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“Big Brother” Takes Over Europe
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Closed
circuit cameras will be installed in every nook and cranny across
Europe
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By
Ahmed Al-Matboli, IOL Correspondent
VIENNA,
July 27, 2005 (IslamOnline.net) – “Big Brother is Watching You?”
has become the mantra of today’s Europe in the wake of the terrorist
attacks on London, which sent seismic waves across the continent and
put all citizens, particularly Muslims, under the microscope, an
Austrian daily reported Wednesday, July 27.
Watertight
security measures are now the norm in
Europe
, including installing closed circuit TV cameras in every nook and
cranny, tapping phones, tracking e-mails and placing all mosques under
scrutiny, mass-circulation Der Kurier reported.
Cell
phones and the Internet are no exception. “Suspicious” numbers
will also be tapped via state-of-the art technologies and
“explosive” Web sites downed.
The
new technologies might be a bit costly and inapplicable sometimes as
it is impossible for authorities in a country like
Austria
to handle 200 million phone calls a day, according to the paper,
citing an economic study.
“It
seems as if famed British writer George Orwell’s “Big Brother”
vision has been materialized,” the paper commented on the security
mania.
Orwell
prophesied in his masterpiece “1984” almost 50 years ago that
European societies would turn oppressive and totalitarian, stifling
individual lives and personal freedoms through omnipresent police.
Tougher
Security
As
far as
Austria
is concerned, lay people started feeling the fallout from the July 7
bombings in
London
, which killed 56 people including four suicide bombers.
Politicians
have also grown critical of the police measures, arguing that it is
untraditional for freedom-loving Austrians to feel they are under
round-the-clock surveillance.
Peter
Pliz, spokesman for the Greens party, said the tougher security
measures would eventually prove futile since the closed-circuit system
in
London
failed to thwart the terrorists attacks, according to the daily.
Wolfgang
Bachler, an expert at security affairs, told Standard daily
Tuesday, July 26, that authorities would not be able to track or
record a torrent of phone calls and data pouring day in and day out.
“We
should take into account how people would feel when they find their
lives crippled and restricted all of a sudden under the new
circumstances,” he told the daily.
Former
interior minister Caspar Einem has further called for recruiting
Muslims to spy on fellow ones in mosques.
The
proposal was endorsed by police personnel commissioner Michael Kloibmüller.
Muslims make up four percent of the country’s eight million people.
Following
the
London
attacks, many European governments, particularly in
Britain
, moved to give police expanded powers to root out terrorism.
London
Police Chief Ian Blair said earlier in the week that British police
remain under orders to shoot “suspected” bombers in the head
despite the storm triggered by the mistaken killing of Brazilian
Jean-Charles de Menezes.
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