bottles, and to report on one another for "studying CCTV cameras."

It's hard to imagine a worse, more socially corrosive campaign. Telling people to rummage in one another's trash and report on anything they don't understand is a recipe for flooding the police with bad reports from ignorant people who end up bringing down anti-terror cops on their neighbors who keep tropical fish, paint in oils, are amateur chemists, or who just do something outside of the narrow experience of the least adventurous person on their street. Essentially, this redefines "suspicious" as anything outside of the direct experience of the most frightened, ignorant and foolish people in any neighborhood.

Even worse, though, is the idea that you should report your neighbors to the police for looking at the creepy surveillance technology around them. This is the first step in making it illegal to debate whether the surveillance state is a good or bad thing. It's the extension of the ridiculous airport rule that prohibits discussing the security measures ("Exactly how does 101 ml of liquid endanger a plane?"), conflating it with "making jokes about bombs."

snip

The British authorities are bent on driving fear into the hearts of Britons: fear of terrorists, immigrants, pedophiles, children, knives... And once people are afraid enough, they'll write government a blank check to expand its authority without sense or limit.

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/03/24/london-cops-reach-ne.html

[sharp_stick]

1. No matter where I am

I see a security camera I flip it off just as a matter of habit. I got a sore finger in London cause the damned things are everywhere, I swear in some places they blot out the sky.

That being said the guy leaving his chemicals hanging out of the garbage can deserves to get caught. Everyone knows you have to double wrap bomb making chemicals in hefty bags. Geeez

[rcrush]

2. Havent they been a police state for awhile now?

I saw some of those posters online. Very 1984.

[infidel dog]

4. Yes, Britain is becoming more Orwellian every day.

I hope the British people are double-plus happy and secure under the omnipresent eye of Big Brother.

[JohnyCanuck]

5. This one takes the cake for outright creepiness.

But then British PM Brown (and Poppy Bush) did tell us a "New World Order" is on the way. I wonder if their New World Order will have "watchful eyes" too.

Attention Londoners: Big Bobby is watching.

That's the message of posters plastered along London's bus routes earlier this week to assuage riders' crime fears.

But the posters are having the opposite effect on privacy advocates, who say the artwork is creepily reminiscent of the all-seeing authority described in George Orwell's 1984.

The posters show a red double-decker bus crossing a bridge as four floating eyes stare down from the sky. The eyes' pupils are the symbol of Transport For London, the city's mass-transit provider.

"Secure beneath the watchful eyes," the poster says. "CCTV and Metropolitan Police on buses are just two ways we're making your journey more secure."

The eyes-in-the-sky imagery startled Perry de Havilland, who ran across one of the posters at a bus stop in his Chelsea neighborhood.

"I saw the bloody thing, and it boggled my mind, the sheer audacity of it," said de Havilland, who runs a blog on libertarian issues. "Basically what they're saying is that we're watching you and you should be happy about it."

http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2002/11/56152

[Richard Steele]

7. That's unbelievable. Straight out of the Stalin-era USSR.

The mind boggles. K&R

[rcrush]

8. WTF nice blatant use of the 'all seeing eye'

Fuckers! They arent even trying to hide anymore.

[mainegreen]

16. Good lord. How are people not rioting over this? That IS 1984 for fucks sake.

Astonishing in it's audacity.

[Blue_Tires]

23. that HAS to be a spoof...

i refuse to believe someone was serious when they designed that....

[rcrush]

25. What about these?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=5384180&mesg_id=5384786

[Blue_Tires]

26. that means "Brazil" wasn't fiction at all...

[TheBigotBasher]

39. No Spoof

Very Real and all around London a few years back.

[madaboutharry]

3. This was the same campaign run in Nazi Germany.

Turn in your neighbors.

I spend time in college studying in the U.K. and this is what I learned: A dumbass with a British accent is still a dumbass.

And this is a dumbass idea.

[SoCalDem]

13. Effective, though..

Keep "the people" busy, watching each other, and they might be less observant of the ones in charge.

It's how the sheriffs of the old west kept order in town.. they'd "deputize" a whole bunch of the town "rowdies", and by doing so, they would get them on their side...kind of like the Iraqi "surge" too..

[fascisthunter]

31. yee-up

[dixiegrrrrl]

6. Ya wanna know the kicker?

All those red light running surveliiance cameras?
Owned and operated by private companies which get a % of the fine.

I have also heard the street corner cameras are by private companies.

[MindPilot]

20. Recently in Italy RCLs have been completely banned and

many high level officials are facing charges.

In another article I saw recently it was discovered that the red light cameras were not just photographing red light violators they were video-taping constantly.

[dixiegrrrrl]

29. I had read about Italy, but did not know the constant taping part.

Figures.
covert camera surveillance under guise of the "red light running" problem.
Stop every car on the Highway and search it under the guise of " DUI" problem.

Every time the government becomes aware of and concerned about me, I get nervous.
Wonder why....

