IP: Britain's sad decline of liberty a warning for U.S.: Dan Gillmor on Technology Thu Jul 05 15:15:09 EDT 2001

[David Farber <dave@farber.net>]

I have taken the path of sending this article in full so it will be read by 
the maximum IP audience. It is right on in my opinion.

Dave


>Thursday July 5, 2001
>
>Britain's sad decline of liberty a warning for U.S.
>
>
>
>BY <mailto:dgillmor@sjmercury.com>DAN G<mailto:dgillmor@sjmercury.com>ILLMOR
>Mercury News
>
>LONDON -- It's always a bit weird to celebrate Independence Day in the 
>nation from which my country rebelled. The British who note it take the 
>occasion in good humor.
>
>But I wonder how many think at all about the degree to which they are 
>giving up fundamental rights, some of which they adopted from their former 
>colonies. At the dawn of the Information Age, the nation that gave us the 
>Magna Carta -- one of the seminal documents of liberty -- seems poised to 
>become a surveillance state.
>
>I'm a fan of the British people and their culture, but today I'm 
>especially glad to be an American.
>
>The Magna Carta's basic principle, that not even the king was above the 
>law, hasn't been repealed. But law in the United Kingdom has become a 
>blunt instrument, a sledgehammer against liberty.
>
> >From pervasive video cameras in public places to Draconian laws giving 
> authorities almost unlimited ability to spy on citizens, the British 
> government flouts basic notions of individual privacy. Yet there's 
> surprisingly little outcry as encroachments on liberty grow more pronounced.
>
>It doesn't seem to matter which political party is in power. Labor and 
>Conservative governments alike have enacted laws that would send American 
>liberty watchers into apoplectic diatribes.
>
>Walk down a street here and cameras follow your moves. At last count, more 
>than 300,000 video cameras were keeping tabs on public places, including 
>streets, housing developments, shopping districts and parking lots. It's 
>all in the name of curbing crime.
>
>I was here a year ago, when Parliament was debating the notorious 
>Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, or RIP, proposed by Prime Minister 
>Tony Blair's Labor government. It passed, to the dismay of an array of 
>civil libertarians.
>
>RIP gives the government unprecedented power to tap people's 
>communications. Among its worst features, the law threatens the security 
>of encrypted information, with jail time for anyone who refuses to turn 
>over an encryption ``key'' when authorities demand it.
>
>Most recently, the Blair government has been leading the charge for a 
>European Union proposal that would allow individual governments to order 
>telecommunications providers to store seven years worth of customer voice 
>and data communications -- and give police access to those records. Again, 
>it's all to reduce crime, say apologists for this over-the-top idea.
>
>Fighting crime also is behind the government's plan for a massive 
>expansion of a national database of DNA samples. It would include not only 
>DNA from criminals, but also DNA from people who volunteer to give genetic 
>information during police investigations. One legislator has suggested 
>taking DNA samples from all newborn babies.
>
>As the Independent newspaper reported in May, however, half of the police 
>asked to give samples -- to distinguish their DNA from other people's DNA 
>found at crime scenes -- refused on privacy grounds.
>
>There's some other dissent, largely from editorial writers and 
>civil-liberties groups, but it doesn't seem to have made much of a dent. 
>The British people seem to have accepted the idea that they will be 
>pervasively spied upon. Sadly, they seem to have happily traded liberty 
>for temporary safety.
>
>None of this is to suggest that the United States is a consistent paragon 
>of respect for individual rights. The recently departed Clinton 
>administration was the most hostile to civil liberties since Richard Nixon 
>and his thugs ran the government, and the Bush administration isn't 
>looking appreciably better in most respects.
>
>Yet the U.S. Supreme Court, in a decision that will reverberate for years, 
>said last month that police were not entitled to use new technology -- 
>heat-sensing devices in this case -- to effectively spy inside people's 
>homes without court order. Those of us who'd almost given up on the court 
>-- strongly pro-government on almost every other key ``law-and-order'' 
>issue recently -- found new hope that the justices had begun to recognize 
>how far out of balance things had gotten.
>
>In coming years, we will need to confront new threats to liberty.
>
>Corporations are gaining power over our lives in unprecedented ways, and 
>the traditional remedy -- voting with one's wallet -- has limited value 
>when monopolists and oligopolists rule a cartel economy, sometimes in 
>concert with corrupt governments. Politicians who either fail to recognize 
>this, or who tacitly (or overtly) support such vast corporate authority, 
>are enemies of our rights, too.
>
>Defending liberty is not a sometime job. We have to keep at it, because 
>the forces that threaten our rights are well-organized, well-funded and 
>committed.
>
>Tonight, I'll join a group of American journalists -- we're here to speak 
>at a conference on new media -- at the Savoy Hotel's American Bar. I plan 
>to raise a glass to liberty. Wherever you are today, please do the same.
>
>
>Dan Gillmor's column appears each Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Visit 
>Dan's online column, eJournal (weblog.mercurycenter.com/ejournal). E-mail 
><mailto:dgillmor@sjmercury.com>dgillmor@sjmercury.com; phone (408) 
>920-5016; fax (408) 920-5917. PGP fingerprint: FE68 46C9 80C9 BC6E 3DD0 
>BE57 AD49 1487 CEDC 5C14.





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