We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
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EU Observer has an article about the European Commission’s proposal to treat European citizens as criminals or at least as criminal suspects. No really.
Apparently, the heads of state for EU countries who met in Greece last week have given the ‘green light’ to the process of collection of biometric data such as fingerprints, iris scan or DNA for a chip inbedded in the passports of all EU citizens.
Thomas Rupp of the European Referendum Campaign is not impressed:
Somehow – obviously – I suffer from a clash of realities: Didn’t a lot of people last year talk about “democratisation” of the European Union and making it more “citizen friendly”? – Right: this event was called the “Convention on the Future of Europe”. Obviously the future of Europe now begins with the need of EU citizens to provide their most intimate data to the state.
[…]
Provided this law will pass and they ask me for my personal data… Shall I give my fingerprints – or even my DNA – to a growing state which does not fulfil the minimum standards of a modern democracy? Where there is no separation of powers? That has a parliament, which has no right to initiate law? Where – instead – non-elected public servants have the monopoly to initiate law, which in the end is decided by the executives of the member states – avoiding control by their national parliaments?
[…]
Suppose I refuse to give away my fingerprints? What would happen? Would I immediately be classified a criminal? Someone who has to hide something, with bad intentions? Would I have to go to jail? Would I have to leave the European Union?
Well, rhetorical questions aside, there are no surprises here from the European Commission.
Link via World Watch Daily.
I do not believe that I was entirely convinced by the argument of the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Dinton, that the bureaucracy can be trusted to safeguard our liberty… I believe that, beyond anything else, the preservation of liberty is the business of Parliament and of others who are not concerned with government or, in other ways, with the powers in the land. They must ensure that this critical part of our being a free and worthwhile nation is preserved.
When we consider legislation which, in particular, poses a danger to liberty, we must not give the Government blanket permissions; we must justify each and every trespass. We must ensure that the Government do not only do things because they can but that, when they do things, they are effective. We must also ensure that the Government consider all possible ways of achieving the same end without the diminution of our liberty.
It is common that authorities do things because they can or that they choose to do the things that they can do rather than the things that are important.
– Lord Lucas in Security and Liberty debate in House of Lords, 26th March 2003
Link via FIPR
In Malta the use of ID cards is regulated by the Identity Card Act first enacted in 1976.
Typically, they were introduced as a way of addressing a very specific concern (in our case, it seems to have been the concern over the possibility of electoral fraud) and slowly, but surely, they gained a more widespread use as more and more Government departments introduced them in their transactions with the public.
Here’s an example I can distinctly remember. Fifteen years ago when I was doing my O-levels you were issued a temporary identification document by the Examinations Department. Your official ID card was given to you only later when you turned 16. Then in 1993 the Act was amended so that an official ID card would be issued to all those aged 14 or older as a way of including those students sitting for their ‘O’s. And today, teenagers who are too young to work legally or to sign contracts have to have an official ID card.
It was all done in the name of ‘convenience’ and could anyone possibly be against that? I have been socialised into this system and its convenience and I know that when I encounter officialdom I either pull out the ID card from my wallet or else chant my name and the six digits and a letter that make up my ID to the public official who asks for it. It has become an automatic reflex.
Recently a very minor and a not untypical incident served as a bit of an eye-opener. I was driving back home in the early hours of morning when I happened to encounter a police roadblock. I slowed down and the policeman signalled me to pull to the side of the road. This I did. He took a look at me and my car, noted nothing suspicious and politely asked me for my name and ID number which I gave in a typical knee-jerk reaction when asked this question by a public official. He took note and signalled me to move on.
It was while I was driving away that the question popped in my head: what was the purpose of asking drivers for their ID number at a roadblock when there was nothing that was suspect? And I could not answer that question. The policeman probably could not either. In my case giving name and ID on being asked to do so by a public official has become automatic. In the case of the police officer (and in the case of all public officials) asking the question has also become automatic.
