“If you don’t comply fast enough with a customs officer, he can beat you, gas you, jail you and then imprison you for two years. This isn’t about safety, it isn’t about security, it isn’t about the rule of law.
It’s about obedience.
Authoritarianism is a disease of the mind. It criminalizes the act of asking “why?” It is the obedience-sickness that turns good people into perpetrators and victims of atrocities great and small.”
-Cory Doctorow (via Boing Boing)
This ain’t good. (Via Cory Doctorow - Boing Boing)
People meekly accept official behaviour, even if they might strongly suspect it is the police who are behaving illegally
The Independent (via Boing Boing)
Britain’s cops have the largest DNA database in the world, and it’s full of innocent people who were arrested but not charged, or charged but not convicted (the EU’s Court of Human Rights have ordered this practice to stop, but the cops refuse to comply with the law — their latest dodge is to keep innocents’ DNA for six years). Now an inquiry that begins today claims that police are “routinely arresting people” that they know they can’t convict of any crime, simply to get their DNA into the database. -Cory Doctorow (Via Boing Boing)
