Thursday, 28 June 2012
German credit agency plans to use Facebook data
German credit agency Schufa is planning to use 'crawling techniques' like those used by search engines to find relevant information with aim of 'identifying and assessing the prospects and threats'.
The agency is looking into using information from other sources including Twitter, LinkedIn and Google Street View to assess individual credit ratings.
In the UK, using such information without consent could be in breach of the Data Protection Act.
Visa bans rival debit/credit cards from the Olympics
Olympic sponsor Visa has been accused of exploiting spectators by effectively banning the use of rival cards at Games venues.
It is ordering the closure of all cash points which accept MasterCard or American Express.
Non-Visa customers will not even be able to use their cards to pay for goods at checkouts.
Spectators without Visa or cash can look forward to a day without food or drink and a miserable Olympic experience, all thanks to Visa's corporate greed, sorry we mean sponsorship.
Wednesday, 27 June 2012
Does the government have the right to monitor private emails?
Surveillance expert Robin Tudge and Professor of Conflict Beatrice de Graaf go head-to-head.
(from New Nationalist Magazine issue 454)
Robin
A defining element of the kinds of abusive, totalitarian regimes seen in our lifetimes has been all-pervasive surveillance – be it in East Germany, J Edgar Hoover’s FBI, or Qadafi’s Libya – including the routine steaming open of people’s letters, tapping phone calls, or sifting through their emails.
But Western governments have passed law after law, ranging from the UK’s new bid to monitor all our online usage, to the US Patriot Act, the US’s impending Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, and the EU’s Data Retention Directive, all supposedly protecting us from terrorism and crime in the age of global communications, but really demolishing our rights to privacy and to live free of this blanket, state-directed paranoia in which people’s lives are shut down on suspicion alone. These are freedoms that previous generations paid mightily to protect, but which governments are now casually destroying.
Sifting through private emails and phone calls only obscures the genuine threats and throws up false leads, while laws allowing such practices to become warped by function creep. The UK’s Regulation of Investigative Powers Act was brought in to guard against terrorism and serious crime, but is mostly used to monitor fly-tipping or to see whose children live in a school’s catchment area.
If we lose the right to privacy and allow all-pervasive monitoring then people will fear becoming a target for greater state scrutiny and curtail their own political, creative and social engagement: all while the state remains unaccountable and democracy silently dies.
This lack of transparency leads to corruption – the state becomes the one with something to hide – while regimes increasingly use surveillance to crush the growing dissent. Ultimately, the seeds of oppression reap revolution – see the Communist Bloc, the Arab Spring, even News Corp – but only after countless innocent lives have been lost or compromised and blood has been spilled on the streets.
Beatrice
Rather than dramatizing the cumulative effect of privacy and surveillance failures – which still do not amount to the level of repression exercised by regimes in East Germany or Syria – experts should be much more vocal on the lack of effect of these monitoring efforts and on the real reasons why they are used.
First of all, we cannot make a case for the rise of a bloodstained Big Brother state (yet) in Western democracies. Yes, there have been numerous insults, wrongdoings and police failures in Britain, France or other European countries, let alone in the US. But these do not compare to intentional killings by Syrian secret police, or to the psychological warfare communist countries once waged against their populations.
Second, the general views about repressive surveillance will be swept away with one single terrorist attack, or even thwarted attack.
Third, leaving security out of the equation exposes a black hole of uncertainty and fear that cannot be filled by human rights or freedom principles alone, however noble they may be. It just does not work that way in populist politics any more.
Being too dependent on monitoring is the real problem. In a world of economic cutbacks, the danger of over-reliance on privatized and computerized security looms large. Israeli airports have exchanged detectors for highly trained, schooled and professional human officers – because they produce better results.
If experts are not able to educate and inform the public about the real costs of security, the side-effects of monitoring and the lack of real effects in terms of preventing attacks, we will keep collecting haystacks with small chances of actually finding the needle. Thus, rather than presenting monitoring as either a catch-all solution or an Orwellian nightmare, let’s present it as it is: at best a second-tier, expensive and ambivalent assistance to real-life security personnel that sometimes succeeds and sometimes fails in the struggle against terrorism and crime.
Robin
Citizens don’t have to justify their need for privacy; the state has to justify its need to subject everybody to wholesale suspicion. No-one would accept having a police officer or bureaucrat sit alongside as they wrote an email or text, so why should they endure such surveillance if it’s done remotely by unknown persons for reasons unknown?
Nor are people so stupid or weak simply to allow governments to demolish their ‘noble’ rights following terror attacks. While the US Patriot Act was passed before the dust of 9/11 had even settled, enough people persistently and emphatically rejected and eventually killed off the following Total Information Awareness program that would have collated all real-time communications and databases everywhere. Opposition to ID cards in Britain strengthened even after 7/7, because people knew these tracking devices couldn’t stop terrorism but would create a mother lode of personal data for the government, hackers and criminals to trawl through and sell.
Guantánamo Bay, confessions extracted by waterboarding, executions by drones, extraordinary rendition and torture in ex-Soviet gulags, and the lies that led to the Iraq War, as well as enterprises set up or colluded in by the CIA, MI6 and elected governments in the US, Britain and Europe – all these show how very violent and repressive Western states actually are.
This is not to mention that anyone foreign-looking may be subject to stop searches, deportations, shootings in underground stations or house-arrests for non-existent plots involving ricin or [the Manchester United stadium] Old Trafford. And apparently we can forestall the inevitable blowback by ever more irrelevant surveillance measures, such as governments reading our emails. To which I will not say ‘go right ahead, I’m sure it’s all for my own good’.
Beatrice
Zigazou under a CC Licence Blatant injustices and torture speak for themselves. Hardly anyone would want to justify the gross violations of human rights that happened in Iraq, Afghanistan or in the extra-rendition prisons in some remote countries. However, Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo are really 2004’s problems. What we are facing now is a much more complex, stealthy and pervasive threat: that of all kinds of data-retention programs, vetting and profiling attempts – not so much initiated by governments, but by commercial enterprises, operating without boundaries, borders or oversight mechanisms.
