Police State

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Connexions Library

Amnesty International Responds to U.K. Government Surveillance
Elsayed-Ali, Sherif
Article
2015
A British tribunal admitted on Wednesday that the U.K. government had spied on Amnesty International and illegally retained some of its communications.
Anti-Capitalist Demonstration of May 1, 2013 in Montreal: Journée des Travailleurs et Travailleuses: Manifestation Anti-Capitaliste
Film/Video
2013
Montreal 2013: police state. Montreal's municipal goverment passes a bylaw that suspends the right of citizens to assemble unless they have received advance permission from police. Citizens who assert...
Big Brother's Getting Bigger
Smith, Jack A.
Article
2012
Government surveillance and attacks on the privacy of American citizens were bad enough under the Bush regime but they are getting even worse during the Obama years.
Bill C-51: A Legal Primer: Overly broad and unnecessary anti-terrorism reforms could criminalize free speech
Ruby, Clayton; Nader R.,Hasan
Article
2015
Bill C-51, the Anti-Terrorism Act, 2015, would expand the powers of Canada's spy agency, allowing Canadians to be arrested on mere suspicion of future criminal activity.
Bringing the Battlefield to the Border: The Wild World of Border Security and Boundary Building in Arizona
Miller, Todd
Article
2012
The U.S.-Mexican border has not only become Ground Zero for every experiment in immigration enforcement and drug interdiction, but also the incubator, testing site, showcase, and staging ground for ev...
Canada's Creeping Police State: Capitalist Repression and War
Article
2015
The Conservative Harper government’s Bill C-51, the "Anti-Terrorism Act 2015," is a sweeping attack on free speech and other civil liberties. The bill targets publications, web postings and even priva...
The Canadian Ministry of "Truth": "Reality Is Whatever We Say It Is"
Guerin, Fred
Article
2015
The government and corporations operate as if truth and reality are what they say it is. Guerin analyzes and provides examples of this propaganda, including Canada's Bill C-51.
Capitalist Surveillance State: Everyone's a Target: Threatening Reporters, Spying on Public
Article
2013
There is an inherent tendency for the state, which governs on behalf of a minuscule, ruthless class of obscenely wealthy exploiters, to attempt to amass ever greater power to control the population be...
The CIA's Memory Prison: A Perverse Logic
Sottile, J.P.
Article
2013
The U.S. government has ruled that the prisoners kidnapped and tortured by the U.S. cannot talk about their experiences because those experiences are the property of the U.S. government, which has cla...
Class and Colour in South Africa 1850-1950
Simons, H.J.; Simons, R.E.
Book
1969
A historical and sociological overview which provides a critical analysis of the Labour and National movements in South Africa and explores how and why the white working class traded its socialist pri...
Connexions Library: Human Rights and Civil Liberties Focus
Website
Selected articles, books, websites and other resources on civil liberties and human rights.
Crossing Rafah: Heading to Gaza
Barber, Johnny
Article
2015
Data Mining You: How the Intelligence Community Is Creating a New American World
Engelhardt, Tom
Article
2012
Joseph K., that icon of single-lettered anonymity from Franz Kafka’s novel The Trial, would undoubtedly have felt right at home in Washington.
Doing Time for Peace: Moral Lights
Swanson, David
Article
2012
Hundreds of Americans, young and old, are regularly going to prison, sometimes for months or years or decades, for nonviolently resisting U.S. militarism.
#DomesticExtremist trend mocks UK police surveillance of protesters
Article
2015
Non-conformists across the UK are taking to social media to declare themselves #DomesticExtremists in a bid to raise awareness about secretive police powers.
Eavesdropping on the Planet: The Inalienable Right to Snoop?
Blum, William
Article
2013
Like a mammoth vacuum cleaner in the sky, the National Security Agency (NSA) sucks it all up: home phone, office phone, cellular phone, email, fax, telex … satellite transmissions, fiber-optic communi...
Fascism, American-Style: One-Step from the Third Reich?
