[Reader-list] Fighting the surveillance state

[Taha Mehmood]

Dear All

Why does it appears that India is heading in the same direction when
it comes to infatuation of a government with surveillance technologies
is concerned?

The technology made by stuffing bits of silicon in molded plastic,
which goes by the popular name of 'smart' ID cards, could serve more
multiple purposes to the government of India, than it could, to the
people of India.

 Because it is the government alone which could use this information
pertaining to a billion people any-which-way it wants. The data
gathered in the course of a national roll out for MNIC or the multiple
purpose national identity card could be put to a variety of uses by
the government, while the citizen will have perhaps little or no
access to information which is her own.

The story below indicates that how in UK how the government is using
surveillance technologies for social control, just as the GOI is in
the process of finalizing a huge, massive technology in the name of ID
cards, which in all probability could be used for social control and
wanton surveillance on the people of India. So maybe the article below
is indicative of the shape of public debate in decades of come.

Excerpt-

-The argument in favour of such intrusion is always that those who
have nothing to fear have nothing to hide, but that was also the
argument that used to be made by the KGB in the Soviet Union to
justify the recording of internal movements at every hour of the day
and night. Free citizens should not have to justify themselves to
their state, for it is the state that should serve the citizen.
Privacy is a right in any civilised society.-

Fortunately for the GOI there are no laws in India, which particularly
pertains to privacy of private individuals. So I guess the Governments
think it is kind of okay. I think that when in UK where privacy laws
are so stringent, the Government does not seem to be soo  bothered
while snooping around in the name of -national security- and -social
control- one wonders whether for a country like India, even if, we had
the most toughest laws, would it have mattered?

Warm regards

Taha




http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2009/aug/11/surveillance-state-liberal-democrats

Fighting the surveillance state

State-sanctioned spying is out of control. Labour and the Tories
support it – only the Liberal Democrats stand against it



The extent of snooping in modern Britain is shocking. The scale of the
state's prying was buried in the back of the annual report (pdf) from
the interception of communications commissioner, Sir Paul Kennedy, one
of a flurry of reports released by the government just before MPs
broke for the summer recess. The report revealed that 504,073 requests
for communication data were made by public bodies last year – a
staggering 1,381 a day – one request for every minute of last year.

Most of these requests were made by the police and security services.
Many will be justified and proportionate. The sheer number of
requests, however, is shocking. When requests first hit the half
million mark in 2007, it was suggested that this was just part of the
bedding-down process. In fact, surveillance seems to have settled at
this level, 44% higher than the more modest numbers of 2006.
Surveillance has soared even though the assessment of the terrorist
threat has eased.

State-sanctioned spying on one in every 78 adults every year cannot be
a proportionate response to our problems. Neither the Home Office nor
the commissioner have presented figures showing how useful such
interceptions were in securing convictions, but we know that wholesale
local authority use of physical snooping powers is often ineffective
as well as intrusive. Only 9% of such surveillance helps with
convictions.

The argument in favour of such intrusion is always that those who have
nothing to fear have nothing to hide, but that was also the argument
that used to be made by the KGB in the Soviet Union to justify the
recording of internal movements at every hour of the day and night.
Free citizens should not have to justify themselves to their state,
for it is the state that should serve the citizen. Privacy is a right
in any civilised society.

We have sleepwalked into a surveillance state without serious debate
and without adequate safeguards. The government's infatuation with
social control shows that it has misunderstood the lessons of George
Orwell's 1984, which was a warning, and not a blueprint. We are not
yet living under the Stasi, but we are living in a country whose proud
liberal history is under threat.

The requests for communications data were made under the Regulation of
Investigatory Powers Act 2000. These "Ripa" powers allowed the public
bodies granted them the ability to authorise themselves to access
"communications data", details of when you sent or received an email
or text or made a phone call, and to whom. The government promised
when introducing them that these substantial powers would only be used
to tackle terrorism and other serious crime.

In reality, however, Ripa powers of physical surveillance have been
used to spy on ordinary people for trivial offences, such as
dog-fouling, over-filling their bins or lying about their children's
school catchment area. It is the nature of bureaucratic creep: powers
for one purpose prove handy for another. We can assume the same has
happened with intercept.

Originally, only nine organisations were authorised under Ripa powers,
such as the police and the security services but now over 800 are,
including all councils.

No one disputes that communications data and intercept evidence can be
of immense value to the police and security services. It would be of
even more value in prosecuting organised crime and violent offences if
intercept evidence were allowed in court, as it is in the US and
Australia.

Intercept should be devastating for serious crime, and not commonplace
for ordinary investigations. Yet many of the powers introduced under
Labour in the name of security lack the safeguards that would prevent
them being abused.

The Liberal Democrats want better checks and balances. Leaving the
power of issuing warrants for intercept communications with the home
secretary, who is also in charge of the police, is like asking the fox
to guard the henhouse. We must review the power to issue these
warrants, restricting their use to serious crime or introducing extra
checks by independent magistrates.

The Conservatives, unbelievably, want to relax the rules governing the
use of these powers for the police and the security services. The
Labour-Tory consensus lives. Only the Liberal Democrats now stand four
square against the surveillance state.