www.statewatch.org/analyses/neoconopticon-report.pdf

Major new report by Statewatch and the Transnational Institute:

“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; ‘peacekeeping’ 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.”

Press release: Defence industry dominates EU’s security research programme (pdf
Contacts for further information:

Ben Hayes +44 (0) 20 8802 1882 (ben@statewatch.org) or
Nina Brenjo +31 (0) 63 484 2129 (nina.brenjo@tni.org)

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