Thus, again, rather than pointing to supposedly oppressive regimes, we should be aware of the ‘security as enterprise’ approach that is pervading our industrialized world. Security nowadays is nothing much to worry about for most people. Current worries are presented by the monetary and economic crises, not by invisible data collection programs. But this ‘security as enterprise’, or even ‘security as comfort’ approach creates victims by the thousands: it divides whole populations into risk-free citizens on the one hand and risk-bearers on the other. People with double passports, travellers to the Middle East, even people with diabetes, if profiled as bearing a risk to the commercial enterprise of an airport, or as otherwise deviating from purported safe standards, will be tracked, endlessly vetted, and discriminated against in all kinds of ways.
In short, rather than remaining entrenched in last year’s battles, let’s concentrate on the techniques of profiling and collecting data. And let’s not point fingers at governments alone, but challenge private companies to come clean about how they sell false security promises for their own benefits, creating new divisions in societies in their wake.
Robin
New InternationalistHomeMagazineBooksBlogShopSubscribeGet app Politics Environment Economics Culture Humanrights Activism Corporations Development Country Argument More» ____________________________________________________________
Home ›Sections ›Argument ›Does the government have the right to monitor private emails?
issue 454
Surveillance expert Robin Tudge and Professor of Conflict Beatrice de Graaf go head-to-head.
Every month we invite two experts to debate, and then invite you to join the conversation online. The best comments will be printed in the next magazine.
Robin
A defining element of the kinds of abusive, totalitarian regimes seen in our lifetimes has been all-pervasive surveillance – be it in East Germany, J Edgar Hoover’s FBI, or Qadafi’s Libya – including the routine steaming open of people’s letters, tapping phone calls, or sifting through their emails.
But Western governments have passed law after law, ranging from the UK’s new bid to monitor all our online usage, to the US Patriot Act, the US’s impending Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, and the EU’s Data Retention Directive, all supposedly protecting us from terrorism and crime in the age of global communications, but really demolishing our rights to privacy and to live free of this blanket, state-directed paranoia in which people’s lives are shut down on suspicion alone. These are freedoms that previous generations paid mightily to protect, but which governments are now casually destroying.
Sifting through private emails and phone calls only obscures the genuine threats and throws up false leads, while laws allowing such practices to become warped by function creep. The UK’s Regulation of Investigative Powers Act was brought in to guard against terrorism and serious crime, but is mostly used to monitor fly-tipping or to see whose children live in a school’s catchment area.
If we lose the right to privacy and allow all-pervasive monitoring then people will fear becoming a target for greater state scrutiny and curtail their own political, creative and social engagement: all while the state remains unaccountable and democracy silently dies.
This lack of transparency leads to corruption – the state becomes the one with something to hide – while regimes increasingly use surveillance to crush the growing dissent. Ultimately, the seeds of oppression reap revolution – see the Communist Bloc, the Arab Spring, even News Corp – but only after countless innocent lives have been lost or compromised and blood has been spilled on the streets.
Beatrice
Rather than dramatizing the cumulative effect of privacy and surveillance failures – which still do not amount to the level of repression exercised by regimes in East Germany or Syria – experts should be much more vocal on the lack of effect of these monitoring efforts and on the real reasons why they are used.
First of all, we cannot make a case for the rise of a bloodstained Big Brother state (yet) in Western democracies. Yes, there have been numerous insults, wrongdoings and police failures in Britain, France or other European countries, let alone in the US. But these do not compare to intentional killings by Syrian secret police, or to the psychological warfare communist countries once waged against their populations.
Second, the general views about repressive surveillance will be swept away with one single terrorist attack, or even thwarted attack.
Third, leaving security out of the equation exposes a black hole of uncertainty and fear that cannot be filled by human rights or freedom principles alone, however noble they may be. It just does not work that way in populist politics any more.
Being too dependent on monitoring is the real problem. In a world of economic cutbacks, the danger of over-reliance on privatized and computerized security looms large. Israeli airports have exchanged detectors for highly trained, schooled and professional human officers – because they produce better results.
If experts are not able to educate and inform the public about the real costs of security, the side-effects of monitoring and the lack of real effects in terms of preventing attacks, we will keep collecting haystacks with small chances of actually finding the needle. Thus, rather than presenting monitoring as either a catch-all solution or an Orwellian nightmare, let’s present it as it is: at best a second-tier, expensive and ambivalent assistance to real-life security personnel that sometimes succeeds and sometimes fails in the struggle against terrorism and crime.
Robin
Citizens don’t have to justify their need for privacy; the state has to justify its need to subject everybody to wholesale suspicion. No-one would accept having a police officer or bureaucrat sit alongside as they wrote an email or text, so why should they endure such surveillance if it’s done remotely by unknown persons for reasons unknown?
Nor are people so stupid or weak simply to allow governments to demolish their ‘noble’ rights following terror attacks. While the US Patriot Act was passed before the dust of 9/11 had even settled, enough people persistently and emphatically rejected and eventually killed off the following Total Information Awareness program that would have collated all real-time communications and databases everywhere. Opposition to ID cards in Britain strengthened even after 7/7, because people knew these tracking devices couldn’t stop terrorism but would create a mother lode of personal data for the government, hackers and criminals to trawl through and sell.
Guantánamo Bay, confessions extracted by waterboarding, executions by drones, extraordinary rendition and torture in ex-Soviet gulags, and the lies that led to the Iraq War, as well as enterprises set up or colluded in by the CIA, MI6 and elected governments in the US, Britain and Europe – all these show how very violent and repressive Western states actually are.
This is not to mention that anyone foreign-looking may be subject to stop searches, deportations, shootings in underground stations or house-arrests for non-existent plots involving ricin or [the Manchester United stadium] Old Trafford. And apparently we can forestall the inevitable blowback by ever more irrelevant surveillance measures, such as governments reading our emails. To which I will not say ‘go right ahead, I’m sure it’s all for my own good’.
Beatrice
Zigazou under a CC Licence Blatant injustices and torture speak for themselves. Hardly anyone would want to justify the gross violations of human rights that happened in Iraq, Afghanistan or in the extra-rendition prisons in some remote countries. However, Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo are really 2004’s problems. What we are facing now is a much more complex, stealthy and pervasive threat: that of all kinds of data-retention programs, vetting and profiling attempts – not so much initiated by governments, but by commercial enterprises, operating without boundaries, borders or oversight mechanisms.