The use of ID cards has become so generalised and they have become so deeply ingrained in our culture that nobody notices. They have become an ordinary part of our everyday lives. Now it is whoever queries these practices who is made to feel awkward, as if he were a paranoid nutcase. In 1976 when the law was introduced there were a few voices, however feeble, who protested; now there are none. And that is what is scariest. Living in an environment that requires official identification all the time is bad enough. Living in an environment that requires official identification and subtly pressuring you never to question such practices is much, much worse.
As Gabriel Syme wrote earlier today, the objective on this blog is to argue for a ‘broad front’ push to regain some ground lost to successive governments in the struggle for individual civil liberties. But as a hard core free market individualist who opposes collectivism in all its left and right flavours, it would fair to say that when I write for Samizdata.net, I tend not to make many friends amongst socialists, social democrats or statist conservatives.
And yet… on White Rose I try to leave some of my narrow political views at the door as the aim here is about forming a much broader front in the resistance to the diminution of individual liberty. Gabriel was right to point out the excellent article by Stephen Robinson in the Telegraph in praising left winger John Wadham for his stewardship of the human rights group Liberty.
I have recently been taken to task by libertarians and conservatives for praising George Orwell, because he was a socialist. Yet it would be hard to overestimate the importance of 1984 and Animal Farm in estabishing a popularised meta-context in which the true nature of tyranny could be understood by millions of people across the world. It is my desire that people reach the conclusion that the state is over-mighty and that its actions pose a clear and present danger to individual liberty… I am far less concerned how they reach that conclusion. If Orwell felt his socialist collectivism could be squared with an abhorance for tyranny, well fine. I may not see it that way but Orwell made many of the right arguments nevertheless. We must take our friends where we find them.
The need to resist the tide of the regulatory state’s smothering of individual rights has appeal far beyond the narrow confines of libertarianism or any particular -ism, and if we are to ever roll back the trend towards a panoptic micro-regulated ‘society’, to quote Benjamin Franklin, we must hang together, or surely we will hang separately.
In commemoration of Orwell’s 100th birthday, Neuromancer author William Gibson had an op-ed piece in Wednesday’s New York Times, in which he discussed Orwell’s vision, and how it was influenced by its time. In particular, Gibson believes that Orwell’s vision was influenced by the broadcast nature of the media at the time: radio and the nascent invention of television were highly centralised.
The surveillance scheme (and the totalitarian states) envisioned in 1984 were centralised in the same way, from some giant central security apparatus. Gibson believes that today’s world, and the world of the future, is different. Greater surveillance will be mixed with much greater freedom of information. People with access to all this new information will consist of many non-state as well as state actors. We will live in a world with much less privacy, but not necessarily much less freedom.
Surveillance states without this fancy new technology were pretty effective, and still are pretty effective in places (from North Korea to Burma to Cuba) where old technological paradigms still apply. Would these states have been more oppressive if the people runing them had PCs? It’s hard to say. Would the presence of PCs in the security apparatus in East Germany rather than mountains of paper records have prevented the end of European communism? It’s doubtful. Changing surveillance technology is taking us somewhere new, it may be that the vision of Orwell provides a good guide as to what it is.
After quickly observing that Gibson sounds rather like Brian Micklethwait, I will observe that Gibson is at least partly right. The greater freedom of information that results from many to many communications networks changes things dramatically. We saw glimpses of this in the 1980s with the invention of the fax machine, which more or less removed the mass media’s ability to bury a story that the people were not supposed to know about. (The key story was something tawdry: a transcipt allegedly of the Prince of Wales talking to his mistress). This reached every office in London seemingly in minutes. The media and hence the courts could no longer supress things like that. With the invention of e-mail and SMS text messaging, such communications became more ubiquitous, and no longer tied to the home or office.
