HOSE WHO KNOW history will appreciate the importance of civil rights. Those who saw the Berlin Wall built will possibly recall all that was learned about the Stasi for example.

In this age of crackdown on journalism and on civil liberties in the UK (simply censorship and gagging) we ought to be aware of the power of those who run the country. They are very rich people. The surveillance gives them more power. While CCTV is impossible to dodge, phones are not obligatory for most people. Phones are surveillance devices, but phones has other features, calls included. Those entice people into carrying tracking devices (walking along with them) and always leaving those switched on, with an identity attached to them (just like a landline). There are other problems with mobile phones.

I have several mobile numbers and phones, but they do not come with tracking per se, as with pay as you go (PAYG) in the UK it turns out that it is possible — albeit hard — to purchase and use a phone anonymously (unless someone works hard to decipher the identity). Here is what I found in each major shop:

Carphone Warehouse: always must disclose personal details, no matter the network, phone, plan, and payment method

Orange: must give personal details to the cashiers

Vodafone: needn’t give personal details, can pay with cash

Phone4U: need to pay more for anonymous usage

Virgin: can avoid giving personal details, but there are caveats

To the credit of all the above, no store had people working for it who give a ‘funny’ or ‘dirty’ look when asked about privacy implications, maybe because I don’t look like a terrorist or maybe because I’m exceedingly polite and smile all the time. Either way, it is not as bad as it could be. To ask for privacy these days is almost like confessing to doing something malicious.

AR CRIMES are considered a lot less serious than whistle-blowing, according to UK standards. The government is currently trying to suppress the publication of stuff that should have been public all along. It is very sad to see that once again — as expected — much of the public will neither know nor care. And why? Because “censorship” is perceived as bad only as long as “they” do it, not “us”. A lot of people are brainwashed into the mindset that our own censorship is “defending” us and others’ is “suppressing” them.

Richard Stallman got it right about censorship. All censorship is bad. If we go down the slippery slope of selective and hypocritical censorship but never stand up, we deserve the consequences.

OR quite some time I’ve affiliated myself with progressivism, not libertarians, maybe because I became familiar with the subversion of the term libertarian when people like Ron Paul came to the scene, supporting all sorts of things like banning of abortions (so much for liberty, eh?). Over at Techrights I promote some progressive values, but these mostly relate to the utility of software (or contrariwise, the limitations). It probably won’t take long for the word progressive to be co-opted, just like republican (as in Republican Party) came to be associated with what we sometimes call here conservatives, or right-wingers. This is why, for the lack of words we have left (not incited against like anarchism), I would describe myself as “progressive”, at least while the word retains its true meaning. Some people characterise The Guardian as “progressivie”, but after it took a bribe from plutocrat Bill Gates I lost all respect for it. I want nothing to do with The Guardian anymore.

One thing is for sure: in the 2012 elections in the United States a Republican will win. This Republican will most likely be Mr. Obama with his Republican-esque policies.