Thus, again, rather than pointing to supposedly oppressive regimes, we should be aware of the ‘security as enterprise’ approach that is pervading our industrialized world. Security nowadays is nothing much to worry about for most people. Current worries are presented by the monetary and economic crises, not by invisible data collection programs. But this ‘security as enterprise’, or even ‘security as comfort’ approach creates victims by the thousands: it divides whole populations into risk-free citizens on the one hand and risk-bearers on the other. People with double passports, travellers to the Middle East, even people with diabetes, if profiled as bearing a risk to the commercial enterprise of an airport, or as otherwise deviating from purported safe standards, will be tracked, endlessly vetted, and discriminated against in all kinds of ways.
In short, rather than remaining entrenched in last year’s battles, let’s concentrate on the techniques of profiling and collecting data. And let’s not point fingers at governments alone, but challenge private companies to come clean about how they sell false security promises for their own benefits, creating new divisions in societies in their wake.
Robin
It seems we agree that endemic surveillance is hell on wheels and is being implemented with the illusion of being done in all good faith by governments and private companies, although it’s palpably not true to say that Guantánamo etc is ‘2004’s problem’.
They illustrate the extremes of abuses that governments of all hues and their privatized partners readily undertake while demanding from us that the price of freedom is to stand naked at all times before the state under all-pervasive suspicion, where threat is based not on realities, but on what might be.
This has been enabled by the pernicious concept of ‘risk’, taken up by governments working with no open oversight or scrutiny, providing entirely venal solutions to non-existent problems, leading to schoolchildren having to surrender their fingerprints to take books out, or mothers needing criminal record bureau checks to taxi their chronically ill children to hospital.
The surveillance industry is a growing business that provides profits, employment and sponsorship for politicians pushing a world where it’s not about who you are or what you know but what you can prove you’re not.
Beatrice
‘Risk’ is indeed the new buzzword; it is not just a new way of perceiving security issues, but has become a mode of governance. The concept of risk not only tackles historical and actual threats (by using them as calculation models for future ones), but also suggests a taming of an uncertain future. By means of risk assessments, apocalyptic horrors are invoked on a daily basis, based on worst-case scenario thinking, stress testing or premeditation.
We see it in courts, where what-if arguments replace habeas corpus considerations, such as in the numerous convictions of terrorism suspects that were apprehended on little more than rumours, or ambiguous taped conversations. Securitization of justice is well under way.
Risk has also become the new dividing principle throughout society, whether you’ll be profiled as a risk while queuing at an airport, or as an uninsurable citizen, forced to pay outrageous insurance premiums.
Therefore, rather than focusing on the obvious and blatant transgressions of democratic rule of law or human rights alone, we should demonstrate how the new politics of risk and prevention work, and how they are increasingly overturning considerations of prudence, accountability and civil rights.
There is enough work to be done for all of us, experts, academics and human rights activists alike. The new ideology of risk and security management is simply too expensive, too ineffective and plain unjust.
Robin Tudge is the author of the No-Nonsense Guide to Global Surveillance, inspired by his campaigning for NO2ID. He also wrote the pioneering Bradt Guide to North Korea and is now based in Newcastle where he works as a freelance journalist and actor.
Beatrice de Graaf is Professor for Conflict and Security History at Leiden University, the Netherlands and the author of Evaluating Counterterrorist Performance: A Comparative Study. Visit her research site at: http://hum.leiden.edu/history/enemies-of-the-state
What do you think?
(from New Nationalist Magazine issue 454)
Robin
A defining element of the kinds of abusive, totalitarian regimes seen in our lifetimes has been all-pervasive surveillance – be it in East Germany, J Edgar Hoover’s FBI, or Qadafi’s Libya – including the routine steaming open of people’s letters, tapping phone calls, or sifting through their emails.
But Western governments have passed law after law, ranging from the UK’s new bid to monitor all our online usage, to the US Patriot Act, the US’s impending Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, and the EU’s Data Retention Directive, all supposedly protecting us from terrorism and crime in the age of global communications, but really demolishing our rights to privacy and to live free of this blanket, state-directed paranoia in which people’s lives are shut down on suspicion alone. These are freedoms that previous generations paid mightily to protect, but which governments are now casually destroying.
Sifting through private emails and phone calls only obscures the genuine threats and throws up false leads, while laws allowing such practices to become warped by function creep. The UK’s Regulation of Investigative Powers Act was brought in to guard against terrorism and serious crime, but is mostly used to monitor fly-tipping or to see whose children live in a school’s catchment area.
If we lose the right to privacy and allow all-pervasive monitoring then people will fear becoming a target for greater state scrutiny and curtail their own political, creative and social engagement: all while the state remains unaccountable and democracy silently dies.
This lack of transparency leads to corruption – the state becomes the one with something to hide – while regimes increasingly use surveillance to crush the growing dissent. Ultimately, the seeds of oppression reap revolution – see the Communist Bloc, the Arab Spring, even News Corp – but only after countless innocent lives have been lost or compromised and blood has been spilled on the streets.
Beatrice
Rather than dramatizing the cumulative effect of privacy and surveillance failures – which still do not amount to the level of repression exercised by regimes in East Germany or Syria – experts should be much more vocal on the lack of effect of these monitoring efforts and on the real reasons why they are used.
First of all, we cannot make a case for the rise of a bloodstained Big Brother state (yet) in Western democracies. Yes, there have been numerous insults, wrongdoings and police failures in Britain, France or other European countries, let alone in the US. But these do not compare to intentional killings by Syrian secret police, or to the psychological warfare communist countries once waged against their populations.
Second, the general views about repressive surveillance will be swept away with one single terrorist attack, or even thwarted attack.
Third, leaving security out of the equation exposes a black hole of uncertainty and fear that cannot be filled by human rights or freedom principles alone, however noble they may be. It just does not work that way in populist politics any more.
Being too dependent on monitoring is the real problem. In a world of economic cutbacks, the danger of over-reliance on privatized and computerized security looms large. Israeli airports have exchanged detectors for highly trained, schooled and professional human officers – because they produce better results.
If experts are not able to educate and inform the public about the real costs of security, the side-effects of monitoring and the lack of real effects in terms of preventing attacks, we will keep collecting haystacks with small chances of actually finding the needle. Thus, rather than presenting monitoring as either a catch-all solution or an Orwellian nightmare, let’s present it as it is: at best a second-tier, expensive and ambivalent assistance to real-life security personnel that sometimes succeeds and sometimes fails in the struggle against terrorism and crime.