Stanton, John
Article
2014
Unbeknownst to most Americans the United States is presently under thirty presidential declared states of emergency. They confer vast powers on the Executive Branch including the ability to financiall...
First a Hand on Your Crotch, Next a Boot in Your Face: False Choices and Airport Security
Scott, Michael
Article
2010
Since 9/11, we have given up many of our rights and our government has condoned practices like torture, legalized assassination, kidnapping, indefinite detention without access to council or trial – a...
Foreclosures and the Police State: Hernandez Family Foreclosure Sparks Anti-Eviction Outrage
Radford, Leslie
Article
2012
The story of the Hernandez family, who became local heroes in their determination to keep their Van Nuys home from foreclosure.
Freedom of speech, assembly, protest? All are nixed by new police powers
Appleton, Josie
Article
2015
UK police now have free rein to create 'dispersal zones' in public places, writes Josie Appleton. This allows them to exclude people for anything from street drinking to looking suspicious, being home...
Government Spying Aims to Silence Us
Spritzler, John
Article
2013
What the ruling class is aiming at, with these occasional "leaks" about its spying on us, is not so much to collect information about us but rather to make us feel so totally spied upon that we will b...
Here come the thought police
Spratt, Michael; Moore, Chelsea
Article
2014
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has declared his intention to fast-track legislation expanding CSIS and police powers of “surveillance, detention and arrest.”
History is a Weapon: Lockdown America in 22 Minutes
Parenti, Christian
Audio
2001
A talk by Christian Parenti, author of Lockdown America: Police And Prisons in the Age of Crisis, about the thirty year explosion in prisons in the United States, at the Stop The ACA(American Correcti...
How California police are tracking your biometric data in the field: Agencies are using mobile fingerprint scanners, tattoo and facial recognition software
Brown, J Pat; Maass, Dave
Article
2015
EFF and MuckRock got together to reveal how state and local law enforcement agencies are using mobile biometric technology in the field by filing public records requests around the country. Thousands ...
How Israel Stacks the Legal Deck: Court System Provides Little Justice for Palestinians
Bisharat, George
Article
2012
To Palestinians, Israeli military courts are sites of repression, not houses of justice. Palestinian defendants facing trial in 2010 were found guilty in 99.74% cases.
ICE: The making of an American Gestapo
Chacón, Justin Akers
Article
2018
Justin Akers Chacón, author of Radicals in the Barrio and co-author with Mike Davis of No One Is Illegal, takes an in-depth look at the troubling history and practices of a government agency that more...
If U.S. Mass Media Were State-Controlled, Would They Look Any Different?: Snowden Coverage
Cohen, Jeff
Article
2013
The Edward Snowden leaks have revealed a U.S. corporate media system at war with independent journalism. Many of the same outlets that missed the Wall Street meltdown and cheer-led the Iraq invasion h...
Increasing Legal Suppression of Freedom of Thought and Expression in So-called Free and Democratic Societies: As evidence for increasing totalitarianism
Rancourt, Denis
Article
2015
That freedom of speech is the foundational individual right for a truly democratic system to exist or emerge. And that this freedom must be defended without compromise, and without bias against any pa...
Information Overload: Driving a Stake Through the National Security State
Lindorff, Dave
Article
2012
Here’s an idea. Let’s all start salting all of our conversations and our written communications with a selection of those 300 key words. If every liberty-loving person in America virus were to do thi...
The Institutionalization of Tyranny: When Victory Has Nothing to do With Justice
Roberts, Paul Craig
Article
2013
Republicans and conservative Americans are still fighting Big Government in its welfare state form. Apparently, they have never heard of the militarized police state form of Big Government, or, if the...
IRS seizes hundreds of perfectly legal bank accounts, refuses to give money back
Article
2014
The Internal Revenue Service has been seizing bank accounts belonging to small businesses and individuals who regularly made deposits of less than $10,000, but broke no laws. And the government is ref...
Is this what a police state looks like?
Dobbin, Murray
Article
2010
The corporate security state is not static - it will keep filling more and more space to the extent that they are allowed to by civil society. The police actions in Toronto are one of those key moment...
