Thursday 16 August 2012

Securing Your World...



Well, I've done a little digging. I intend to dig deeper in time, but for the time being I'll publish what I've discovered. It may be nothing, or it may be of interest to some, but not to others.

There are some, a number, who feel that there is something a little oppressive about modern society. It's not just our 24/7 technological and media age in which we find ourselves glued to our mobile phones and computers. It's something else. It's a feeling that around us is being erected some kind of omnipresent monitoring system which leaves little room for personal privacy. It's the feeling that, if certain parties wanted to do so, your movements could be recorded and watched on a daily basis, more or less wherever you are in urban areas, as well as on roads. What with GPS and satellite tracking in terms of mobile phones, I suppose certain parties could know of your whereabouts wherever you are.

Of course, its good to have security. Security, I am sure, plays some role in reducing crime and terrorism. However, the construction of a kind of security monitoring grid which is so vast in scale does obviously have consequences for those who cherish liberty - which should be all of us. Once an 'all seeing eye' has been established, the danger of such a control grid's construction is one of power falling into the wrong hands. We who know our history also know that the State is not always benign. At first, it could be something that's deters crime and assists police in their enquiries. Unfortunately, it could end with a 'Big Brother' scenario.

All this is obvious to readers, I am sure, but I felt I should set the scene. I recently wrote a massive post on G4S and the security roles for which they are responsible in the UK and across the World. I was personally quite shocked to discover that a security company I only knew as a regularly bumbling operation manning a few supermarkets and transporting convicts to prison were in fact a much larger commodity altogether. As well as fulfilling security roles for British Government, retail, infrastructure and banks, they do the same for the Central Banks of the World and for the US Government as well. From airports to nuclear facilities to oil and gas pipeline security, to the transportation of gold and diamonds, to cash management services and even being responsible for the security of the sea itself, in its maritime division. In different roles you will find them in the World unarmed, or, indeed, armed.

And not just that. G4S are responsible for the security at GCHQ and, to be quite honest, I wouldn't be at all surprised if G4S were responsible for monitoring ne'er do wells, potential terrorists, cybercriminals and you and, indeed, me, at GCHQ, depending on what and who you believe GCHQ, based in the beautiful Cotswolds, is for.

GCHQ, Cheltenham
As well as doing lots and lots of security work in Great Britain and across God's green globe, G4S are also responsible for a massive network of technological operations for government, pharmaceuticals and the rest, as evidenced by their own website. Oh, and they did the Olympics and whatever security is around for the Paralympics as well.

This we knew, but I did not know the following. Obviously, G4S are responsible for the running and collection of secure cash around Britain. You'll see the vans in your local high street nipping into Natwest and HSBC. Another company do the same job in the UK and that company are called Loomis. They 'manage cash in society' according to their slogan. What I didn't know is that G4S and Loomis are one in the same company. In other words, when you see G4S doing their job and Loomis doing their job, they are owned by the same parent company. That company is called Securitas which holds G4S and Loomis cash management. As its website says:

'In 2001, Securitas acquired Loomis, Fargo and Co. and incorporated it into the division Securitas Cash Handling Services. In 2006, Securitas announced its intention to split the business into separate, specialized security companies. Securitas Cash Handling Services assumed the name Loomis.'

Through acquisitions and mergers, three giant security firms become one operating under different names - a trinity, if you please. Except, that's not quite it either, since Pinkerton (Government Services Inc), the leading US security firm, in the year 2000, were brought into the Loomis-Securitas-G4S 'godhead' which begins the reign of Securitas's work in the US.

The history page of Loomis tells us that: 'Erik Philip-Sorensen, [founder of Securitas] handed over the control of Securitas to his sons, Sven and Jörgen, in 1981. The international part of Securitas’ operations has developed into Group 4 Securicor (also known as G4S) while the Swedish part of the business operates under the brand Securitas.'