Robin
Citizens don’t have to justify their need for privacy; the state has to justify its need to subject everybody to wholesale suspicion. No-one would accept having a police officer or bureaucrat sit alongside as they wrote an email or text, so why should they endure such surveillance if it’s done remotely by unknown persons for reasons unknown?
Nor are people so stupid or weak simply to allow governments to demolish their ‘noble’ rights following terror attacks. While the US Patriot Act was passed before the dust of 9/11 had even settled, enough people persistently and emphatically rejected and eventually killed off the following Total Information Awareness program that would have collated all real-time communications and databases everywhere. Opposition to ID cards in Britain strengthened even after 7/7, because people knew these tracking devices couldn’t stop terrorism but would create a mother lode of personal data for the government, hackers and criminals to trawl through and sell.
Guantánamo Bay, confessions extracted by waterboarding, executions by drones, extraordinary rendition and torture in ex-Soviet gulags, and the lies that led to the Iraq War, as well as enterprises set up or colluded in by the CIA, MI6 and elected governments in the US, Britain and Europe – all these show how very violent and repressive Western states actually are.
This is not to mention that anyone foreign-looking may be subject to stop searches, deportations, shootings in underground stations or house-arrests for non-existent plots involving ricin or [the Manchester United stadium] Old Trafford. And apparently we can forestall the inevitable blowback by ever more irrelevant surveillance measures, such as governments reading our emails. To which I will not say ‘go right ahead, I’m sure it’s all for my own good’.
Beatrice
Zigazou under a CC Licence Blatant injustices and torture speak for themselves. Hardly anyone would want to justify the gross violations of human rights that happened in Iraq, Afghanistan or in the extra-rendition prisons in some remote countries. However, Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo are really 2004’s problems. What we are facing now is a much more complex, stealthy and pervasive threat: that of all kinds of data-retention programs, vetting and profiling attempts – not so much initiated by governments, but by commercial enterprises, operating without boundaries, borders or oversight mechanisms.
Thus, again, rather than pointing to supposedly oppressive regimes, we should be aware of the ‘security as enterprise’ approach that is pervading our industrialized world. Security nowadays is nothing much to worry about for most people. Current worries are presented by the monetary and economic crises, not by invisible data collection programs. But this ‘security as enterprise’, or even ‘security as comfort’ approach creates victims by the thousands: it divides whole populations into risk-free citizens on the one hand and risk-bearers on the other. People with double passports, travellers to the Middle East, even people with diabetes, if profiled as bearing a risk to the commercial enterprise of an airport, or as otherwise deviating from purported safe standards, will be tracked, endlessly vetted, and discriminated against in all kinds of ways.
In short, rather than remaining entrenched in last year’s battles, let’s concentrate on the techniques of profiling and collecting data. And let’s not point fingers at governments alone, but challenge private companies to come clean about how they sell false security promises for their own benefits, creating new divisions in societies in their wake.
Robin
New InternationalistHomeMagazineBooksBlogShopSubscribeGet app Politics Environment Economics Culture Humanrights Activism Corporations Development Country Argument More» ____________________________________________________________
Home ›Sections ›Argument ›Does the government have the right to monitor private emails?
issue 454
Surveillance expert Robin Tudge and Professor of Conflict Beatrice de Graaf go head-to-head.
Every month we invite two experts to debate, and then invite you to join the conversation online. The best comments will be printed in the next magazine.
Robin
A defining element of the kinds of abusive, totalitarian regimes seen in our lifetimes has been all-pervasive surveillance – be it in East Germany, J Edgar Hoover’s FBI, or Qadafi’s Libya – including the routine steaming open of people’s letters, tapping phone calls, or sifting through their emails.
But Western governments have passed law after law, ranging from the UK’s new bid to monitor all our online usage, to the US Patriot Act, the US’s impending Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, and the EU’s Data Retention Directive, all supposedly protecting us from terrorism and crime in the age of global communications, but really demolishing our rights to privacy and to live free of this blanket, state-directed paranoia in which people’s lives are shut down on suspicion alone. These are freedoms that previous generations paid mightily to protect, but which governments are now casually destroying.
Sifting through private emails and phone calls only obscures the genuine threats and throws up false leads, while laws allowing such practices to become warped by function creep. The UK’s Regulation of Investigative Powers Act was brought in to guard against terrorism and serious crime, but is mostly used to monitor fly-tipping or to see whose children live in a school’s catchment area.
If we lose the right to privacy and allow all-pervasive monitoring then people will fear becoming a target for greater state scrutiny and curtail their own political, creative and social engagement: all while the state remains unaccountable and democracy silently dies.
This lack of transparency leads to corruption – the state becomes the one with something to hide – while regimes increasingly use surveillance to crush the growing dissent. Ultimately, the seeds of oppression reap revolution – see the Communist Bloc, the Arab Spring, even News Corp – but only after countless innocent lives have been lost or compromised and blood has been spilled on the streets.
Beatrice
Rather than dramatizing the cumulative effect of privacy and surveillance failures – which still do not amount to the level of repression exercised by regimes in East Germany or Syria – experts should be much more vocal on the lack of effect of these monitoring efforts and on the real reasons why they are used.
First of all, we cannot make a case for the rise of a bloodstained Big Brother state (yet) in Western democracies. Yes, there have been numerous insults, wrongdoings and police failures in Britain, France or other European countries, let alone in the US. But these do not compare to intentional killings by Syrian secret police, or to the psychological warfare communist countries once waged against their populations.
Second, the general views about repressive surveillance will be swept away with one single terrorist attack, or even thwarted attack.
Third, leaving security out of the equation exposes a black hole of uncertainty and fear that cannot be filled by human rights or freedom principles alone, however noble they may be. It just does not work that way in populist politics any more.
Being too dependent on monitoring is the real problem. In a world of economic cutbacks, the danger of over-reliance on privatized and computerized security looms large. Israeli airports have exchanged detectors for highly trained, schooled and professional human officers – because they produce better results.
If experts are not able to educate and inform the public about the real costs of security, the side-effects of monitoring and the lack of real effects in terms of preventing attacks, we will keep collecting haystacks with small chances of actually finding the needle. Thus, rather than presenting monitoring as either a catch-all solution or an Orwellian nightmare, let’s present it as it is: at best a second-tier, expensive and ambivalent assistance to real-life security personnel that sometimes succeeds and sometimes fails in the struggle against terrorism and crime.
