SABOTAGE OF SURVEILLANCE AND SECURITY SYSTEMS
Lately, we’ve been witnessing a dramatic increase in our repression and surveillance. Smart cameras record our movements, mobile phones and electronic devices are being filed, and all sorts of cops are on the prowl.
Lately, we have been observing an ever-increasing mobility of flying surveillance devices above our heads both in the centre and in the northern regions where we operate. We are referring to the police drones (unmanned aerial vehicles) that, with all sorts of excuses, have intruded into our lives and that the state is trying to impose as the new normal.
About two years ago, a drone first appeared in our area on a permanent basis, flying over the OAKA – Athens Olympic Stadium(1). Sometimes, however, it was also observed flying in residential areas adjacent to it. During this time, these have multiplied within a certain range around the ΗΣΑΠ – Athens–Piraeus Electric Railways stations under the pretext of guarding the line from attacks and vandalism during the evening hours. We have now reached the point of talking about countless flights over public spaces, squares and streets, and even over neighbourhoods that have nothing to do with central points of the city. More specifically, in the last two weeks, we have observed the constant presence of a drone over the streets of Heraklion in the area of the green hill, a purely residential area during the evening hours, a fact that, combined with what we see happening in the north (2), we understand is a pilot programme in the works.
The state, in order to “pass” more control and more effective repression, weaves a general sense of lawlessness which is fed by the media with heavy-handed news headlines such as juvenile violence, increased crime, etc. which it reduces to central social issues that need immediate attention. By constantly expanding the limits within which it will be able to derive social legitimacy for the new surveillance and monitoring practices it implements, it poses the following question: how much freedom are you willing to sacrifice for your “safety”? As the mayor of Agia Paraskeui area characteristically states, “it is no longer taboo”(3) to use such practices for the purpose of guarding public spaces and preventing juvenile delinquency! As if the problem is the youth and not the cops – fascists – mafiosi!
We consider the increase in surveillance, moreover with increasingly advanced military-grade equipment, as yet another extreme escalation of repression. Through pervasive fear, the constant surveillance of our spaces and lives, the filing and recording of our movements and habits, they are trying to impose a regime of permanent terror. We believe that the evolution of this situation will be grim if we do not stop it at its source.
Let us not accept absolute control as a condition of life!
Sabotage of security and surveillance systems!
Fenek anarchist/anti-authoritarian collective of Heraklion/N.Ionia
(1) https://athens.indymedia.org/post/1624214/
(3) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFDuioUN81I
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via: athens.indymedia
Translated by Act for freedom now!