By Martin Brampton, 1 November 2005 07:00
COMMENT
Are you prepared to accept government surveillance of your every move? Martin Brampton isn't, despite what looks like the coming of a truly Orwellian society.
Maybe I'm paranoid but that doesn't prove they aren't out to get me. These days, it seems as if the government plans to get us all well and truly under its thumb. If the ID cards are not enough, then the anti-terrorist legislation will be.
Authoritarians like to dismiss the 'civil rights industry'. Odd really, since we know exactly what happens in countries like Uzbekistan where people don't have civil rights: arbitrary arrest, torture and imprisonment. Are the victims guilty? No one can ever know but probably not in many cases. Lack of proper legal procedure encourages false reports based on grudges.
Even in this country, while most police officers behave well, there has always been a strand of corruption that has emerged in high-profile miscarriages of justice. The same thing happens on a daily basis in trivial cases where a minority of policemen abuse their powers simply to assert superiority over some hapless individual.
So it is both astonishing and frightening that government is rushing to limit our rights. And it is not as if the complaints are coming from the hoi polloi. No less a person than the UK's Information Commissioner is sounding warnings about the trend towards a surveillance society. He objects to the insistence that we must all record information such as everywhere we have ever lived and then keep updating it until we die.
Moreover, all this is likely to be linked to CCTV face recognition and automatic number plate recognition. George Orwell's novel 1984 was inspired by the fear that a Stalinist communist regime would come to dominate people's lives. It seems as if, with the threat of Kremlin domination long gone, we are going to allow our own government to create 1984 for us.
It is also astonishing and frightening that such an enormous change is being rushed through with little sign of serious thought. Over centuries, we evolved a situation where the individual citizen did not have to account for themselves unless there was evidence of wrongdoing. We do not have to tell anyone where we live or what we are doing. All that seems about to end.
One thought that occurred to me was that I could keep out of at least some of these government computers now that I travel much less. More and more, I am able to work in my office, a hundred yards from home. There are no CCTV cameras in the small town where I live, and quite a few days go by without the use of a car. Inevitably, I depend heavily on communication through the internet.
While at present, most of what I do is in more or less plain text, I started thinking that perhaps more use of encryption would be appropriate - not because I am engaged in law breaking but simply because I would like to assert my right to communicate with who I like and not with anyone else.
But then it occurred to me that the US counted encryption as 'munitions' because it could be used in connection with doubtful activities. It might seem, therefore, that in the government's obsession with terrorism, use of encryption might be seen as tantamount to carrying a bomb in a backpack. Merely exchanging harmless messages with friends and colleagues might be seen as suspicious activity and subject to months of imprisonment without trial.
That leads me to a simple conclusion. I do not want an ID card or to be obliged to constantly feed government computers with details of my life. While I no more wish to be blown to bits than anyone else, I would rather take my chance on it than give up any of my civil rights. Surely life is an adventure in which we have to accept some risks.
Comments
There are 11 comments. Join the discussion
1. Chris Tolmie
Absolutely correct. There are more CCTV cameras per head in the UK than any other country. We have the Civil Contingencies Bill, The Licencing Act (which kills rebelious folk music) and now the Id card. Encryption assumes that clear terrorist commands may be spoken or written and then encrypted. The truth is that people will use codes. "Darling, I will be late tonight" could become a very suspicious code perhaps meaning "Bxxxcks to Blair". Finally, my son and I use video to communicate using sign language. This may well confuse the enemy whether the enemy is a terrorist or national government.
2. Richard Fassam
Why does New Labour hate its citizens so much. Eventually it will be a crime not to have a computer- subverting the system, etc.
What price independance for the common person against the need of the State to know!
I thought that when I pay for goods its up to me to use them as legally as I wish, not to have "DRM" regulations, work time directives, and security laws passed to stop me.
Are Blair's thought police reading any of this?
3. anonymous
A very apt quote from Behjamin Franklin:
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."