Robin
Citizens don’t have to justify their need for privacy; the state has to justify its need to subject everybody to wholesale suspicion. No-one would accept having a police officer or bureaucrat sit alongside as they wrote an email or text, so why should they endure such surveillance if it’s done remotely by unknown persons for reasons unknown?
Nor are people so stupid or weak simply to allow governments to demolish their ‘noble’ rights following terror attacks. While the US Patriot Act was passed before the dust of 9/11 had even settled, enough people persistently and emphatically rejected and eventually killed off the following Total Information Awareness program that would have collated all real-time communications and databases everywhere. Opposition to ID cards in Britain strengthened even after 7/7, because people knew these tracking devices couldn’t stop terrorism but would create a mother lode of personal data for the government, hackers and criminals to trawl through and sell.
Guantánamo Bay, confessions extracted by waterboarding, executions by drones, extraordinary rendition and torture in ex-Soviet gulags, and the lies that led to the Iraq War, as well as enterprises set up or colluded in by the CIA, MI6 and elected governments in the US, Britain and Europe – all these show how very violent and repressive Western states actually are.
This is not to mention that anyone foreign-looking may be subject to stop searches, deportations, shootings in underground stations or house-arrests for non-existent plots involving ricin or [the Manchester United stadium] Old Trafford. And apparently we can forestall the inevitable blowback by ever more irrelevant surveillance measures, such as governments reading our emails. To which I will not say ‘go right ahead, I’m sure it’s all for my own good’.
Beatrice
Zigazou under a CC Licence Blatant injustices and torture speak for themselves. Hardly anyone would want to justify the gross violations of human rights that happened in Iraq, Afghanistan or in the extra-rendition prisons in some remote countries. However, Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo are really 2004’s problems. What we are facing now is a much more complex, stealthy and pervasive threat: that of all kinds of data-retention programs, vetting and profiling attempts – not so much initiated by governments, but by commercial enterprises, operating without boundaries, borders or oversight mechanisms.
Thus, again, rather than pointing to supposedly oppressive regimes, we should be aware of the ‘security as enterprise’ approach that is pervading our industrialized world. Security nowadays is nothing much to worry about for most people. Current worries are presented by the monetary and economic crises, not by invisible data collection programs. But this ‘security as enterprise’, or even ‘security as comfort’ approach creates victims by the thousands: it divides whole populations into risk-free citizens on the one hand and risk-bearers on the other. People with double passports, travellers to the Middle East, even people with diabetes, if profiled as bearing a risk to the commercial enterprise of an airport, or as otherwise deviating from purported safe standards, will be tracked, endlessly vetted, and discriminated against in all kinds of ways.
In short, rather than remaining entrenched in last year’s battles, let’s concentrate on the techniques of profiling and collecting data. And let’s not point fingers at governments alone, but challenge private companies to come clean about how they sell false security promises for their own benefits, creating new divisions in societies in their wake.
Robin
It seems we agree that endemic surveillance is hell on wheels and is being implemented with the illusion of being done in all good faith by governments and private companies, although it’s palpably not true to say that Guantánamo etc is ‘2004’s problem’.
They illustrate the extremes of abuses that governments of all hues and their privatized partners readily undertake while demanding from us that the price of freedom is to stand naked at all times before the state under all-pervasive suspicion, where threat is based not on realities, but on what might be.
This has been enabled by the pernicious concept of ‘risk’, taken up by governments working with no open oversight or scrutiny, providing entirely venal solutions to non-existent problems, leading to schoolchildren having to surrender their fingerprints to take books out, or mothers needing criminal record bureau checks to taxi their chronically ill children to hospital.
The surveillance industry is a growing business that provides profits, employment and sponsorship for politicians pushing a world where it’s not about who you are or what you know but what you can prove you’re not.
Beatrice
‘Risk’ is indeed the new buzzword; it is not just a new way of perceiving security issues, but has become a mode of governance. The concept of risk not only tackles historical and actual threats (by using them as calculation models for future ones), but also suggests a taming of an uncertain future. By means of risk assessments, apocalyptic horrors are invoked on a daily basis, based on worst-case scenario thinking, stress testing or premeditation.
We see it in courts, where what-if arguments replace habeas corpus considerations, such as in the numerous convictions of terrorism suspects that were apprehended on little more than rumours, or ambiguous taped conversations. Securitization of justice is well under way.
Risk has also become the new dividing principle throughout society, whether you’ll be profiled as a risk while queuing at an airport, or as an uninsurable citizen, forced to pay outrageous insurance premiums.
Therefore, rather than focusing on the obvious and blatant transgressions of democratic rule of law or human rights alone, we should demonstrate how the new politics of risk and prevention work, and how they are increasingly overturning considerations of prudence, accountability and civil rights.
There is enough work to be done for all of us, experts, academics and human rights activists alike. The new ideology of risk and security management is simply too expensive, too ineffective and plain unjust.
Robin Tudge is the author of the No-Nonsense Guide to Global Surveillance, inspired by his campaigning for NO2ID. He also wrote the pioneering Bradt Guide to North Korea and is now based in Newcastle where he works as a freelance journalist and actor.
Beatrice de Graaf is Professor for Conflict and Security History at Leiden University, the Netherlands and the author of Evaluating Counterterrorist Performance: A Comparative Study. Visit her research site at: http://hum.leiden.edu/history/enemies-of-the-state
What do you think?
Monday, 24 October 2011
Profit before Planet - who is making deals with your government.
A Friends of the Earth Article.
OIL COMPANIES SUPERMARKETS PETR0-CHEMICAL FIRMS. AIRLINES
Globally they spend millions of pounds undermining environmental policy
Big businesses spend serious money on advertising and PR telling us that they are doing their bit for the environment. But away from the public eye they're spending many millions holding back environmental progress.
Airlines are spending millions to persuade governments to expand airports. Petro-chemical companies are blocking environmentally friendly measures because of the cost to them. Oil companies are funding "independent thinktanks", designed to undermine serious climate change research. And they are all doing it for one thing - profit.
TO THEM IT'S JUST GOOD BUSINESS. THEY WANT TO CARRY ON AS USUAL. AND THEY ARE READY TO SPEND MILLIONS TO MAKE SURE THEY CAN.
