Smile: you're under global surveillance

By John Lettice

A newly-published report warns that a global infrastructure of
registration and surveillance is emerging through the efforts of
groups such as the EU, G8 and ICAO. According to the report, which 
was produced by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Focus on 
the Global South, Friends Committee (US), International Civil Liberties
Monitoring Group (Canada), and Statewatch, anti-terror and security
measures being driven largely by the US are being used to roll back
freedom, increase powers and exercise increasing control over
individuals and populations.

The report details a number of "signposts" on the road to global
surveillance, and argues that these add up to a bigger picture 
where the aim is to ensure that "almost everyone on the planet is 
'registered', that all travel is tracked globally, that all electronic
communications and transactions can be easily watched, and that all
the information collected about individuals in public or private-
sector databases is stored, linked, and made available to state
agents.

Most of the signposts are already clearly visible.

Registration systems for foreigners, national ID schemes and biometric
passports provide the registration process, while electronic borders,
passenger data sharing and threat lists cover surveillance of physical
movements. The increased sharing of database and their convergence at
an international level have accelerated the globalisation of
surveillance and security, while mutual legal assistance arrangements
contribute to an erosion of democratic values and sovereign checks and
balances.

The technological capacity of the structures being built "dwarfs any
previous system and makes Orwell's book Nineteen Eighty-Four look
quaint", says the report.

The result, however, will be a massive loss of freedoms in exchange
for systems which do not succeed in their intended purposes, and which
may even obstruct them by chasing down the blind alleys of predictive
'threat models' and risk profiling. "The initiatives described in this
report are not effective in flagging terrorists or stopping their
determined plans," it says. "They divert crucial resources away from
the kind of investments in human intelligence we need to give us good
intelligence about specific threats, rather than useless information
on the nearly 100 per cent of the population that poses no threat
whatsoever."

On the back of the report the groups have, with the support of around
100 civil liberties groups and NGOs world-wide, launched the
International Campaign Against Mass Surveillance (ICAMS), which will
campaign against mass surveillance-oriented anti-terrorism efforts.
Commented Statewatch director Tony Bunyan: "Our message is that
mandatory registration and mass surveillance are not the answers to
the problem of terrorism, and not a road that any nation should be
heading down. What is needed is good intelligence on specific threats 
- not the so-called 'risk-profiling' of entire populations and the
generation of more information than can possibly be usefully analysed.
There is a real danger that in trying to watch everyone you are
actually watching no-one."

(c) Copyright 2005 The Register

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Source: Raiders News Updates ...
http://www.raidersnewsupdate.com/lead-story72.htm

Cheers, Steve..

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