'Israel is a terrorist state'
Cook, Jonathan
Article
2015
The violence rocking the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and now Gaza is on the verge of spilling into Israel, Palestinian leaders in Israel warned. A wave of unrest has swept Palestinian towns in ...
Israel's Worldwide Role in Repression
Article
2012
Researched, written, and edited by members of the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, this pamphlet focuses on the role of Israel’s government, its military, and related corporations and organi...
Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution: Volume II: The Politics of Social Classes
Draper, Hal
Book
1978
Draper ranges through the development of the thought of Marx and Engels on the role of classes in society.
Kurt Vonnegut and the American Police State: Just Say "Hi-Ho!" as They Strip Search You
Lindorff, Dave
Article
2012
The country seems to have crossed over a dark threshold. We are now a police state in all but name. Cops and wannabe cops are shooting innocent people and nothing gets done.
The Latin Americanization of U.S. Police Forces
Caal, Cosme
Article
2014
A call to white Americans to unite with suppressed minorities who are incarcerated daily, killed in the streets, and who hold little political power against these militarized police forces.
Lessons of the Snowden Revelations: You are the Target!
Lopez, Alfredo
Article
2013
We in the Left have long worried about “police state tactics”. Now we have to confront the police state structure. It’s here and it can morph into a real police state with very little effort. Opposing...
The Lockdown Society Goes Primetime
Schwalbe, Michael
Article
2013
Michael Schwalbe ponders the influence on society of incorporating authoritarian jargon into everyday use, with specific reference to the use of 'Lock down' normalizing the concept of restrictions on...
The Logic behind Mass Spying: Empire and Cyber Imperialism
Petras, James
Article
2013
Revelations about the long-term global, intrusive spying by the US National Security Agency (NSA) and other allied intelligence apparatuses have provoked widespread protests and indignation and threat...
Mistaking Omniscience for Omnipotence : In a World Without Privacy, There Are No Exemptions for Our Spies
Engelhardt, Tom
Article
2013
Given how similar they sound and how easy it is to imagine one leading to the other, confusing omniscience (having total knowledge) with omnipotence (having total power) is easy enough. It’s a reasona...
Mouths Wide Shut: Obamas War on Whistleblowers
Feffer, John
Article
2015
The Obama administration has been ruthless in its prosecution of whistleblowers.
The National Security State Cops a Feel: Taking Off the Gloves (Then Everything Else)
Englehardt, Tom
Article
2010
It's finally coming into focus, and it’s not even a difficult equation to grasp. It goes like this: take a country in the grips of an expanding national security state and sooner or later your "safety...
The New Police Surveillance State: The Rising Price of Political Assembly
Rosen, David
Article
2012
Police are increasingly being deployed to restrict if not prevent mass political actions, especially directed at the banks.
The NSA Has Effectively Destroyed Internet Privacy: Snowden's Latest
Lopez, Alfredo
Article
2013
Whistle-blower Edward Snowden prove that the NSA, working with its British counterpart the Government Communications Headquarters has conducted an intentional and largely sucessful campaign to destroy...
NSA's Path to Totalitarianism: Ever-Shrinking Democracy in America
Pollack, Norman
Article
2013
The American National Security Agency (NSA) appears as a “rogue” organization, extremism in the putative service of liberty. Or better, call it, stripped of all cosmetics, the unerring mark of a Polic...
Obama signs police state legislation
Martin, Patrick
Article
2012
Militarism and aggressive war abroad go hand in hand with authoritarianism and dictatorship at home.
Obama's Liberty Problem: Why Indefinite Detention By Executive Order Should Scare the Hell Out of People
Quigley, Bill; Warren, Vince
Article
2010
The proposal to create a special new legal system by Executive Order will threaten the liberty of every single US citizen who is not in Guantanamo because it will damage the due process guarantees wh...
Orwell's Triumph: How Novels Tell the Truth of Surveillance
Frank, Sam
Article
2015
Novels may be the best medium for describing a distopian world in which everyone is under constant surveillance.