For more information contact Friends of the Earth.
OIL COMPANIES SUPERMARKETS PETR0-CHEMICAL FIRMS. AIRLINES
Globally they spend millions of pounds undermining environmental policy
Big businesses spend serious money on advertising and PR telling us that they are doing their bit for the environment. But away from the public eye they're spending many millions holding back environmental progress.
Airlines are spending millions to persuade governments to expand airports. Petro-chemical companies are blocking environmentally friendly measures because of the cost to them. Oil companies are funding "independent thinktanks", designed to undermine serious climate change research. And they are all doing it for one thing - profit.
TO THEM IT'S JUST GOOD BUSINESS. THEY WANT TO CARRY ON AS USUAL. AND THEY ARE READY TO SPEND MILLIONS TO MAKE SURE THEY CAN.
For more information contact Friends of the Earth.
Friday, 7 October 2011
Feral scum - a view of the recent riots
Feral scum? Look no further than our politicians
by Anna Chem (New Internationalist, October,2011)
How was your Summer? Ours was ... um .. interesting.
If you look up the word schadenfreude and you'll likely find an image of the English riots examined by the laughing faces of Chinese, Iranians and other assorted recipients of British democracy know-how down the ages.
With only months to go before the 2012 olympics, based half an hour up the road from Hackney, one of the riot hot spots, the world takes another lurch nearer to the Twiligh Zone. Next year's British sporting spectacular has gone from being merely the austerity Olympics to the take your own life in your hands and see who comes out of this alive extravaganza.
Synchronized fleeing and dodge-the-javelin are likely to be major attractions.
The first rule of Riot Club is that you must not talk about the causes. The second rule of Riot club is ....
What was amazing was to see our politicians who had been dragged back from their August holidays, lining up in Parliament to condemn the looters at the bottom of society. MP's who had been caught with their fingers in the till wrungs their hands over the culture of greed.
If you want to study the genesis of the current cycle of "something for nothing" surely you need look no further than Mr and Mrs Freebie, Tony and Cherie Blair. It was only a short while prior to the insurrection that we'd woken up to the fact that Britain has been run by dark forces for decades. Press, politicians and police fell into disgrace as the full depth of their corruption was exposed by Hackgate. The bankers whose crisis started the recession have been laughing all the way to their annual bonuses while we turn into rats in a sack, head chickens and attention-deficit goldfish.
But now British society doesn't know whether to bang up the biggest or the nearest. And so a bystander to the riots, who picked up a bottle of water from a smashed shop was imprisoned for six months.
It feels like 1930's Germany, with a soupcon of Parisian Communard-baiting as kids are written off as "feral scum" and "rats".
Perhaps the Prime Minister, David Cameron should invite the Taliban to keep control in the Olympic village next year, much as the Hells Angels were employed by the Rolling Stones to maintain discipline at their infamous Altamont concert. After all, Cameron wanted to bring in the head of the notorious L A cops (with their record beating murder figures) for advice. So why not?
Insurrection, calls for a mangled internet and soldiers on the streets .... if I wanted an army turning on its own people, I'd go back to Tiannaman square. Rumours have it that, after years of berating them for their contempt for freedom of speech, Cameron is consulting the Chinese authorities on shutting down the social networks.
Now that is a riot!!
by Anna Chem (New Internationalist, October,2011)
How was your Summer? Ours was ... um .. interesting.
If you look up the word schadenfreude and you'll likely find an image of the English riots examined by the laughing faces of Chinese, Iranians and other assorted recipients of British democracy know-how down the ages.
With only months to go before the 2012 olympics, based half an hour up the road from Hackney, one of the riot hot spots, the world takes another lurch nearer to the Twiligh Zone. Next year's British sporting spectacular has gone from being merely the austerity Olympics to the take your own life in your hands and see who comes out of this alive extravaganza.
Synchronized fleeing and dodge-the-javelin are likely to be major attractions.
The first rule of Riot Club is that you must not talk about the causes. The second rule of Riot club is ....
What was amazing was to see our politicians who had been dragged back from their August holidays, lining up in Parliament to condemn the looters at the bottom of society. MP's who had been caught with their fingers in the till wrungs their hands over the culture of greed.
If you want to study the genesis of the current cycle of "something for nothing" surely you need look no further than Mr and Mrs Freebie, Tony and Cherie Blair. It was only a short while prior to the insurrection that we'd woken up to the fact that Britain has been run by dark forces for decades. Press, politicians and police fell into disgrace as the full depth of their corruption was exposed by Hackgate. The bankers whose crisis started the recession have been laughing all the way to their annual bonuses while we turn into rats in a sack, head chickens and attention-deficit goldfish.
But now British society doesn't know whether to bang up the biggest or the nearest. And so a bystander to the riots, who picked up a bottle of water from a smashed shop was imprisoned for six months.
It feels like 1930's Germany, with a soupcon of Parisian Communard-baiting as kids are written off as "feral scum" and "rats".
Perhaps the Prime Minister, David Cameron should invite the Taliban to keep control in the Olympic village next year, much as the Hells Angels were employed by the Rolling Stones to maintain discipline at their infamous Altamont concert. After all, Cameron wanted to bring in the head of the notorious L A cops (with their record beating murder figures) for advice. So why not?
Insurrection, calls for a mangled internet and soldiers on the streets .... if I wanted an army turning on its own people, I'd go back to Tiannaman square. Rumours have it that, after years of berating them for their contempt for freedom of speech, Cameron is consulting the Chinese authorities on shutting down the social networks.
Now that is a riot!!
Should foreign investment replace aid for Africa?
The virtue of overseas aid is back in the spotlight, as Africa's economies boom.
Should foreign investment replace aid for Africa?
Donu Kogbara believes it should. Her many experiences in Ethiopia and other African countries have convinced her that donors are inadvertently encouraging developing countries to be dependent.
African nations are riddled with corruption and incompetence, they are, therefore, the architects of most of their misfortunes. They must grow up, clean up their acts, get off their backsides and learn how to become more self reliant, dynamic and dignified
She believes Africans must think big, believe in themselves, demand high standards, take full responsibility for their destiny and aggressively embrace the "trade not aid" mantra.
More pressure, she says, should be put on the leaders to deliver progress and transparecy, the priority should be the creation of wealth, the empowerment of indigenous entrepreneurs and foreign investment pursued.
