87 lines
5.1 KiB
Plaintext
87 lines
5.1 KiB
Plaintext
SURVEILLANCE * by Dimity
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How often do you look up while ambling around the city and see cameras
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aimed at you? Walk on to a railway platform and become conscious of the
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video pointing in your direction, go into a bank (often, unfortunately, an
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unavoidable exercise) and be surrounded by the bloody things, happily
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whirring away, getting a good look at your every profile, just in
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case...Look up at certain high rise buildings throughout the city and smile
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- there they are again. Why are we being watched and by whom?
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"Security" cameras and other paraphenalia are designed to intimidate. With
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camera's trained on your every movement, it is hard enough to relax let
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alone do anything anti-social. And if you are opposed to this society, one
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which is white skin and wealth dominated, one in which women are still
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subject to so much sexual abuse, a patriarchal society with no room for
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dissent, then yuo probably have some anti social antics that thses cameras
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happily snap. The constant activity of the police helicopter, also taking
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photographs, serves this intimidatory function. An American police manual
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states "The helicopter possesses and omnipresence which no other police
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vehicle ever had before." It has been said so many times that these things
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are necessary.
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"Security measures" is the offhand explanation and suprisingly the general
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population accepts this. But I never feel comfortable when my every
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movement is being watched and perhaps recorded by an unseen eye. To me
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such measures have a sinister ring; the old "Big Brother is watching you"
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fear leaps up every time. Imagine what the helicopter does to Vietnam
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Vets.
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I have been told that as a women, video's spying on every train station,
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post office, bank etc, is meant to make me feel a little safer. A little
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less likely to face attack, rape or harassment. However I know this is not
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the case. If sexually harassed on a train platform even if someone is
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watching behind the cameras there is no guarantee of help or assistance.
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Considering the amount of pornography and the extent to which the
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television has distorted peoples ability to react to a situation right in
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front of them, we can't guarentee that the man behind the camera isnt
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getting off on the 'action'. The eye is definately male, the protecting
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strong bucket of hormones ready to save the lady in distress. Problem is,
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the distress of women is a multi million dollar industry and that's just
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the explicit stuff. If vido evidence was produced at a court hearing
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there is still no more likelihood that the justice system will be any more
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sympathetic to the abuse facing women in our society every day because the
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systematic violence aganist women is an integral facet of justice in this
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system. So those cameras are not really there to help and protect us. The
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eye is perverse enough to look, we can only imagine what the imagination of
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the eye could be.
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A black American man is beaten to within an inch of his life by four white
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cops "hitting a few home runs" on the streets of LA for a simple driving
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offence. The entire event is filmed by another party and an American court
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still can find these racist jerks "not guilty"
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There is a belief that the camera never lies, but who can guarentee the
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viewer's internal or beuracratic editing device?? At AIDEX in Canberra last
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year, hours and hours of video footage was shot by protesters and media
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which depicted excessive and unecessary police violence and yet to get any
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one in "authority" willing to view it and take on the obvious inquiry into
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police methods at such demonstration, has been a monumental and ongoing
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unsuccessful task.
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Surveillence is a power over other people. Early European prisons had
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developed fairly unsophisticated methods of surveillence, but they still
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allowed the prison officers to see into the prison quarters while not being
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seen. Because they were never sure when they were being watched, the
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prisoners did not have the freedom to carry out their most basic functions
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in comfort. As films like Ghosts of the Civil Dead show, now we are the
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prisoners, our every step observed, our words monitored, our freedom and
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privacy encroached day in day out. And don't believe that it is only the
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street level surveillence. Every telephone in the country is able to be
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monitored. At the slightest suspicion of subersive activity, the police
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can monitor your phone, record your conversations, stake out your
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movements. The more subversive elements are documented the more
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justification for increased money, powers and numbers the police have thus
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it is in their interests to invite more to their bad taste party.
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Kerry Browning knows the far reaching lengths the powers that be will go
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to to keep their blood shot eye on citizens, especially those who are
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politically active, usually under the auspices of drug investigation.
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Hours of audio and filmed footage of her movements and those of her
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household were presented at the court case, even recordings from inside her
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bedroom. Other events that were clearly innocent household activities like
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chopping wood were turned into baby massacres by the police in court.
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Do not underestimate the paranoia of the "powerful".
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