The Emergence of a Global Infrastructure for Mass Registration and Surveillance
The International Campaign Against Mass Surveillance has issued a report (dated April 2005): “The Emergence of a Global Infrastructure for Mass Registration and Surveillance.” It’s a chilling assessment of the current international trends towards global surveillance. Most of it you will have seen before, although it’s good to have everything in one place. I am particularly pleased that the report explicitly states that these measures do not make us any safer, but only create the illusion of security.
The global surveillance initiatives that governments have embarked upon do not make us more secure. They create only the illusion of security.
Sifting through an ocean of information with a net of bias and faulty logic, they yield outrageous numbers of false positives and false negatives. The dragnet approach might make the public feel that something is being done, but the dragnet is easily circumvented by determined terrorists who are either not known to authorities, or who use identity theft to evade them.
For the statistically large number of people that will be wrongly identified or wrongly assessed as a risk under the system, the consequences can be dire.
At the same time, the democratic institutions and protections, which would be the safeguards of individuals’ personal security, are being weakened. And national sovereignty and the ability of national governments to protect citizens against the actions of other states (when they are willing) are being compromised as security functions become more and more deeply integrated.
The global surveillance dragnet diverts crucial resources and efforts away from the kind of investments that would make people safer. What is required is good information about specific threats, not crude racial profiling and useless information on the nearly 100 percent of the population that poses no threat whatsoever.
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Steve L. • April 29, 2005 9:49 AM
It looks like a great report – but will anybody listen? It seems to me the government is moving the other way towards global surveillance. Hopefully reports like these will be heard and make a difference.