Being spoon-fed handouts by well meaning white liberals, who have a penchant for not telling us tough home truths, is the last thing we need.
I'm convinced that foreign donors are de-motivating Africans with kindness. They infantilize us with their soothing 'there, there' approach and make us feel that it's fine to whip out begging bowls. Donu Kogbara
Dereje Alemayehu disagrees, he agrees and shares the contempt and outrage with regard to Africa's leaders, but says that Aid cannot be made responsible for what it is not meant to do. Aid cannot buy democracy. Aid is not the primary support that props up corrupt regimes.
He believes that if the primary motive to attain political power is self enrichment, then you will be a thief with or without aid. Getting rid of tyrants and thieves is the responsibility of African citizens.
The solution to aid abuse is the fight for accountability and transparency to make it serve its purpose, not to cut off aid. When aid is perverted by donor countries to promote business interests or to buy the loyalty of corrupt regimes for geopolitical ends, this is not aid, it is economic and political corruption.
Aid should have only one purpose - the eradication of poverty. That is why he supports aid and is engaged in fighting its abuse.
Can we rely on foreign investors to deliver development? The amount they steal through agressive tax evasion is fourfold what comes in as aid. I can't see how ending aid would make them change their behaviour. Dereje Alemayehu.
Donu in response to this says that she too is concerned about the misuse of aid, but states that she didn't have this in mind when she spoke about foreign donors, she expressed her view that they are unintentionally making developing nations weak.
She suspects that this leads to welfare dependency, and believes that most economically challenged individuals and countries will, as a general rule, perform more impressively if they are urged to stand on their own feet. We are capable, she says, of solving our poverty problems without leading on Western philanthropists.
Dereje argues that Donu seems to suggest that a causal link exists between aid and poor political leadership. But he believes aid dependency syndrome only comes about if there is a self seeking leadership. He believes development isn't about money, but a political process propelled by nationalism. By this he means a national project that makes ending poverty a priority, an outrage at the preponderance of abject poverty in a country and a decision to tackle it with the utmost urgency it deserves. A leadership committed to this kind of nationalism, instead of using political power for self-enrichment, would necessarily use aid as a complementary resource to national efforts.
The driving motive for foreign investment is short term profit maximization to pay fat dividends to ever-greedy shareholders. Putting profits first will not serve long term equitable and sustainable development. It will promise shareholder value by making the rich richer, but it will not end poverty.
Donu responds by saying she is not totally heartless!! and doesn't object to generous amounts of emergency aid being provided by the international community whenever countries or regions are crippled by natural disasters and famines.
However in her belief, foreign investment will always be superior to foreign aid within the context of non emergency scenarios. She provides examples of aid from the EU being serious errors of judgment and not serving the purposes it was intended and believes that investment in the area would have helped more people than the aid.
She cites as an example a town in Nigeria's Niger delta which was once a semi comatose backwater, but is now a thriving hive of commercial activity thanks, she says to an Italian oil company.
Derej says attracting FDI with generous tax holidays and freedom to repatriate profits is already a priority in all African countries, but the dynamism that Donu alludes to is just not there. Foreign companies tend to extract wealth in enclaves without helping the development of host countries productive capabilities.
Colonial policy was all about 'nipping productive capacity in the bud' and multi-national dominated globalization is carrying on in the same vein. That is why diamonds cause death and poverty in Lubumbashi but riches and glory in Antwerp.
FDI has not distrubed the peaceful co-existence between lucrative foreign business and perennial stagnation, has not liften African commodity producers out of subsistence income levels. Its advances towards promoting value chain activities, creating decent jobs, transferring knowledge and technology or investing in research and development are negligible. You cannot expect miracles in this department. He goes on to say that profits go to companies' countries of origin and rampant tax evasion drains resources from Africa's social infrastructure provision.
Aid is not useful only when directed at providing help during emergencies. It also builds resilience for the next emergency, and helps plug the vital infrastructure gap that FDI will never address.
The two participants of this debate are:
Donu Kogbara a Nigerian print and broadcast journalist. She acts as a Director on the Greater Port Harcourt City Development Authority Board and is part of the African Arguments debates forum. africanarguments.org
Dereje Alemayehu is a development worker of Ethiopian origin, Christian Aid's Country Manager for East Africa and Chair of the Tax Justice Network Africa.
The views expressed in this debate are entirely his own.
Please feel free to comment on this article.
Should foreign investment replace aid for Africa?
Donu Kogbara believes it should. Her many experiences in Ethiopia and other African countries have convinced her that donors are inadvertently encouraging developing countries to be dependent.
African nations are riddled with corruption and incompetence, they are, therefore, the architects of most of their misfortunes. They must grow up, clean up their acts, get off their backsides and learn how to become more self reliant, dynamic and dignified
She believes Africans must think big, believe in themselves, demand high standards, take full responsibility for their destiny and aggressively embrace the "trade not aid" mantra.
More pressure, she says, should be put on the leaders to deliver progress and transparecy, the priority should be the creation of wealth, the empowerment of indigenous entrepreneurs and foreign investment pursued.
Being spoon-fed handouts by well meaning white liberals, who have a penchant for not telling us tough home truths, is the last thing we need.
I'm convinced that foreign donors are de-motivating Africans with kindness. They infantilize us with their soothing 'there, there' approach and make us feel that it's fine to whip out begging bowls. Donu Kogbara
Dereje Alemayehu disagrees, he agrees and shares the contempt and outrage with regard to Africa's leaders, but says that Aid cannot be made responsible for what it is not meant to do. Aid cannot buy democracy. Aid is not the primary support that props up corrupt regimes.
He believes that if the primary motive to attain political power is self enrichment, then you will be a thief with or without aid. Getting rid of tyrants and thieves is the responsibility of African citizens.
The solution to aid abuse is the fight for accountability and transparency to make it serve its purpose, not to cut off aid. When aid is perverted by donor countries to promote business interests or to buy the loyalty of corrupt regimes for geopolitical ends, this is not aid, it is economic and political corruption.
Aid should have only one purpose - the eradication of poverty. That is why he supports aid and is engaged in fighting its abuse.
Can we rely on foreign investors to deliver development? The amount they steal through agressive tax evasion is fourfold what comes in as aid. I can't see how ending aid would make them change their behaviour. Dereje Alemayehu.
