Living under surveillance: to put it bluntly, the technology that enables the surveillance state is here to stay. Now, how do we keep it from controlling us?

New American, The, Oct 29, 2007 by Wilton D. Alston

While the bulk of the American public seems convinced that more surveillance is a good thing, both for safety and convenience, the technorati are not as uniform in their view. Schneier thinks legislation is the only methodology for curtailing, or at least somewhat stemming, the advance of surveillance and the corresponding loss of privacy. In a recent blog entry he says:

   We're never going to stop the march
   of technology, but we can enact legislation
   to protect our privacy: comprehensive
   laws regulating what can
   be done with personal information
   about us, and more privacy protection
   from the police. Today, personal
   information about you is not yours;
   it's owned by the collector. There
   are laws protecting specific pieces of
   personal data--videotape rental records,
   health care information--but
   nothing like the broad privacy protection
   laws you find in European countries.
   That's really the only solution;
   leaving the market to sort this out will
   result in even more invasive wholesale
   surveillance.

It is ironic that Schneier speaks of the protection available in European countries, given the number of times per day that a typical citizen of the UK is caught on camera. Another person worried about increased surveillance is author Naomi Wolfe. According to Wolfe's The End of America, the United States is well on its way to becoming a fascist empire due to the fact that creating a surveillance society is one of the "Ten Steps to Fascism." The Bush administration claims to have a legitimate reason for massive privacy infringement: protecting the U.S. public from the ever-present specter of terrorism, but are its arguments legitimate?

Surveillance and Power

The Bush administration (like many U.S. administrations before it) is enamored with monitoring ordinary citizens, under the guise of protecting the freedom of those they watch. The fact that their "improvements" in security have resulted in limited actual performance improvements is apparently lost in the shuffle. Is there anyone who believes that the privacy normal Americans have given up has directly precluded further terrorist attacks? Is there anyone--anyone--who actually believes that if a terrorist wanted to attack an arena, a stadium, a shopping center, or even an airport, that such an attack could not have taken place despite the so-called protections put in place after 9/11? From Future of Freedom Foundation columnist Anthony Gregory, we find this accurate commentary:

   The real threat to American liberty,
   the defense of which the administration
   still insists is the purpose of the
   war on terror, is a federal government
   without strict checks and limits on its
   power, whose executives feel comfortable
   using the military to spy on
   peaceful Americans, while telling the
   media not to report their secret and
   unconstitutional surveillance activities.
   The use of a military intelligence
   agency against the American people,
   with or without judicial oversight, is
   far more a "shameful act" than reporting
   such activities to the American
   people, who have a right to know.