So far-fetched have been recent grounds for arrest, or for flagging yourself up as a terrorist suspect, that people keep asking me if Lib Dem Voice is running a series of hoax posts. (We’ve had lingering near street ironworks, ordering vegetarian airline meals, handing in lost property, scaring ducks, putting your bin out on the wrong day, looking at things and – easily the most heinous, in my opinion – going equipped with balloons.)
I thought I was joking (albeit darkly) when I said on LibDig that people might one day be singled out for their taste in music, but even that now appears to have happened. Home Office Watch features the terrifying ordeal of a jazz musician arrested by anti-terror police who had taken his soundproofed studio, replete with wires, as a sign of bomb-making.
We read everywhere of the bewildering array of groups whom the Government has decided should carry ID cards, from Mancunians to pilots, or in a happy Venn-style coincidence, both.
Then there’s people travelling outside the UK… people travelling inside the UK…
(Are you remembering all these vital clues? Tricky when there doesn’t seem to be any particular pattern behind them.)
So who should we be wary of? What we need is a handy guide in pictures. Never mind Keeping Calm and Carrying On nor indeed not keeping calm and carrying on. At last, I’ve found just the thing:
Met poster about terrorism
Seems the key is to look for people who use these rare objects, and then watch them avidly (with or without the aid of your own cameras, mobile phones, computers, etc).
Anyone here who can still claim not to fit into one of the categories above?
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15 Comments
I’ve used all those items in the poster. Better hand myself in.
Ah brilliant Helen 🙂
Do I belong to a suspicious group? Yes, the Lib Dems – oh, and I have non-mainstream thoughts.
Next poster in this series:
Terrorists need feet to walk about on – have you seen any feet recently? Has it made you suspicious.
No, actually, this is beyond parody isn’t it.
I think you’ll find Alix that every known terrorist has breathed at some point. I’m practising holding my breath for walking past armed police.
Worse than that I’ve taken pictures of a security wall in one city had a hand it knocking down one in another city in my time.
Add on my perchant for lentils, my thick accent associated with terrorist activities in the UK, and mt suport for contra-government policies its amazing I’m allowed to roam free to be captured on Google Streetview TBH.
You could probably count all those “tourists” taking pictures of the Palace of Westminster, that I saw on my way to Cowley Street.
Hmmm… “tourists” sounds a bit like “terrorists” – could lead to some comical mixups!
The Metropolitan Police have already singled out specific types of music such as garage as part of their monitoring via Form 696.
I’m amazed that google hasn’t been shut down yet. How can it not be a vast terrorist operation?
I thought this sillyness was just a met thing, but the British Transport Police have put these posters up in Keighley…
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/03/26/remixes-of-the-paran.html
Surely reading that poster online constitutes reading something on a website related to terrorism?
Does the graphic file have the word “GOTCHA!” embedded in the data by any chance?
Just a shame thanks to the lib dems and labour immigration policy we are now in this state. By the way I was nearly killed in 2001 in Sept 11th and thanks to the local lib dem council here in wavertree liverpool and its immigration policies the area around earle rd is turning into a hotbed of terrorist activity with our own middle east on the doorstep.
Oddly I do not find it comforting that even more people are joining the ranks that I and other EMLD members were aready members of as one of those people who are subject to questionable forms of profiling.
State promoted fear has been ramped up to extraordinary and unwarranted levels over the past decade and a half, and this has merely aided in marginalising communities and making people feel even more vulnerable.