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Cards on the table. The bosses of this blog are out of town, and although they may be able to stick stuff up here from time to time, they may be distracted. I’m one of the people they hope will keep things buzzing in their absence. So I googled a few obvious things like “surveillance” and “privacy” and got little that was new, and then I tried “Freedom versus Security”, and got to this piece at Mr Blog, from way back in August.
Mr Blog has this to say on the matter:
Defining the debate as “freedom versus security” circumvents the question of whether the various proposals, in fact, improve security. Where is the evidence for this assumption that any of these measures can help ensure security?
He then attacks various supposed US security measures on cost effectiveness grounds. This critique is good as far as it goes. Indeed we do not want to hand on to our grandchildren a society bankrupted by a million futile security measures which weren’t. That’s true.
But I think Mr Blog is making a fundamental error of omission here. The really big consequence of framing things as “freedom versus security” is to smuggle past you the notion that “freedom” can never ever be any good for “security”. Yet plainly it can.
If the populus is numbed into a state of brainless inertia by laws that take away their freedom, and which simultaneously promise to create security, then a major source of security, in the form of individuals protecting themselves and each other, may be switched off, and by the very measures which were supposedly going to make us all more secure. The “cost” of “security” measures isn’t only that they cost us a ton of money, or even that they cost us freedom. What if, by costing us freedom, they also reduce security? That’s the biggest problem with framing this argument as “freedom versus security”.
As I have probably said here before, this debate reminds me of the Economic Calculation debate of a hundred years ago, and Mr Blog is just like one of those anti-economic-planning grumblers of days gone by who complained that planning would be more of a muddle and less of a spur to prosperity than pro-planners fancied, and that it would eat up our freedoms to insufficiently good effect. But that was to miss the vital point about prosperity, which was that in order to get it, you had to have freedom. No freedom, no prosperity.
What if security is the same? No freedom, no security. I think it is, and I think that’s true. And I want some latter day Von Mises to write a huge book which proves it.
Mr Blog’s error is all the more distressing because he frames the question so clearly.
The problem with using technology to look after children is that it is liable also, in due course, to be used to look after adults.
As part of writing for this, I occasionally buy the Times Educational Supplement, and on page 5 of the most recent issue (October 3 2003) it says this (paper only):
Pupils will soon be asked for a thumb-print instead of a password to enter internet chat-rooms.
A firm in the north-east of England has spent three years developing a scanner that will make it harder for paedophiles to prey on youngsters via the internet.
Think2gether, which is based in Gateshead, says the scanner is the first secure access system for chatroom users.
For about £30 schools will be able to buy the thumb-print scanner, which is already being used at the South Tyneside city learning centre and in Leicester education action zone.
Alan Wareham, director of Think2gether, said the system had attracted interest from as far away as Singapore.
“The problem is that children often tell other people their password, which is something adults tend not to do,” he said.
“A child can pass on this information in all innocence and the adult can then lon on as that child and pretend it is them using the chat-rooms.
“The scanner removes this possibility by scanning the child’s thumb-print three times before letting them in. We are also developing hardware which will monitor and record conversations in chatrooms, as additional protection.”
As so often when someone is quoted, the last bit is the scariest.
STL today.com reports that Charter Communications Inc., third largest cable provider in the United States, filed a suit on Friday seeking to block the recording industry from obtaining the identities of Charter customers who allegedly shared copyrighted music over the Internet. Charter filed papers in U.S. District Court in St. Louis in a bid to quash subpoenas that the Recording Industry Association of America issued seeking the identities of about 150 Charter customers.
“We are the only major cable company that has not as yet provided the RIAA a single datum of information,” said Tom Hearity, vice president and associate general counsel for Charter.
Via Slashdot
Computerworld reports that despite the government’s recent efforts to integrate dozens of terrorist watch list databases, terrorists may still be slipping through major cracks in homeland defenses by stealing identities and using computers to create fraudulent travel documents.
Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-District of Columbia), a self-proclaimed “card-carrying civil libertarian,” said the nature of the vulnerabilities has led her and others to rethink the issue of national ID cards.
However, Keith Kiser, chairman of the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators, said a national ID card is not needed and would probably require additional IT infrastructure currently not in place. Instead, Kiser argued that the IT infrastructure used throughout state motor vehicle departments to verify identities and issue valid driver’s licenses should be enhanced and standardized.
Lawmakers and federal homeland security experts argued in favor of wider deployment of biometric technologies and standardization of driver’s licenses throughout the country. Currently, 21 states don’t require proof of legal residence to get a driver’s license. In addition, there are 240 variations of driver’s licenses used throughout the 50 states. California and New Mexico also issue valid driver’s licenses to noncitizens, and Arizona is debating the issue. Chairman of the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators, Keith Kiser, said:
I don’t disagree that a biometric identifier is a great place to be and we should be trying to get there. But we [conducted] a two-year study of biometrics and our conclusion at this point is that although biometrics work great on a one-to-one match, it’s awfully hard to find a technology that works on a one-to-300 million match, which is what we really need to [have] to have an effective biometric identifier.
Telegraph reports that Gordon Brown and Jack Straw are leading a rearguard action to block David Blunkett’s plans for national identity cards despite Tony Blair’s backing for the scheme.
Mr Blunkett wants a compulsory scheme and has proposed that those who do not qualify for the card will not be able to work legally or get access to health care, education and public services. But so far he has failed to get Cabinet backing. Cabinet sources say a “fierce battle” is being waged with Mr Brown and Mr Straw expressing the strongest doubts.
