Opinion, May 2003, Al-Jazeerah.info
Human Price of the Israeli Occupation of Palestine
Israeli daily aggression on the Palestinian people
Mission and meaning of Al-Jazeerah
Cities, localities, and tourist attractions
Is individual privacy a privilege or a right,
Linda
S Heard
Gulf News, Athens |
The proud democratic nations, which claim to have
brought "liberty" to Iraq, while eying up new targets for their
"benefice of freedom", seem determined to erode the civil
liberties of their own citizenry in the name of fighting terrorism.
Since September 2001, privacy is slowly becoming a thing of the past in
the U.S. and Britain. In the U.S. alone it is estimated that some two
million closed-circuit television cameras or "little brothers"
monitor Americans going about their daily lives whether shopping, parking
their cars or simply strolling around their town squares.
Britain's "spies in the sky' are even more prevalent than those in
the U.S. with an estimated 1.5 million to two million closed-circuit
television cameras – the highest per capita rate in the world. But not
content on simply observing their citizens from afar, both countries are
now proposing to introduce, or have introduced, draconian measures to keep
tabs on individuals.
In the U.S., it began with the controversial Patriot Act, which allows
arrest and detention without trial, the concealment of presidential
records, secret military tribunals for suspected terrorists, sneak
searches of homes and offices, the infiltration of organisations and the
surveillance of individuals without proof or even probable cause.
Leaked draft
According to a leaked draft, Patriot II is even more corrosive of civil
liberties allowing secret indefinite arrests, under conditions of "no
bail" with any federal employee disclosing the identity of persons
incarcerated under this Act being liable to up to five years imprisonment.
Where naturalised American citizens are discovered working with foreign
governments, or having donated to charitable organisations, later deemed
to have supported terrorist causes, their citizenship can be revoked. They
may then be deported before it is even established whether they knew how
their alms were spent.
Under Section 126 of Patriot II, the U.S. administration can demand
consumer credit reports and exact penalties on credit agencies if they
inform the individual under surveillance that such records have been
sought, while Section 128 allows for federal subpoenas demanding
information from any company/organisation that keeps a data base on
individuals, such as hospitals, clinics, libraries, telephone, electricity
and water companies.
The use of any encryption computer program to which the U.S. government
does not possess the key is forbidden under Section 404 of the Act, with
offenders serving up to a five-year gaol term.
Headed by John Poindexter, former president Ronald Reagan's former
National Security Adviser, known for his involvement in the Iran-Contra
scandal and who once said that it was his duty to withhold information
from Congress, is the Terrorist Information Awareness (TIA) Programme,
formerly known as Total Information Awareness.
Controlled by the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), a
branch of the Department of Defence, TIA seeks to create an
"ultra-large-scale" database for the use of government
officials.
Information available to Big Brother would include individuals' medical
and financial records, political beliefs, travel history, purchasing
habits, records of phone calls, emails, web surfing, as well as details of
family and friends.
As if this wasn't enough intrusion in to the private life of citizens, the
Pentagon is set to embark on an even more comprehensive "spying"
venture known as the LifeLog programme, currently in its gestation period.
LifeLog, sponsored by DARPA, would gather information on every email a
person has either sent or received, every web page accessed, photograph
taken, phone call made or received, television channels watched, magazines
and books read.
This data would be married with a GPS transmitter, designed to monitor
where an individual goes; audio-visual sensors to record all that they see
or say; and biomedical monitors keeping track of the subject's health
status. The Pentagon has budgeted US$9.2 million towards researching the
programme for 2002, US$20 million in 2004 and US$25.5 million for 2005.
The American Civil Liberties Union has called the LifeLog programme
"Orwellian", while The Electronic Freedom Forum has labelled it
as a "giant suspicion-generating machine".
The Pentagon, in cooperation with the Georgia Institute of Technology and
Carnegie Mellon University, is also developing a radar-based device, able
to recognise individuals by the way they walk. Researchers say that thus
far they have a 90 per cent success rate.
Not to be outdone in the tracking stakes, Britain's Home Secretary, David
Blunkett, is attempting to implement plans to introduce identity cards, a
measure consistently resisted by Britons, who have never been obliged to
possess such cards since WW2. Blunkett says that I.D. cards, which he has
chosen to present as innocuous by calling them "entitlement
cards", are part of a comprehensive system to identify illegal
immigrants.
Biometric entitlement cards will contain personal and employment details
along with either an iris scan or electronic fingerprint, and without
sufficient cash in the Treasury coffers, Blunkett expects every man (and
woman) to do his duty and pay 25 pounds for the "pleasure".
There is already talk in Britain concerning the implantation of computer
ID chips under the skin of certain offenders. Applied Digital Solutions
Inc. has designed the VeriChip, which is the size of a grain of rice, and
can hold a person's entire history. If criminals are fitted with such a
device, how long will it be before we all are, perhaps at birth?
Britain's anti-terrorism laws, introduced after September 11, 2001, have
already been challenged by the UK's human rights group Liberty, while Ben
Emmerson QC, the barrister for nine suspects who were held without charge
or trial, has called the new powers "a disproportionate
response".
Emmerson further called such laws "discriminatory" since they
only apply to foreign nationals and give power to the police to hold
individuals unconnected to terrorist groups and who do not pose a threat
to U.K. interests.
Foreign suspects can be held in Britain without access to Legal Aid, or
lawyers and without charge. In some cases, they are not even told why they
are being detained.
A May 2001 article on the BBC's website reported that a European
Parliamentary committee had advised computer users to encrypt all their
emails if they want to avoid being spied upon by the Echelon eavesdropping
network.
Echelon is a global tapping grid jointly run by the U.S., Britain, Canada,
Australia and New Zealand, stemming from a 1947 agreement when those
nations signed accords agreeing to share and swap intelligence data.
The BBC said that "civil rights groups which monitor Echelon say it
can be used to intercept almost any electronic communication...The wildest
estimates of its capabilities report that it can sift through up to 90 per
cent of all Internet traffic."
The report goes on to state that deep water fibre-optics are not secure
either and that Echelon has developed devices, which can tap into optical
undersea cables. It advises anyone who wishes to remain anonymous to
"use only payphones, buy pre-paid mobile phone cards and change to a
service provider that does not assign a fixed net (IP) address".
Threat from terrorists
For most of us who live in the West, even if there is a threat from
terrorists, "freedom" does not just mean the ability to choose
between various brands of washing powder, to be able to browse hundreds of
television channels, or to pick our own life insurance policy.
If, as George W Bush is so fond of repeating, the terrorists are jealous
of our freedoms, they certainly won't be for very much longer. The reality
is that human beings are being relegated to numbers, put in neat little
boxes and conveniently labelled.
In the same way that we do not expect friends and family to rifle through
our pockets or read our private mail, why should we put up with nameless,
faceless officials invading our privacy in a more invasive way than even
the former East German secret service agency, the Stasi, could have ever
hoped to achieve?
According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, "democracy" means
"government by the people" or "rule of the majority".
Those who live in Western societies should take a long, hard look at the
new political reality in this context. Is strict governmental control of
our every move compatible with democratic values, and where should the
lines be drawn?
Are all of us willing to be scrutinised as potential terrorist suspects,
or would we prefer to return to the principle of "innocent until
proven guilty"?
The chipping away at our civil liberties is slow and insidious and we may
hardly notice the changes… until one day we may wake up to find that
Huxley's prophecies are here and now. A "brave new world" will
be born.
The writer is a specialist writer on Middle East affairs. She can be
contacted at lheard@gulfnews.com
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| Earth, a planet hungry for peace |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |