The Heyday of the Counter Terror Industry

On 14-15 April 2010, London’s Kensington Olympia will play host to a Counter Terror Expo, the only major international exhibition and conference of its kind to take place in the UK.

Headline sponsored by French arms company Thales, the Expo will be put on by Clarion Events which is also responsible for organising the Defence Systems and Equipment International (DSEi) exhibition held every two years in London’s Docklands, where some 1,000 arms companies congregate to flog off lethal arms, bombs and other weapons to buyers from all over the world.

The culture of fear and distrust that has grown up around this century’s terror culture and its associated wars has created vast new markets for anything that can be branded with the words security or defence.

Officially supported by a plethora of military, police and private security associations, the Counter Terror Expo will showcase over 250 security, surveillance and specialist logistics companies such as BAE Systems and Lockheed Martin ; state agencies including NATO and the Ministry of Defence; and anyone else claiming to provide protection against terrorism for both the armed forces and civilian populations.

Joining the fray are a number of corporations involved in creating identity verification technologies. The biometrics and database management companies whose invasive products, based on the recognition of physiological characteristics, are finding voice as futuristic ’solutions’ in, what is deemed, an ’increasingly dangerous world’.

Surveillance systems will be a major focus of the expo, with companies promoting biometric and data gathering/mining technologies—technologies promoting “freedom” through ever greater control and documentation of our daily lives.