{"id":1371,"date":"2015-01-11T05:37:19","date_gmt":"2015-01-11T13:37:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.privateinternetaccess.com\/blog\/?p=1371"},"modified":"2015-01-11T11:11:00","modified_gmt":"2015-01-11T11:11:00","slug":"charlie-hebdo-and-out-come-the-surveillance-services-demanding-more-budget-powers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.privateinternetaccess.com\/blog\/charlie-hebdo-and-out-come-the-surveillance-services-demanding-more-budget-powers\/","title":{"rendered":"Charlie Hebdo: And Out Come The Surveillance Services Demanding More Budget, Powers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Following the terrorist attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris, everybody and their brother have come out in support of freedom of speech. The problem is, they don\u2019t even know what it is when asked. Meanwhile, the surveillance services waste no time in trying to use the attack to claim more powers.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Not even 24 hours had passed before the British MI5 asked for more<\/a> sweeping surveillance powers. To put it differently: the bodies of the victims weren\u2019t even cold when surveillance hawks tried to exploit them politically.<\/p>\n

At the same time, political leaders are using the occasion to talk about civil liberties. More specifically, they speak of Freedom of Speech. These leaders who have consistently, tenaciously, and vigorously worked to erode<\/em> freedom of speech in their own countries \u2013 directly, as in outlawing certain political opinions, or indirectly, via surveillance. <\/p>\n

All week, we\u2019ve heard every columnist express their concern of how \u201call expressions that don\u2019t break the law must unconditionally be allowed\u201d \u2014 apparently completely unaware of the tautology, the contradiction, and the complete irony in that statement, which has taken on hundreds of different wordings by now. It\u2019s straight outta The Onion.<\/p>\n

One of the cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo, who survived because \u201che hates meetings\u201d, is outraged at the double standard. He went on the record<\/a> and said \u201cWe vomit on all these people who suddenly say they\u2019re our friends.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cA few years ago, thousands of people took to the streets in Pakistan to demonstrate against Charlie Hebdo. They didn\u2019t know what it was. Now it\u2019s the opposite.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is a prime example of how people who claim to \u201cbe Charlie Hebdo\u201d are most certainly not<\/em> so. For Charlie was an inconvenient voice who dared go against the crowd and use their freedom of speech to provoke outside the mainstream; agreeing with what everybody else is saying, as happens now, is the very opposite of \u201cbeing Charlie Hebdo\u201d.<\/p>\n

But the more grave danger lies in the security services, or the so-called<\/em> security services, demanding more budget and powers as a result of this attack. There are so many problems with this, let\u2019s try to just list some of them:<\/p>\n