Donu in response to this says that she too is concerned about the misuse of aid, but states that she didn't have this in mind when she spoke about foreign donors, she expressed her view that they are unintentionally making developing nations weak.
She suspects that this leads to welfare dependency, and believes that most economically challenged individuals and countries will, as a general rule, perform more impressively if they are urged to stand on their own feet. We are capable, she says, of solving our poverty problems without leading on Western philanthropists.
Dereje argues that Donu seems to suggest that a causal link exists between aid and poor political leadership. But he believes aid dependency syndrome only comes about if there is a self seeking leadership. He believes development isn't about money, but a political process propelled by nationalism. By this he means a national project that makes ending poverty a priority, an outrage at the preponderance of abject poverty in a country and a decision to tackle it with the utmost urgency it deserves. A leadership committed to this kind of nationalism, instead of using political power for self-enrichment, would necessarily use aid as a complementary resource to national efforts.
The driving motive for foreign investment is short term profit maximization to pay fat dividends to ever-greedy shareholders. Putting profits first will not serve long term equitable and sustainable development. It will promise shareholder value by making the rich richer, but it will not end poverty.
Donu responds by saying she is not totally heartless!! and doesn't object to generous amounts of emergency aid being provided by the international community whenever countries or regions are crippled by natural disasters and famines.
However in her belief, foreign investment will always be superior to foreign aid within the context of non emergency scenarios. She provides examples of aid from the EU being serious errors of judgment and not serving the purposes it was intended and believes that investment in the area would have helped more people than the aid.
She cites as an example a town in Nigeria's Niger delta which was once a semi comatose backwater, but is now a thriving hive of commercial activity thanks, she says to an Italian oil company.
Derej says attracting FDI with generous tax holidays and freedom to repatriate profits is already a priority in all African countries, but the dynamism that Donu alludes to is just not there. Foreign companies tend to extract wealth in enclaves without helping the development of host countries productive capabilities.
Colonial policy was all about 'nipping productive capacity in the bud' and multi-national dominated globalization is carrying on in the same vein. That is why diamonds cause death and poverty in Lubumbashi but riches and glory in Antwerp.
FDI has not distrubed the peaceful co-existence between lucrative foreign business and perennial stagnation, has not liften African commodity producers out of subsistence income levels. Its advances towards promoting value chain activities, creating decent jobs, transferring knowledge and technology or investing in research and development are negligible. You cannot expect miracles in this department. He goes on to say that profits go to companies' countries of origin and rampant tax evasion drains resources from Africa's social infrastructure provision.
Aid is not useful only when directed at providing help during emergencies. It also builds resilience for the next emergency, and helps plug the vital infrastructure gap that FDI will never address.
The two participants of this debate are:
Donu Kogbara a Nigerian print and broadcast journalist. She acts as a Director on the Greater Port Harcourt City Development Authority Board and is part of the African Arguments debates forum. africanarguments.org
Dereje Alemayehu is a development worker of Ethiopian origin, Christian Aid's Country Manager for East Africa and Chair of the Tax Justice Network Africa.
The views expressed in this debate are entirely his own.
Please feel free to comment on this article.
Disabled rights defenders pile on the pressure
From an article in New Internationalist magazine, September edition 2011
Sick of being labelled work-shy by the tabloid press, disabled and frail people across Britain are mounting a powerful campaign against government cuts.
Some 10,000 people turned out for the Hardest Hit March in London in May to demand the right to a decent life, with income and support for the most vulnerable.
Since this mobilization, the largest rally of disabled people in living memory, a lot of e-activism and organising has brought the fight home to cities across the country.
People are worried about losing their benefits, some say if they lose their mobility benefits it would mean being stuck indoors 24/7. Some of the marchers say they (the government) should take the barriers to work away, not the support.
Groups are springing up all over the country and are fiercely grass roots and user led and firmly rooted in the wider anti-cuts movement. Beth Tichborne from Campaign for a fair society believes that there is a really good philosophy emerging and says "It's about making protest accesible and not talking on behalf of people"
Eleanor Lisney fromm Disabled People Against Cuts believes it is a question of self-defence, everyone is affected and believes this is the reason for the unprecedented response. She says her community are reeling from the cuts on all sides.
The chronically ill and dying have been having benefits taken away from them by the Atos computer programme - and this has sparked depression and even suicide for some people. Benefits like the disability living allowance are also under review, plus local councils are cutting back on vital social care.
This growing movement is making an impact, the sit ins and vigorous lobbying against Atos has helped prompt a highly critical select committee report. Legal challenges are forcing local authority re thinks and DPAC hope to force a goverment U-turn on benefit changes.
Some links for readers who want to read further:
dpac.uk.net
campaignforafairsociety.org
mylifemychoice.org.uk
Sick of being labelled work-shy by the tabloid press, disabled and frail people across Britain are mounting a powerful campaign against government cuts.
Some 10,000 people turned out for the Hardest Hit March in London in May to demand the right to a decent life, with income and support for the most vulnerable.
Since this mobilization, the largest rally of disabled people in living memory, a lot of e-activism and organising has brought the fight home to cities across the country.
People are worried about losing their benefits, some say if they lose their mobility benefits it would mean being stuck indoors 24/7. Some of the marchers say they (the government) should take the barriers to work away, not the support.
Groups are springing up all over the country and are fiercely grass roots and user led and firmly rooted in the wider anti-cuts movement. Beth Tichborne from Campaign for a fair society believes that there is a really good philosophy emerging and says "It's about making protest accesible and not talking on behalf of people"
Eleanor Lisney fromm Disabled People Against Cuts believes it is a question of self-defence, everyone is affected and believes this is the reason for the unprecedented response. She says her community are reeling from the cuts on all sides.
The chronically ill and dying have been having benefits taken away from them by the Atos computer programme - and this has sparked depression and even suicide for some people. Benefits like the disability living allowance are also under review, plus local councils are cutting back on vital social care.
This growing movement is making an impact, the sit ins and vigorous lobbying against Atos has helped prompt a highly critical select committee report. Legal challenges are forcing local authority re thinks and DPAC hope to force a goverment U-turn on benefit changes.
Some links for readers who want to read further:
dpac.uk.net
campaignforafairsociety.org
mylifemychoice.org.uk
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