Serve and Protect

This is horrific:

Recent images of an Iranian-American student at UCLA being repeatedly shocked with a Taser by campus police has been viewed nearly a million times on YouTube and led to protests and an independent investigation.

Police said the footage was notable for what it left out: The student refused to comply with rules that he show a college identification card or leave the library. (Contra Costa Times)

Got that? Failure to show your ID card on demand is a justification for being shot with 50,000 volts by some jumped-up authoritarian shit. This is what "nothing to hide, nothing to worry about" really looks like. And don't kid yourself it couldn't happen here. Tasers are set to become an increasingly common accoutrement in the arsenal of your friendly local neighbourhood bobby and the government are hell-bent on introducing a national ID scheme, to say nothing of the increasingly restrictive nature of the university system in this country, which means you can't even access the library without swiping your student card to prove you've paid for the right to use the reading material contained within.

Oh, I was at the Defy-ID national gathering yesterday in case you're interested.