4. anonymous
Yes, the so called New Labour, which is merely the high taxation, anti British indigenous people Old Labour in a spin doctor manufactured coating. The fact that New Labour are a bunch of totally obsessive control freaks should now be clearly seen by all. In 1997 in the pre & post election period I was doing an 'Access' course, one of the subjects that I was studying was 'Media & Communications'. I did in fact create & produce an analysis of the General Election, which also had an element of prophecy concerning, 'Things to Come'.
I regret to say that the 'things have come' & are in fact about to go further down the dark road of indigenous citizen suppression & persecution..............
It is sad, very sad, that this scenario has been arrived at in a mere 8 years of New Labour control freak mis-government............................!!!!!!!!!!1
5. apologies, not provided
FROM THE INSIDE... you would be surprised to learn that there are many who would 100% agree with you.
Topics to be concerned about:
a) Joined up cross-Departmental ICT systems sharing data with poor regulation and no transparency
b) Weak policy and/or enforcement for inter Departmental information sharing on the whole
c) Unreleased catastrophic identity errors to date
d) PERMANENT long term loss of control of your biometric data once scanned into the system (fingerprints, face scan, eye scan)
e) The data bases that store this information and support the networks are owned in most cases by external suppliers and are no where near as "secure" as we imagine.
f) Current and projected cost of collecting human data versus impact and effeciveness on stated objectives is a known figure for some Programmes and reads like the Dome (but on a far greater scale).
6. Nikki
At first I was of the opinion that if an individual was innocent of wrongdoing then they would have no objection to making their lives an "open book". However, while IT technology advances and IT security weakens, I am loathe to share my personal genetic data with what could potentially be millions of persons hellbent on criminal activity! As an avid viewer of sci-fi I am finally forced to concede that these films can no longer be regarded as mere escapism or fiction. For me, it is now entirely believable to imagine New Labour hunched over flickering machines in some darkened secluded room watching, and dictating every move for every UK resident and visitor. A pretty scary thought!
7. Brian Smith
Spot on! well said that man.
8. Karen Challinor
To "apologies, not provided"
thank you for blowing the whistle but why didn't you blow your whistle sometime before the first reading of the bill rather than after the third when it is almost an act ?
9. Charles Smith
Using a cannon to burst a boil often has unanticipated side effects. Poor laws tend to become ignored.
Terrorist will "hide in plain sight" any secret messages, yet use encryption for junk content.
It is interesting to note at the Biometrics Exhibition, held adjacent to the Parliament Square, that one of the exhibitors for people tracking face recognition software comes from the Ex USSR country of Kazakhstan. Their systems are installed in public places such as airports and stations. They reckon that a good proportion of their town/city dwellers are recorded on the system. How true that is I'm not sure.
It is a step that could be easily taken in the UK to add people recognition once that faces are recorded on the national identity register. Incorporating GPS tracking in mobile phones is an existing technology. Credit card and smart card payment systems add to the tracking capability.
Without too much effort the security forces could automatically identify when target people deviate from their normal daily routine.
As it happens I support the concept of National Id Cards, but I don't trust the current Government to use them without abuse.
10. Bernie Greene
Excellent piece. Glad to see it carried on Silicon.com who seem to follow a more state sponsored BBC line usually.
[Ed note: Beats us, what you mean by that. But glad you appreciated the article.]
11. Withheld for reasons of privacy
Regardless of what the government may say in public with regards to the state and capability of their security (that is touted as protecting the proposed data and identity stores), this reader does not have any faith at all in their ability to protect my data. As a security professional with extensive experience I have more than a mere paranoia fuelling my doubts. In addition to that I hold no faith whatsoever in the government not subverting their original intentions on the use of the data over time.
The proposed measures will do little to nothing to truly eliminate terrorism. While the media display of CCTV images of the London (7th July) bombers directs the public imagination toward the positive effectiveness of such systems, it must be obvious that the surveillance did not _prevent_ the attacks but were merely handy for after the fact analysis. Meanwhile the many million innocent are similarly scanned and captured every day, already more than necessary. To those who applauded the capability of the CCTV systems to capture images of the bombers; remember that you're also similarly photographed every move you make. We do not need more!
To put a measure on the depth and solidity of my beliefs, I will freely leave this country permanently rather than accept a national ID card in its current form.