‘We stand on edge of fascist era’
The recent intelligence scandal of the US and UK has once again raised concerns over further human rights violations under the so-called war on terror. Experts say laws protecting individual privacy are completely overridden by the western ‘police states.’
Earlier, an independent judicial body in UK, the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) declared that regulations covering access by Britain’s GCHQ to emails and phone records intercepted by the US National Security Agency (NSA) breached human rights law.
“The situation now is that the securities and guaranties against that abuse have been completely overridden in practice so there is now nothing which protects individual’s privacy and there is no legal power which in practice is effective,” said Rodney Shakespeare, a London-based political analyst in an interview with Press TV.
Shakespeare warned against the re-emergence of fascist states adding:” We are on the verge of a fascist state because they can spy on us and they can control us. It’s not just the question of spying; once they know everything about you, they can not only blackmail you, they can then subtly coerce you and they can do things like putting false information on your computer or some other dirty tricks like this.”
The analyst noted that there is no political will to put an end to the rights violations in the West, adding it is the nations which are paying the price of Western government’s wrong policies in dealing with terrorism.
” We have to stand up…frankly we need a revolt because the ground of this is security against terrorism and we should remember that it’s the West which has created the terrorism and it’s the West whose policies continue to increase terrorism.”
Shakespeare praised the role of whistle blowers like Julian Assange, Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning in revealing the mechanism behind the intelligence services operations noting: ”The situation is going to get worse because you see as the economy is going to a major collapse there will be two consequences: increase in surveillance, increase in spying and increase in distraction of journalists and of course they will also go to war which is what they are up to in Ukraine.”
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