-Caveat Lector-
England turning into a surveillance state
http://www0.mercurycenter.com/business/top/031893.htm
BY DAN GILLMOR
Mercury News Technology Columnist
LONDON -- It's always a bit weird to celebrate Independence Day in the
nation from which my country rebelled. The British who note it take the
occasion in good humor.
But I wonder how many think at all about the degree to which they are giving
up fundamental rights, some of which they adopted from their former
colonies. At the dawn of the Information Age, the nation that gave us the
Magna Carta -- one of the seminal documents of liberty -- seems poised to
become a surveillance state.
I'm a fan of the British people and their culture, but today I'm especially
glad to be an American.
The Magna Carta's basic principle, that not even the king was above the law,
hasn't been repealed. But law in the United Kingdom has become a blunt
instrument, a sledgehammer against liberty.
>From pervasive video cameras in public places to Draconian laws giving
authorities almost unlimited ability to spy on citizens, the British
government flouts basic notions of individual privacy. Yet there's
surprisingly little outcry as encroachments on liberty grow more pronounced.
It doesn't seem to matter which political party is in power. Labor and
Conservative governments alike have enacted laws that would send American
liberty watchers into apoplectic diatribes.
Walk down a street here and cameras follow your moves. At last count, more
than 300,000 video cameras were keeping tabs on public places, including
streets, housing developments, shopping districts and parking lots. It's all
in the name of curbing crime.
I was here a year ago, when Parliament was debating the notorious Regulation
of Investigatory Powers Act, or RIP, proposed by Prime Minister Tony Blair's
Labor government. It passed, to the dismay of an array of civil
libertarians.
RIP gives the government unprecedented power to tap people's communications.
Among its worst features, the law threatens the security of encrypted
information, with jail time for anyone who refuses to turn over an
encryption ``key'' when authorities demand it.
Most recently, the Blair government has been leading the charge for a
European Union proposal that would allow individual governments to order
telecommunications providers to store seven years worth of customer voice
and data communications -- and give police access to those records. Again,
it's all to reduce crime, say apologists for this over-the-top idea.
Fighting crime also is behind the government's plan for a massive expansion
of a national database of DNA samples. It would include not only DNA from
criminals, but also DNA from people who volunteer to give genetic
information during police investigations. One legislator has suggested
taking DNA samples from all newborn babies.
As the Independent newspaper reported in May, however, half of the police
asked to give samples -- to distinguish their DNA from other people's DNA
found at crime scenes -- refused on privacy grounds.
There's some other dissent, largely from editorial writers and civil
liberties groups, but it doesn't seem to have made much of a dent. The
British people seem to have accepted the idea that they will be pervasively
spied upon. Sadly, they seem to have happily traded liberty for temporary
safety.
None of this is to suggest that the United States is a consistent paragon of
respect for individual rights. The recently departed Clinton administration
was the most hostile to civil liberties since Richard Nixon and his thugs
ran the government, and the Bush administration isn't looking appreciably
better in most respects.
Yet the U.S. Supreme Court, in a decision that will reverberate for years,
said last month that police were not entitled to use new technology --
heat-sensing devices in this case -- to effectively spy inside people's
homes without court order. Those of us who'd almost given up on the court --
strongly pro-government on almost every other key ``law and order'' issue
recently -- found new hope that the justices had begun to recognize how far
out of balance things had gotten.
In coming years, we will need to confront new threats to liberty.
Corporations are gaining power over our lives in unprecedented ways, and the
traditional remedy -- voting with one's wallet -- has limited value when
monopolists and oligopolists rule a cartel economy, sometimes in concert
with corrupt governments. Politicians who either fail to recognize this, or
who tacitly (or overtly) support such vast corporate authority, are enemies
of our rights, too.
Defending liberty is not a sometime job. We have to keep at it, because the
forces that threaten our rights are well-organized, well-funded and
committed.
Tonight, I'll join a group of American journalists -- we're here to speak at
a conference on new media -- at the Savoy Hotel's American Bar. I plan to
raise a glass to liberty. Wherever you are today, please do the same.
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Dan Gillmor's column appears each Sunday, Wednesday and Saturday. Visit
Dan's online column, eJournal (www.siliconvalley.com/dangillmor). E-mail
[EMAIL PROTECTED]; phone (408) 920-5016; fax (408) 920-5917. PGP
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