The Other Police State: Private Cops vs. the Public Good
Rosen, David
Article
2013
A revealing study on "Spooky Business: A New Report on Corporate Espionage Against Non-profits" written by Gary Ruskin confirms one’s worst suspicions about the ever-expanding two-headed U.S. security...
Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter - October 30, 2014: Refugees
Diemer, Ulli (editor); Khan, Tahmid (production)
Serial Publication (Periodical)
2014
Topic of the week is Refugees. Featured articles look at migration, counter-surveillance resources, farmers in Ghana fighting to retain the freedom to save their own seeds, and rebuilding communities ...
Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter - February 26, 2015: Ukraine
Diemer, Ulli (editor); Khan, Tahmid (production)
Serial Publication (Periodical)
2015
Ukraine is spotlighted in this issue of Other Voices, with several articles on the events of the past year, from the overthrow of the government, to the rise of the far right, the armed conflict in th...
Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter - March 12, 2015: Organizing
Diemer, Ulli (editor); Khan, Tahmid (production)
Serial Publication (Periodical)
2015
The focus of this issue is organizing. How can we challenge and overcome entrenched structures of economic and political power? Our own source of power is our latent ability to join together and work ...
Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter - March 26, 2015: Sustainability, ecology, and agriculture
Diemer, Ulli (editor); Khan, Tahmid (production)
Serial Publication (Periodical)
2015
This issue features a number of items related to sustainability, ecology, and agriculture, including Vandana Shiva's article "Small is the New Big," the Council of Canadians' new report on water issue...
Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter - April 23, 2015: Eduardo Galeano, Latin America, the Vietnam War
Diemer, Ulli (editor); Rickwood, Darien Yawching (production)
Serial Publication (Periodical)
2015
In this issue of Other Voices, we mark the death of Eduardo Galeano by featuring two of his books, as well as an article about his life and work. Galeano once wrote that he was "obsessed with remember...
Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter - July 3, 2015: Greece and thd debt crisis
Diemer, Ulli (editor); Rickwood, Darien Yawching (production)
Serial Publication (Periodical)
2015
Our spotlight this issue is on the debt crisis facing Greece. To understand the crisis, one has to look beyond the mainstream media to alternative sources of information. We've done that, with article...
Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter - October 9, 2017: Meeting the Challenge of the Right
Diemer, Ulli (ed.)
Serial Publication (Periodical)
2017
Challenging the Right requires not only anti-fascist actions in the street, but organizing to reach those who may be attracted the the appeal of the Right and offering an alternative social vision. Th...
Police Militarism in America: In Many Communities Cops are the Terrorists
Lindorff, Dave
Article
2014
The apparent murder by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, of Mike Brown, an unarmed 18-year-old black youth who was shot a number of times while he was allegedly on his knees with his hands...
Police State India: Robert Clive and the Forbidden
Vltchek, Andre
Article
2012
Describing security-mania in India.
The Police State is Real: It Has Happened Here
Roberts, Paul Craig
Article
2013
The Bush regime’s response to 9/11 and the Obama regime’s validation of this response have destroyed accountable democratic government in the United States. So much unaccountable power has been concen...
Police State: US Government-Funded Database Created to Track "Subversive Propaganda" Online
MacEgan, Matthew
Article
2014
The creation of the Truthy database by Indiana University researchers has drawn sharp criticism from free-speech advocates and others concerned over government censorship of political expression.
The Political Slaughterhouse: Statism's Death Knell for Liberty and Democracy
Bovard, James
Article
2010
The issue of government coercion has been taken off the radar screen of politically correct thought. The more government power has grown, the more unfashionable it becomes to discuss or recognize gove...
Preparing for a Digital 9/11
Greenberg, Karen
Article
2012
In recent years, in one of the more dangerous, if largely undiscussed, developments of our time, the Bush and then Obama administrations have launched the first state-planned war in cyber space. First...
