In this blog first published on the website of the Scottish Left Project, GRAEME ARNOTT points out the human rights implications of increased surveillance in Scotland, much of it using technology first developed by the Israeli military and tested on Palestinians.

“The [Investigatory Powers Bill provides us with] powers that I believe we need, whether on communications data, or on the content of communications, I feel very comfortable these are absolutely right for a modern, liberal democracy.” – David Cameron

In contrast to those who would prefer a revolution without a revolution, radicals are possessed by what Alain Badiou calls the ‘passion of the Real: if you say A – equality, human rights, freedoms – you should have to say B – the terror needed to really defend and assert the A’. But what, if, rather than applying Badiou’s formula to the radical left, we apply it to Cameron’s unrestrained Conservative majority government? If you say A – inequality, loss of human rights, freedom of capital, freedom to privatize, deregulate, and exploit the planet – then you should have to say B – the terror needed to defend and assert the A.’ Then we see that when Jen Stout wrote in an earlier Left Project article that austerity and surveillance are the primary features of unrestrained Tory rule, she wasn’t simply stating an empirical fact about the government’s future policy plans but rightly setting out that both need to be regarded in their proper historical context. Whereas austerity is the unrestrained class war of A, the paranoid surveillance spy-state is the Tory terror that will be used to ensure its success. Continue reading →