Comments on: Europe and the War on Liberty

By: Maria

Maria — Sun, 28 Mar 2004 12:47:39 +0000

Saraj,I don’t know what you mean by ‘turning libertarian’. As an individual, I have been working on these issues for several years now and don’t appreciate snarky comments that assume that the over a dozen people who post on CT have a party line. We don’t. It may or may not interest you to know that the EU governments pushing opportunistic surveillance and immigration controls that have little or nothing to do with fighting terrorism have been the UK, Spain and Italy. Does that line-up sound familiar? Traffic data retention of European citizens,contrary to European laws, was specifically requested by George Bush. And his buddies in the EU haven’t been shy about giving Bush what he wants. It’s not what I would call social democracy, but maybe you have a different conception of that.

By: Suruj

Suruj — Fri, 26 Mar 2004 23:41:19 +0000

It is interesting to see CT turning increasingly libertarian recently. Of course, this post is spot-on about most of the issues. Like America’s Right, terrorism is an equally valid excuse for Europe’s Left – sorry, social democratic – governments to forge a police state.

By: Pieter R�hling

Pieter R�hling — Fri, 26 Mar 2004 10:47:56 +0000

The new security co-ordinator is not the social-democrat Klaas de Vries, former minister of the interior, but the liberal party's Gijs de Vries, former deputy minister of the interior.

By: Tobias Schwarz

Tobias Schwarz — Fri, 26 Mar 2004 01:21:27 +0000

I agree with your overall judgement: A little bitter, but remember how much is at stake. On the positive side, however, it has been difficult for the surveillance obsessed former Red Army Faction defense lawyer to implement much of what he wanted even after 911. Madrid is horrible, but politically, it’s simply not 911. So it will take a while to register with the concerned parts of society but I am fairly certain that much of the stuff on the table now will not be codified. I am, however, wondering if it would not be politically more useful for opponents to channel the current biometric rage by proposing the implementation of less problematic biometric data, like retinal scans. Those have no value for public surveillance like fingerprints or facial scans, or even DNA scans. If biometry is the myth of rationality of the day and impossible to fight against, this, it seems to me, may be a useful way to mitigate the social ramifications.

By: msg

msg — Thu, 25 Mar 2004 19:24:46 +0000

Paranoia can be, though it too often isn’t, a source for interesting hypothoses the more rational mind can’t so readily produce, bound as it is in the confines of the real. The sense that greener, more liberal circles are the leading edge of information processing when it comes to global climate change is probably going to prove to have been a mistaken one. The men and women who hold most of the executive power in the world now, today, have access to a lot more science than even the most strung-out news junkies online. So that while no one knows exactly what’s coming, they probably know a lot more about what’s ahead than the public does. – One possible reason for the triple-lock kevlar security panic, or, rather, the Homeland Security efforts, in the US anyway, might be, could be, it occurred to me one day in the midst of a state of anxious heightened awareness, it might possibly have something to do with the obvious social chaos that would/will result when and if the common people of the industrialized nations finally put the simple pieces together and realize that the world has been shot out from under them and the men and wome who did it, out of stark greed and rampant selfish blindness and nothing more, and by accident seemingly, are still running things. This would make even the most mild-mannered individual somewhat dyspeptic. Talk about your midnight and your torches and your pitchforks at the castle walls… So, better have some pretty tight security in place, just in case, you know, people wake up to what’s happening. What happened. What’s going to happen.

By: Keith

Keith — Thu, 25 Mar 2004 18:43:22 +0000

Have Europeans not been paying attention to what’s been going on here in the US for the last three years? We’ve already implented versions of at least half of those measures and all it’s done is made the citizens angry and less safe than before. I had hoped that the EU would be more reasonable than BushCo. so that when he rigs the election in november, my family and I would have someplace free and cultured to flee to. Looks Like I’ll be going to Canada instead.

By: Sebastian Holsclaw

Sebastian Holsclaw — Thu, 25 Mar 2004 17:23:40 +0000

Since I’m in favor of beating dead horses…this is the ‘law enforcement’ method of dealing with Islamist terrorism as implemented by big government. It will eat our societies from the inside.

By: des

des — Thu, 25 Mar 2004 16:30:35 +0000

I’d be nice if the famously Europhobic UKish press seized the opportunity to defend our liberty from the faceless and unaccountable machinations of undemocratic Yoorpean elites. But they’re even eagerer than David “Security” Blunkett to get on with this. I saw a Torygraph article (recycled in Courrier International, so don’t look at me like that) that really did boil down to:

Terroristes hate the liberal democracies that guarantee our freedom. To thwart their dastardly machinations, we’re going to confiscate all freedoms and hide them in a bank vault, where they will be very safe indeed, especially from the public.

(Excerpted, condensed, backtranslated and paraphrased from memory. No likeness to real reactionary Torygraph ravings is intended other than for satirical effect.)