The Chancellor has said that the Treasury will not meet the cost of issuing the cards, which are expected to cost individuals up to £40. Several other ministers, including Charles Clarke, Education Secretary, Peter Hain, Leader of the Commons, and Patricia Hewitt, Trade and Industry Secretary, have voiced reservations about the cards
Telegraph opinion section had a good editorial on identity cards last week.
Having failed to win the argument during its six-month consultation period on what it then called “entitlement cards”, the Government now seems determined to press ahead with a national, compulsory ID card scheme. This has been a most peculiar exercise in policy presentation, perhaps because the Cabinet is divided and because opinion polls suggest several million people would defy the law by refusing to apply for one.
It draw attention to the fact that the government seems unable to make up its mind precisely what these cards will actually achieve.
It is important to be clear what Mr Blair is proposing: every person in the land will be required to pay £40, give over an image of his or her iris, and have private information stored on a central database. This is an uncomfortable thought in itself. To suggest that this is all about protecting civil liberties is simply insulting.
This is like something out of a comic novel:
The players know who they are, the media knows who they are and, thanks to the internet, millions of members of the public know who they are.
But yesterday, despite fears that fans of the clubs involved in the Premiership rape allegations would publicly finger the suspects at the tops of their voices, football crowds showed uncharacteristic restraint.
Just to make sure, sound engineers turned down microphones to prevent obscene chanting being heard by television viewers and radio listeners. But there was no need. Football fans, armed obviously with a better working knowledge of the law of contempt of court than the editors of some of the websites and papers they read, kept any taunting of the players involved in the 17-year-old girl’s claims to themselves.
So, no chanting on matters that are sub judice.
Patrick Crozier reflects on the privacy dilemmas of celebs, in this case the soccer celebs who are being accused of gang rape.
He concludes: (1) privacy for such people is dead (“I found out the name of the club involved in 10 minutes”), (2) for a celeb simply being cleared is not enough, (3) this affects the club(s) hugely (well yes! – BM), and (4) If Patrick were an accused celeb he’d tell the truth in public (either way) quickly.
The whole thing (not that much longer than this) is here.
We’ve warned before about the dangers of functionality creep with Identity Cards. Now it appears that Big Blunkett is actively seeking such extended functionality in order to force compulsory National Identity Cards on innocent UK citizens.
The Evening Standard reports:
David Blunkett is poised to strike a multi-billion-pound deal with the major banks which would see compulsory ID cards double as credit cards.
People could choose to use the ultra-secure identity cards to pay for shopping, reducing the amount of plastic clutter in their purses while dramatically cutting fraud at the tills.
How long before that “choice” ceases to become a choice and is instead mandatory?
Cross-posted from The Chestnut Tree Cafe. Why not join the mailing list?
Today’s New York Times has a useful piece comparing and contrasting the legally enforced privacy (and unprivacy) implications of various different kinds of cable TV, internet use, etc. What are the powers of the IRS? What are the legal rights of the music industry as they go after music piracy? That kind of thing. If that’s what you want, go here.
Australia is often held up as an example of a country where the threat of Big Brother was beaten off once and for all. Now it looks likely to re-emerge.
ABC reports Steven Fitzgerald, General Manager of Operations from the Sydney Airport Corporation, giving evidence to the Committee into Aviation Security. The Committee was critical of Sydney airport’s own security record and questioning Fitzgerald about plans to tighten up.
Fitzgerald admitted he had discussed the idea of a national passenger profiling database with the Federal Government.
The last few lines of the transcript are of relevance to British readers and others in Commonwealth countries:
COMMITTEE MEMBER: Sounds very Big Brother-ish.
STEVEN FITZGERALD: It’s? I think, that’s an issue that really is one for the Commonwealth and not private sector airports at this at this point.
COMMITTEE MEMBER: Have there been discussions with them about it?
STEVEN FITZGERALD: It has been discussed in terms of the broad and, I’ll have to say, confidential discussions that we have about the range of, of issues that are being considered around the world.
“Confidential”. Or “secret”, depending on how much you trust the people involved.
The Scotsman reports:
They have been carrying these cards for more than a month now, unaware they are the guinea pigs for a national scheme which has raised the spectre of the introduction of Orwellian-style identity checks.
But there are fears among teenagers in Aberdeen that their personal details could fall into the wrong hands, and that the trial is designed to soften them up to the idea of carrying one of the cards for life.
Andy Ronnie, one of the coordinators of the scheme at Aberdeen City Council, has sought to reassure teenagers, denying claims that the scheme is part of an ID card plan.
While these cards could be used as an identifier, they are not ID cards. Whatever an ID card will be like, it will not be these cards. They have not been designed as ID cards, but as cards to access services.
Also, they are not compulsory. People who do not want to use them are still able to access services in other ways – we have made sure of that.
The scheme has split the local council amid worries over civil liberties. Liberal Democrat councillor Millicent McLeod, said:
There is the concern that we could be verging on invading people’s privacy by putting too much information on display.
However, Labour councillor George Urquhart said:
The Accord scheme seems to be going OK. To be honest, there has been surprisingly little reaction in the local community. Personally, I have nothing against identification cards – I think they are a good thing, especially in the current climate of terrorist threats. Ordinary people young or old have nothing to fear from ID cards.
And what if you are not ‘ordinary’?
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