[Soylent Brice]

9. this deserves more recs. absolutely disturbing.

looking upthread at the poster made me shiver.

here i thought london was more progressive...

[rcrush]

10. Heres some more of their posters.

[onethatcares]

11. holy swizzlestik, that's insanity in the making.

what happens when 1 million people report one million people for using MiracleGro or a white, powdery substance to make bread???

The powers that be spend days thinking up this shit to drive wedges tween us all.

Peace.

[JohnyCanuck]

14. "The powers that be spend days thinking up this shit to drive wedges tween us all."

I think their main intent, however, is to scare the population at large into turning to the nanny, police state to protect us from the "evil-doers" they assure us are lurking in the shadows and around every corner, and therefore more accepting (or even welcoming) of every further totalitarian, Orwellian, police state type of control measures they impose on society. Well frankly, I am more scared of what the authorities are up to and what they have planned for our future than I am of the supposed "terrorists."

[onethatcares]

33. to that I respond with a big AMEN.

That's the reason they are so afraid of the internet. Imagine, people everywhere discussing their lives, their kids, and the fact that most of them don't really support the wars being fronted on them in the name of glory or nationalism.

Peace to ya JohnyCanuck:hi:

If you're ever in my neck of the woods, let me know, I'll buy ya a beer or a beverage of your choice. (that would be left coast Floriduh)

[JohnyCanuck]

41. Thanks for the offer OTC.

Unfortunately I am on a pretty tight budget so can't afford much traveling these days.

[Quantess]

12. I assume a good number of Britons have read 1984?

Or are at least familiar with the general premise of the story? Good grief, you'd think at least the "beneath the watchful eyes" poster would trigger some distaste.

[Bluenorthwest]

17. Amazing and disturbing

I have not been there in years, and this would send me running for the airport!

[truebrit71]

32. Good God.....

....that is so Orwellian it's almost unreal...

[PM Martin]

34. I never want to vistin Not Great Britain.

[chrisa]

40. wtf?

Just wow.

What's next? "These children (of course) are alive because you reported your neighbor for not being "Patriotic?""

Either this is as scary as it seems, or the person who made those signs is an idiot.

[Forkboy]

15. Reminds me of an episode of Red Dwarf where they come across a fascist poster.

"Be a government informer. Betray your family & friends. Fabulous prizes to be won."

Our own DUer Sebastian Doyle should know the episode well as that's the episode where his name comes from. :)

[TheBigotBasher]

18. For the last 12 years

"New Labour" has followed and used the Bush agenda on terrorism and the other bogeyman of paedophilia to remove rights that have been enshrined in British legislation going back over 1000 years. The UK has the longest period of detention without trial anywhere in the World, more cctv cameras than anywhere else in the World, the Government is planning on introducing compulsory biometric ID cards for all residents, the list goes on.

All pushed through on the back of if you do not allow us to do this, you are "soft on crime".

[rcrush]

19. This sign was posted in Chicago for the 2007 holidays.

[MindPilot]

22. Nothing there about applying for an H1B visa?

[Fumesucker]

21. ROFL..

Americans have no problem with their very bodily fluids being inspected for loyalty to the state, or having their very children being urged to turn them in for "drugs".

But get uptight about a video camera or two..

The war on terror is the war on drugs on steroids, and the war on drugs started in "the land of the free" and has been pushed worldwide by it.

[Blue_Tires]

24. damn.. did no one watch "The Last Enemy" on PBS last fall?

[pinniped]

27. The people rummaging through my garbage can yesterday found some bottles....

of dihydrogen monoxide.

[ikri]

28. Some of the response posters are brilliant

From the BoingBoing response thread the next day













Plus there's a site to generate your own anti-terror poster

[arcadian]

30. They shoud start with the MPs

Go through their trash first.

[TheBigotBasher]

36. That would get you arrested

You are not even allowed to take a photograph of the police any more.

[arcadian]

37. Well, I meant Member of Parliament.

But military police works too,

[TheBigotBasher]

38. I assumed MP

was Member of Parliament. Going through the bins of the Military Police would get you shot.

[MrSlayer]

35. Why not just go searching your neighbor's houses?

They aren't allowed to do anything to stop you. England is fucked up.

[tuckessee]

42. So the Brits are taking a cue from the Yanks? Remember the MARC posters of 2005?

"WATCH, RIDE and REPORT" done in classic Soviet -style.

Posters were done by CSX & hung on the Baltimore-Washington DC route.

http://www.ble.org/pr/news/headline.asp?id=13788

[rcrush]

45. Or these from BART police.

[rcrush]

43. More Posters!

BART POLICE POSTERS


http://www.redorbit.com/news/technology/202858/bart_unveils_new_antiterrorism_posters/




This poster also seen in SF.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/article?f=/c/a/2005/08/10/MNG87E5L791.DTL&o=

[rcrush]

44. Another.

I think this one might be a spoof tho.


lol


This one is freaky