The US Sets the Standard … in Lack of Privacy!

By: Wilton D. Alston
January 3, 2008

As I completed the research for my "Living Under Surveillance" story for The New American, several things were very clear to me. One of them was the seminal point I got from studying the Surveillance Studies Network’s 2006 "Report On the Surveillance Society" which I captured by quoting them directly:

We live in a surveillance society. It is pointless to talk about surveillance society in the future tense. In all the rich countries of the world everyday life is suffused with surveillance encounters, not merely from dawn to dusk but 24/7. Some encounters obtrude into the routine, like when we get a ticket for running a red light when no one was around but the camera. But the majority are now just part of the fabric of daily life. Unremarkable.

Anyone, particularly anyone living in 'the West" — that is Great Britain, the United States, etc. — who thinks that they aren’t falling prey to random surveillance might as well employ a rather well-known Sopranos technique and "fuhgetaboutit!" As the Surveillance Studies report states, routine surveillance in these societies is "unremarkable" and will stay that way.

This is a point emphasized by a new report. In the most recent survey of "Leading surveillance societies in the EU and the World," the United States gives new meaning to the hackneyed chant, "We’re Number 1!" According to London-based Privacy International (PI), a human rights group formed in 1990 as a watchdog on surveillance and privacy invasions by governments and corporations, the U.S. now has an "endemic surveillance society."

At minimum the 2007 PI report confirms, in spades, previous reports suggesting that the U.S. was moving toward implementing a thorough surveillance state. Nevertheless, even with my background in researching and writing on the subject of privacy and surveillance, I was still taken aback to see the relative comparisons between the U.S., the UK, and everyone else. Even as I stated in my TNA surveillance cover story, that "the UK is now the world’s most watched country, having upwards of five million closed-circuit TV (CCTV) cameras keeping a watchful eye on the public, with the average citizen being caught on camera around 300 times per day," I was unprepared to see the stark comparisons. (Yes, I’m a slow learner!)

The overview for the report sets the stage:

Each year since 1997, the US-based Electronic Privacy Information Center and the UK-based Privacy International have undertaken what has now become the most comprehensive survey of global privacy ever published. The Privacy & Human Rights Report surveys developments in 70 countries, assessing the state of surveillance and privacy protection.

Pretty clearly the report is comprehensive relative to the number of countries included, which provides excellent context. The Overview further states:

The most recent report published in 2007, available at http://www.privacyinternational.org/phr, is probably the most comprehensive single volume report published in the human rights field. The report runs over 1,100 pages and includes 6,000 footnotes. More than 200 experts from around the world have provided materials and commentary. The participants range from eminent privacy scholars to high-level officials charged with safeguarding constitutional freedoms in their countries. Academics, human rights advocates, journalists and researchers provided reports, insight, documents and advice. In 2006 Privacy International took the decision to use this annual report as the basis for a ranking assessment of the state of privacy in all EU countries together with eleven non-EU benchmark countries. Funding for the project was provided by the Open Society Institute (OSI) and the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust. Follow this link for more details of last year's results.

Pretty clearly, the report is comprehensive relative to the amount of detail and raw data, coming in at a full-figured, Tolstoy-esque size! (‘Tis better to have too much information than too little I reckon.)

The overview mentions two other points that are worthy of emphasis. First this is the second report wherein rankings are included, and it therefore provides an opportunity — a first-time opportunity — to assess trends. That provides, I think, an excellent context within which to judge privacy in one’s own country. To the question, "why would you conduct a process of this scope?" PI also provides a good answer:

The intention behind this project is two-fold. First, we hope to recognize countries in which privacy protection and respect for privacy is nurtured. This is done in the hope that others can learn from their example. Second we intend to identify countries in which governments and privacy regulators have failed to create a healthy privacy environment. The aim is not to humiliate the worst ranking nations, but to demonstrate that it is possible to maintain a healthy respect for privacy within a secure and fully functional democracy.

While it would be a mistake to automatically assume that these rankings "reflect the state of democracy or the full extent of legal or parliamentary health or dysfunction in these countries," it is also true, as so accurately noted by the study, that "the two conditions are frequently linked." Indeed.

And it is that possibility — that the health of democracy and freedom is directly linked to the pervasiveness of surveillance — that we must focus upon. As I noted in the TNA cover story, Americans currently seem to favor surveillance over privacy. "Security expert Bruce Schneier calls this effect, within the realm of surveillance psychology, the ‘availability heuristic.’ Most people would rather all their deepest secrets be posted on the Internet tomorrow than have a psychopathic serial killer escape capture today, assuming that’s the trade-off." That this is not the trade-off somehow gets lost in the shuffle.

This was confirmed for me recently via a Facebook survey that asked the question: "Is the U.S. safer since the war on terror began?" One of the respondents who said "yes" also noted, apparently as confirmatory evidence, that there had been no terrorist attacks since the USA PATRIOT Act was signed. To even the most juvenile student of statistics, this conclusion is flawed. If terrorist events only happen at a rate described by the number that have occurred on American soil, there is really no way to judge if the rate is lower or higher since 9/11. (No one ever said logic and statistics were the strong suits of Internet survey takers!)

More importantly, as Judge Andrew Napolitano recently explained in an excellent speech given in DC and recorded on Reason.TV, the point is not that we must give up our liberty to achieve security. That is an over-used and patently absurd false dichotomy. In most cases, it is those who seek to extend their own power that are the biggest threats to our safety, and most times, those are people we elected! History is full of examples of this, dating back to the Alien and Sedition Acts and proceeding, in megalomaniacal glory, up to the USA PATRIOT Act. (The irony of that name never gets old!)

To the agents of the state who apparently think I’m asleep at the wheel, I’ve got one thing to say: "I’ll take my security and privacy together, if it’s all the same to you, and in fact, even if it’s not."

Wilton Alston is a principal research scientist working in the field of transportation safety, specifically with regard to trains and transit. A libertarian activist and writer, and a speaker for the JBS Speaker's Bureau, Mr. Alston’s columns have appeared in such places as LewRockwell.com, Strike-the-Root.com and around the Internet blogosphere.

http://www.thenewamerican.com/node/6761