Financial and business minds are welcome to put me right, but, as far as I can see, this means that when a man walks into Sainsbury's and see's a Securitas security guy, he may as well be looking at G4S. When G4S say they are manning the Olympics, they are, but they may as well be Securitas since Securitas owns G4S and regards this as its international operations division, which I take to mean the operations of G4S anywhere but Sweden.

When Loomis are 'managing cash' in society, they may as well be G4S or Securitas. In the US, or indeed Latin America, when its citizens see Loomis, they see Securitas. When they see G4S they see Securitas and when they see Securitas, they may as well be seeing G4S. When they see Pinkertons, that is Securitas too.

Now, I know that this situation isn't terribly confusing or new. That's just the way business or big business works in modern times. Acquisitions occur creating what has become known as monopoly capitalism whereby services end up being provided by just one or two companies. It isn't fair, it pushes out the little guys, but hey, who said the World was fair? Over a period of time, as the Securitas website will tell you, the merging of monitoring, surveillance, government services and security companies has been taking place because, while we sleep, national detective and security agencies never do. As a recap, feel free to watch the video below.


Personally, I don't have a great problem with the idea of a security agency being really great and spreading their operations across the globe. What I have a problem with is the fact that this same security agency, going by what we know of Securitas and G4S are so close to Government in terms of contracts. Not only does it pose a question to us as to how prepared we are to lose civil liberties in the battle against terrorism, with CCTV everywhere and satellite tracking facilities, but if what is plainly the same company is being used as a security network by Governments across the World, if Governments wanted to do something naughty, like commit some kind of false flag event, like a bombing or something, in a nation of their choice, or wished to take out someone and make it look like suicide, because they can get into just about any building on earth, in order to achieve a particular goal, then they could. All we have to do is entrust the Government with our civil liberties and pray to God that the Government always has our interests at heart. This, I think, was what both Orwell and Huxley considered very naive. Over to you. I hope GCHQ didn't read that.

I mean, in the Soviet Union, you had secret police, right? In the Eastern Bloc of Germany you had the Stasi and I'm guessing these guys were different and looked rather different to normal police. We know we've got MI5/6 and the US has CIA and FBI and all that and obviously no government departments are all pure. But, what I'm seeing in the acquistions process leading to this all-seeing, all-pervasive security force is a picture of a private security web which not only has its own investigations bureau division in Pinkerton and Burns International Security Service (also acquired by Securitas) as well as myriad other firms, but also, more or less, as G4S boast, are intent on 'securing your world' entirely. I mean, as they say, securing not 'the World' but 'your World'.

It's a little scary because it means that let's say, in the future, or even now, if you were to be considered an enemy of the State for any reason - it need not be because you oppose a particular government policy on marriage or abortion - a gigantic security network is in place to ensure you stop saying what you're saying or writing what you're writing. Meanwhile, nobody in the mainstream press has filled us in on the fact that seemingly just one, god-like massive company, working in close collaboration with the State here and in states abroad is responsible for so much. monitoring, investigation, intelligence gathering and security (for seemingly everything), logistics, delivery, transportation and new security systems and surveillance systems and cybersurveillance as well as other forms of technology around the western World. Why?

Why? Why are we never told these things? Because our Press are lazy or because they're 'in on' the deception of the Western World. For while the West was sleeping (around), taking loads of drugs and having a knees up, losing their marriages, marbles and inhibitions, forces with close ties to the State were erecting a prison around us in the name of security. So much so, in fact, that if the Government didn't like you, didn't want you to leave the country, or for some reason had locked the borders, you'd find the same security guys at the airport that were hunting you down in your home town! Then, if you made it abroad, they'd be in that country too! What is concerning is not just the links between Securitas and Government, nor their spread across the globe, but that the scale of the technology now at their disposal is now so immense and powerful. I'll keep digging, hopefully not my grave.

Blessed Titus Brandsma, pray for us.




2 comments:

Lynda said...

Thank you, thank you, thank you, for the great service you do for your fellow man. You ought to constantly seek ways to reach a greater audience.

John said...

Or you could just put up a link to wikipedia/the company website where the same info is publicly available.

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