We are suddenly in a world where a great deal of information is being collected on us and transmitted to other places, and yet at the same time, we are collecting a lot of information on ourselves, and transmitting it voluntarily, and to some extent this controls the flow. Much of this information is and will continue to be cultural rather than political in content. Like Brian, I am fascinated by this phenomenon, which can also be for the good. Due largely to the use of SMS messaging, the Chinese government this year completely failed to keep information secret about the spread of the SARS virus in China. People throughout the country knew far more about what was going on than the government wanted them to know. The Chinese government now seems to know that it cannot keep things secret like this any more, and as today’s Economist discusses, the consequences could be profound. → Continue reading: William Gibson on Orwell and the surveillance state.
Another opinion piece by Stephen Robinson in the Telegraph, this time about John Wadham who resigned this week as director of the human rights group Liberty. He salutes him for his efforts at Liberty:
Mr Wadham argues that the threat posed by the state to individual liberty transcends political allegiance, so he worked hard to make Liberty less of a sectarian pressure group of the Left since his appointment as director eight years ago. He has been a good friend to the Telegraph’s Free Country campaign, dismissing the protests of some of his allies on the Left, who would prefer to exclude any conservative voice from the debate about the state and individual liberty. Thanks to him, the Telegraph has been welcomed at Liberty conferences to speak out on issues such as foxhunting and gun ownership.
This is a good sign. White Rose has been set in recognition of the need to address civil liberties across the widest political spectrum. As long as the common ground is the concern about the state and its impact on invidual liberty, we welcome those with different political opinions. We also add our voice to that of Stephen Robinson:
It would be much better if an independent or conservative figure could emerge and to make the point that individual liberty cannot be protected so long as it is popularly understood to be a concern only of the Left.
A dispiriting reading by Stephen Robinson in yesterday’s Telegraph:
To mark Orwell’s birthday, I rang around some of the people who have featured in The Daily Telegraph’s Free Country campaign since we launched it two years ago. It seemed a good moment to conduct a sort of “freedom audit” and gauge if those who seek to stem the tide of government encroachment on our liberties are managing to hold the line. It was a depressing experience.
[…]
At the beginning of last year, letters and e-mails began pouring in from unpaid parish councillors around England, enraged at being required to sign up to a new Whitehall Code of Conduct and declare all their business dealings. It is when considering the “best practices” aspects of New Labour’s “modernising agenda” that you pass through the looking glass into a world far weirder than anything Orwell could have imagined.
For the list of individual cases the Telegraph Free Country campaign has publicised or was involved in read the whole article.
Australia has a federal form of government, and there is a division of power between the Federal Government and the various state governments. As in the US, security issues are dealt with federally, while day to day matters of law and order are dealt with at a state level.
The agency which the Australian government uses for internal security in Australia is the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO).
In the wake of the Bali bombing, which deeply affected Australia, the government has been trying to broaden ASIO’s powers. However, they have not demonstrated how these new laws will actually make Australia safer, nor has there been any demonstrated inadequacies with the already ample powers that ASIO has.
The new law gives the government the right to hold someone for a week. This is not suspects we are talking about, it is dealing with people that might know something about terrorism. They ask you questions, you answer them, we all live happily ever after but they still have the power to detain you for a week.
Moreover, if there is new information that you reveal under questioning, the government have the power to apply for another warrant. There goes another week. And there is no limit to the number of warrants that the government can apply for. This can lead to indefinant confinement.
The provisions of the act are by no means hypothetical; the media is pointing out that journalists can be forced to reveal their sources. Either that, or face a five year jail term.
The key point is that this reform is not aimed solely at those who have committed a terrorism offence. The ASIO plan allows for people to be detained solely because they have information about a terrorism offence – a power even police officers do not have when questioning a suspected murderer.
The police are not given powers to detain people solely to gain information. As a society which respects human rights, this is seen as a power that is just too intrusive.
The issue is dealt with through criminal offences for concealing a major offence. There is no reason to think those laws will not apply to terrorism offences.
