Owl Content

Neoconopticon – the EU Security-Industrial Complex, by Ben Hayes (pdf):

“Despite the often benign intent behind collaborative European research‚ into integrated land, air, maritime, space and cyber-surveillance systems,  the EU’s security and R&D policy is coalescing around a high-tech blueprint for a new kind of security. It envisages a future world of red zones  and  green zones; external borders controlled by military force and internally by a sprawling network of physical and virtual security checkpoints;  public spaces, micro-states and mega events‚ policed by high-tech surveillance systems and rapid reaction forces; Œpeacekeeping‚ and crisis  management‚ missions that make no operational distinction between the suburbs of Basra or the Banlieue; and the increasing integration of  defence and national security functions at home and abroad.

It is not just a case of „sleepwalking into” or „waking up to” a „surveillance society”, as the UK’s Information Commissioner famously warned, it feels  more like turning a blind eye to the start of a new kind of arms race, one in which all the weapons are pointing inwards. Welcome to the NeoConOpticon.”