followed by interview with Belarus anarchists
"Air travel was dangerous so she took a train to Paris and got on the daily charter bus to England. When the bus reached the English Channel everyone got out and wandered around the enormous ferryboat. Maya watched British tourists buy duty-free liquor, pump coins into slot machines, and stare at a comedy on the television screen. Life was normal- almost boring- when you were a citizen. They didn't seem to care or realise that they were monitored by the Vast Machine.
There were four million closed-circuit television cameras in Britain, about one camera for every fifteen people. Thorn once told her that an average person working in London would be photographed by three hundred different surveillance cameras during the day. When the cameras first appeared, the government put up posters telling everyone that there were `SECURE BENEATH WATCHFUL EYES'. Under the shield of the new anti-terrorism laws, every industrial country was following the British example.
Maya wondered if citizens made a deliberate attempt to ignore the intrusion. Most of them truly believed that the cameras protected them from criminals and terrorists. They assumed that they were still anonymous when they walked down the street. Only a few people understood the power of the new facial-scanning programs. The moment your face was photographed by a surveillance camera, it could be transformed into a consistent size, contrast and brightness that could be matched against a driver's license or passport photograph.
The scanner programs identified individual faces, but the government could also use the cameras to detect unusual behaviour. These so-called Shadow programmes were already being used in London, Las Vegas and Chicago. The computer analyzed one-second images taken by the cameras and alerted the police if someone left a package in front of a public building or parked a car on the shoulder of a highway. Shadow noticed anyone who strolled through the city instead of trudging to work. The French had a name for these curious people- flaneurs- but as far as the Vast Machine was concerned, any pedestrian who lingered on street corners or paused at construction sites was instantly suspicious. Within a few seconds, images of these people would be highlighted in color and sent to the police." (Taken from The Traveller by John Twelve Hawks, Bantam Press, July 2005)
The above passage about a fictitious future society, taken from a `bestseller', does not seem that far off from today's Britain. Recent articles in Organise! and in our pamphlet on ID cards have already highlighted the kinds of technology that are available and being implemented to various degrees. The arguments for this increased surveillance are the same- it is necessary to protect the public from terrorism. Many people have accepted this dangerous logic. Anarchists have always argued against the argument that we need to give up our freedom in order to be `safe'. For example, Malatesta provides an eloquent denunciation back in the late 19th century in his book `At the Caf‚: Conversations with Anarchists'.
Gino (a worker): Is it true that you anarchists want to remove the police force? I am not their friend, and you know it. But I'm also not the friend of murderers and thieves and I would like my goods and my life to be guarded as well.
Giorgio (Malatesta): And who guards you from the guardians? Do you think that the best way to provide for one's security is by offering up one's neck to a gang of people who, with the excuse of defending us, oppress us and practice extortion, and do a thousand times more damage than the thieves and murderers?
Events since September 11th and the advent of the `war on terrorism' in earnest, have given us many reasons to see the truth in Malatesta's words. Just think how `secure' the Brazilian worker felt when he was shot by the police seeking to `protect' the public. Yet, for the most part we continue living our lives oblivious to this repressive surveillance, increased police powers and the vast quantities of information that exist about us in various data banks. On the surface, it doesn't seem to impinge on our lives. Even those active in anarchist and other social movements that challenge the current power structures, are not usually conscious of the likely surveillance that is going on. Our phones are most likely tapped, undercover officers will have been used to identify `who's' who' and our activities will be monitored. It is only in certain circumstances, recently in the build-up to G8 protests, that individuals have overtly felt the weight of surveillance and police control of activity. Nevertheless, the protests have largely gone ahead in some form. In Scotland last year, despite certain individuals being targeted by the `FIT team', the heavy police presence around the `eco-camp' in Stirling, and some actions seemingly known to the police in advance, meetings, demonstrations and other actions went ahead, sometimes taking the police by surprise. Instead, the focus of the State is largely on Islamic activists. Anarchists have not shown too much concern about this, seeing Islam as an enemy of anarchism. However, we maybe should rethink our silence. Anarchists could easily become the next target. The State may choose not to see the difference between an Islamic `training camp' and one set up by Earth First.
In Russia this year, anarchists were the target. In Russia and many other countries of the former Soviet Union, anarchists are struggling to organise under heavy surveillance and police repression. Those activists who attempted to go to St. Petersburg, as they had gone to other venues for other protests, had a very different experience. The protests were banned outright and hundreds of known activists were arrested in advance. People were stopped at the border and bureaucratic and financial impediments made practical organisation almost impossible. Yet, despite these difficulties, anarchist movements exist and are continuing to grow and develop.
There is no doubt that the tendency throughout the world is for those in power to increase their control over every aspect of our lives. Capitalism is a system that is unpredictable and impossible to control. Marx's economic predictions have proved to be only too true: that capitalism is inherently prone to lurch from crisis to crisis. As a result, those in power desperately struggle to control what they can, in order to ensure the stability and survival of the system that is the basis of their dominance. They cannot control capital itself: financial movements around the world, rising and falling prices of commodities, fluctuating demand for products. Therefore, they aim to control the people- as workers and consumers. Every aspect of society is geared to ensuring that people consume and work, according to routines and schedules. They need our lives to be predictable and our minds to be busy with seeking individual `happiness' that is brought about through `success', money, and entertainment. Any thoughts of the `bigger' questions on the meaning of life are safely controlled and managed, for example, through organised religion.
However, all through history, many people, to varying degrees, have proved impossible to control and manage in this way. In today's world, anarchists are some of these people, refusing the legitimacy of the State and the need for authority, rejecting the work ethic, the drive for money and status and the diversion of consumerism, and ignoring the existence of borders. In the `Traveller' the hero