Moreover, the powers that the government now enjoy are pretty much unaccountable. The government say that there are sufficient accountability mechanisms in place already, but there’s actually no watchdog for ASIO.
The Australian government has acted very poorly throughout it’s long efforts to get this legislation passed. They haven’t demonstrated why there is such a pressing need for such an oppressive statute. The existing powers at their disposal remain quite adequate to deal with terrorism.
One can’t help but get the suspicion that this bill is a power-grab to take advantage of the troubled times that we live in.
Semi-cross posted from The Eye of the Beholder
The head of civil rights group Liberty, John Wadham, is to take a top job in the new organisation investigating complaints against police. He is to be a deputy chairman of the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC).
The IPCC, which will replace the existing Police Complaints Authority next April, is designed to improve transparency because for the first time civilians will investigate allegations made against the police, rather than inquiries being conducted by other officers.
Telegraph reports that civil liberties campaigners accused the Government last night of compiling a national DNA database “by stealth” as police prepared to enter the two millionth profile into the system. Police powers to keep DNA samples have been strengthened considerably since 2001 when they were first allowed to keep the information indefinitely from suspects who were not convicted.
The new Criminal Justice Bill now before Parliament extends this rule to people who are arrested but never charged. David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, said the importance of DNA profiling to criminal detection outweighed the civil liberties objections.
The DNA and fingerprint databases have become vital weapons in law enforcement, making our communities safer by helping to put thousands of repeat criminals behind bars.
That would be fine, no one disputes the usefulness of advanced technology in crime detection. The problem is, as Gareth Crossman, a spokesman for Liberty, points out:
The Government is hell-bent on creating a national DNA database by stealth. It claims that only criminals will be listed, yet is passing legislation so DNA samples will be retained indefinitely for anyone who is ever arrested, whether guilty or innocent.
If you have any doubt about the government’s intention – the new Health Secretary, John Reid, plans to ask the genetics watchdog to consider the case for DNA screening of every newborn baby. All in the best possible taste, of course…
Simon Davies of Privacy International organised an event this evening here in London in order to honour George Orwell and hoist a drink or three to one of England’s greatest writers on the occasion of his birthday.
Now I know a lot of you have read Orwell’s sundry works… 1984… Animal Farm… etc… but how many of you have drunk a ‘Black and Tan’ at Orwell’s favorite pub, the Newman Arms on 23 Rathbone Street…
…followed by walk to the Elysee Restaurant, around the corner at 13 Percy Street, which was one of Orwell’s favorite eating places? The default dish here has to be Moussaka, as Orwell ate it on nearly every occasion that he visited this place.
A splendid evening was had by Gabriel Syme and myself (the wicked and iniquitous Johnathan Pearce was a no-show) amidst an impressive collection of privacy and civil liberties activists from across a .. ahem… wide range of the political spectrum.
Cross-posted from Samizdata.net
In a characteristic Samizdata posting, Perry de Havilland regrets the modern use of the phrase “Big Brother” to describe reality TV shows, and harks back to Orwell’s original coinage, with grim pictures of CCTV surveillance cameras outside primary schools, and of propaganda for CCTV cameras in the form of big posters in the London Underground.
All this anti-surveillance thinking over at Samizdata is connected to the recent launch of this new blog, which will be concerned with civil liberties and “intrusive state” issues. I’ve already done a couple of posts here, the most substantial of which concerned organ donorship, and I intend to contribute many more similar efforts. The boss of White Rose is one of my closest friends.
However, I have long been nursing heretical thoughts about this total surveillance stuff, which it makes sense to put on a “culture” blog rather than on a politics blog. Because what I think is at stake here is a sea change not just in state surveillance, but in the culture generally. What is more, it is a sea change which places programmes like Big Brother right at the centre of what is happening. → Continue reading: Reflections on “Big Brother”: the total surveillance society and the prescience of popular culture
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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