Quebecers' right to protest restricted after 2012 "Maple Spring" in Canada
Canadian Journalists for Free Expression
Article
2013
In 2012, a massive student strike over tuition fee increases rocked Quebec and thousands took to the streets, marching in protest. In the aftermath, Montreal residents find that their ability to prote...
The Smile of Policeman Agadi
al-Ahmed, Abdel Rahman
Article
2002
An account of the abuse of Palestinian political prisoners in the Israeli prison system.
Snowden leak: MI5 has gathered so much data it may actually be missing 'life-saving intelligence'
Article
2016
British spies may have missed potentially "life-saving intelligence" because their surveillance systems were sweeping up more data than could be analyzed, a leaked classified report reveals. The docum...
Snowden, Surveillance And The Secret State
Cromwell, David; Edwards, David
Article
2013
There is plenty to be said about living under a giant system of government surveillance. Just don't expect the corporate media to explore the full extent of what it really all means.
Spooky Business: Corporate Espionage Against Nonprofit Organizations
Ruskin, Gary
Article
2013
This report is an effort to document something about corporate espionage against nonprofit organizations. Law enforcement should prioritize investigating and prosecuting corporate espionage against no...
Spying by the Numbers: Hundreds of Thousands Subject to Government Surveillance and No Real Protection
Quigley, Bill
Article
2013
Thanks to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden many more people in the US and world-wide are learning about extensive US government surveillance and spying. There are publicly available numbers which sho...
Spying on Democracy: Government Surveillance, Corporate Power, and Public Resistance
Boghosian, Heidi
Book
2013
Heidi Boghosian documents the disturbing increase in surveillance of ordinary citizens and the danger it poses to our privacy, our civil liberties, and to the future of democracy itself.
State Lawlessness on the Rampage: The Menu for 2011
Roberts, Paul Craig
Article
2010
As 2011 dawns, public discourse in America has the country primed for a fascist dictatorship.The situation will be worse by 2012. The most uncomfortable truth that emerges from the WikiLeaks saga is t...
Stop-and-Frisk as a Policy of State Control Over Blacks and Latinos: Hobbes on Trial in New York City
Paul, Ari
Article
2013
Nicholas Peart is one of the plaintiffs in the federal class action lawsuit against the New York Police Department’s policy of stop-and-frisk, where officers use their power to roam the streets and st...
Surveillance USA: NSA and the PRISM Project
Kampmark, Binoy
Article
2013
The government is merrily going about its business of keeping tabs on you in virtually every conceivable way.
Terror Takeover: The monstrous march of the security state
New Internationalist November 2009 - #427
Serial Publication (Periodical)
2009
Has our panic over terrorism given permission for unchecked abuse? The fear of terrorism has been used to curtail our liberties and violate human rights.
Thirteen Ways Government Tracks Us
Quigley, Bill
Article
2012
Privacy is eroding fast as technology offers government increasing ways to track and spy on citizens. Here are thirteen examples of how some of the biggest government agencies and programs track peopl...
TSA's Gestapo Empire: A Greater Threat Than the Terrorists
Roberts, Paul Craig
Article
2010
The U.S. Transportation Security Administration is a far greater threat to the lives and freedom of Americans than the 'terrorists' it claims to be protecting them from.
12 most absurd laws used to stifle occupy movement
Khalek, Rania
Article
2011
Here are 12 desperate and unsuccessful measures the authorities are using to discourage, deter and crack down on peaceful protests.
Unlawful Dissent: New Laws Around the Globe Don't Curb Inequity, They Undercut Social Protests and Gag Free Speech
Warnke, Brett
Article
2012
The state is increasingly encroaching upon dissent as social conditions worsen.
The US Government's Frontal Assault on Freedom: Hillary the Identity Thief
Roberts, Paul Craig
Article
2010
The leaked Wikileaks documents show that the last thing the US government wants anywhere is a government that is accountable to its own citizens instead of to the US government.
War Against the People: Israel, The Palestinians and Global Pacification
Halper, Jeff
Book
2015
Governments today are waging a 'war against the people' -- whether 'securitization' against asylum seekers in Fortress Europe, 'counterinsurgency' in Afghanisation, or the subliminal war of policy and...
