Check out David Scharf’s brilliant Flash video on YouTube or on his homepage. (HT: BB). Very timely in light of the (altogether unsurprising) revelations about the FBI’s rampant abuse of the National Security Letters. But the problem lies deeper. The ubiquity of privacy invasions (e.g., photographs whenever you enter an office building in New York, what the hell for?) makes such invasions seem normal, expected, and over time appropriate. Every time I’m in line at an airport security theater or see a kid visit a parent in an office building, the kids are the most enthusiastic participants in the security charade. We are sleepwalking into the surveillance state, the British might be leading the pack, but we’re not far behind in the US. Once surveillance has become ubiquitous and the right to privacy has lost its normative bite, free speech will become guarded speech. Anyone interested in a modern day paper based (!) surveillance state should study the last decade of the German Democratic Republic. The Stasi knew pretty much every dirty secret about anyone of any consequence, all in the name of protecting the republic — but somehow they got caught by surprise when the wall came down. So much for the effectiveness of ubiquitous spying. Surveillance won’t make us safer, just less free. Anyone who really wants to blow him- or herself up in a subway train can do so at any time, surveillance or not. Anyone who really wants to bring down an aircraft can do so. The real question is not why there is terror but rather why there isn’t more of it, given that the barriers to committing mass-carnage are so exceedingly low. Real security measures would focus on strengthening the social bonds that keep people from blowing themselves up in a mall, which is, of course, an incredibly tall task and one for which law enforcement — and respect for the law and what it stands for — is of critical importance. Vacuum-cleaner surveillance, however, won’t help.
[tags]privacy, surveillance, Big Brother, Stasi[/tags]
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