War on Whistleblowers: Free Press and the National Security State: Free Press and the National Security State
Greenwald, Robert
Film/Video
2013
During his election campaigns, Barak Obama promised the most transparent administration in U.S. history. Cynics can rejoice in the fact that the Obama administration has indicted more people for viola...
The Watchers: The Rise of America's Surveillance State
Harris, Shane
Book
2010
An exploration of how and why the American government increasingly spies on its own citizens.
Who threatens us most -- peaceful campaigners or a private militia run by police chiefs?
Monbiot, George
Article
2011
The people challenging corporate power are often defamed as destructive anarchists. Yet they are seeking to defend the fabric of our lives from the anarchic destruction of market fundamentalism. The p...
Whose Streets? Their Streets
Hoenig, Myles
Article
2017
If people don’t believe that the police in America are the greatest threat to civil society then they've been asleep for years, and comatose just this week. Or they're white, privileged and/or accepti...
With Power of Social Media Growing, Police Now Monitoring and Criminalizing Online Speech
Greenwald, Glenn
Article
2015
Criminal cases for online political speech are now commonplace in the UK, notorious for its hostility to basic free speech and press rights. As The Independent's James Bloodworth reported last week, "...
You are all suspects now. What are you going to do about it?
Pilger, John
Article
2012
A state of permanent war has been launched by the United States and a police state is consuming western democracy.

Sources Library

Canada considers preventive detention in wake of Ottawa attack
Prime minister Stephen Harper says he plans to strengthen counter-terrorism efforts as parliament returns day after shooting
Ling, Justin
2014
The Canadian government indicated on Thursday that it intends to speed up proposals to toughen the country’s anti-terror laws in the wake of the attack on Parliament in Ottawa, including a measure tha...
Canada's Proposed Anti-Terrorism Law
An Assessment
Roach, Kent; Forcese, Craig
2015
A Statement to the Standing Committee on National Security & Public Safety regarding the dangers Bill C-51 poses to many of Canada's democratic freedoms.
How the Government Secretly Demanded the IP Address of Every Visitor to Political News Site Indymedia.us
2009
Secrecy surrounds law enforcement's communications surveillance practices like a dense fog. Particularly shrouded in secrecy are government demands issued under 18 U.S.C. § 2703 of the Stored Communic...
Lockdown London
The Olympics will see the UK's biggest mobilisation of security forces since the second world war
Graham, Stephen
2012
The projected expense of security at the upcoming London Olympic Games is $867m -- part of the booming 'security industry'.
Met police using surveillance system to monitor mobile phones
Gallagher, Ryan; Syal, Rejeev
2011
Civil liberties group raises concerns over Met police purchase of technology to track public handsets over a targeted area.
Panama's indigenous champion defies president's mining deal
Canadian-Korean consortium plans 30-year gold, silver and copper project
Helmore, Edward
2012
In Panama the Ngabe-Bugle indigenous community fights to keep a Canadian copper mining company off their land.
Preservation or plunder? The battle over the British Museum's Indigenous Australian show
Daley,Paul
2015
Indigenous Australians are calling for the objects on show at the British Museum's new exhibition to be returned.
The Stasi could only dream of such data
Britain, the birthplace of liberalism, has become the database state
Ash, Timothy Garton
2008
As technology increases the flow of stored data about individual actions, assurances of the "right to informational self-determination" must be hard won from governments. Government surveillance of ci...
Unmasking the Five-Eyed monster, a global and secret intelligence-sharing regime
2013
Privacy International is proud to announce our new project, Eyes Wide Open, which aims to pry open the Five Eyes arrangement and bring it under the rule of law.
Will the government's counter-extremist programme criminalise dissent?
Kundnani, Arun
2015
From 1 July, a broad range of public bodies - from nursery schools to optometrists - will be legally obliged to participate in the U.S. government’s Prevent policy to identify would-be extremists. Und...