2002 Update

Europe has voted to end data privacy . Despite opposition from civil liberties groups worldwide, the European parliament bowed to pressure from individual governments, led by Britain, and approved legislation to give police the power to access the communications records of every phone and internet user.

The measure, which will be approved by the 15 EU member states, will allow governments to force phone and internet companies to retain detailed logs of their customers' communications for an unspecified period. Currently, records are kept only for a couple of months for billing purposes before being destroyed.

The best way to combat this infringment on our freedom is to keep an eye out for technology and software that can counter this violation. M-O-O-T aims to beat RIPA powers by storing encryption keys and other data overseas, beyond the reach of investigators. No data will be stored on the computer's hardware. It should be released soon.

UK = Air Strip One

-The UK has the highest number of CCTV cameras in THE WORLD.

There are at least 2.5m cameras across the country and, in the course of a typical day, the average city-dweller can expect to be filmed at least eight times. If they are very unlucky - or lucky, depending on your point of view - they may be filmed 300 times. In London alone, there are 150,000 cameras - used by the police as well as businesses and other private organisations - keeping a watchful eye over the capital. In addition, new mobile CCTV cameras will be fitted to specially designed two-seater police cars.

Many CCTV initiatives are being developed by the private sector and other interests who, he claims, have a profit-orientated aim of keeping cities sanitised.

What about deterrence? Roy Coleman, lecturer in criminal justice at Liverpool John Moores University, cites a study carried out in Glasgow, in 1999, which he says showed that, far from crime falling as a result of CCTV installation, it had actually risen - as had fear of crime. "It is a vicious circle," he says. "More CCTV cameras generate more crime and more fear of crime. Our concern is that CCTV is really part of the government's agenda which is highly ideological and is legitimising a new form of government. It is quite disturbing from a civil liberties point of view."

Privacy International, another human rights organisation, concurs. Its director, Simon Davies, says cameras fundamentally change the way we behave and ultimately make us more homogeneous. "I do not buy the argument that the cameras makes us feel safer," he says. "I feel that the mania for reality television has fed the CCTV industry - it is like a synergy."

-As part of the UK's Terrorism Act, the UK can monitor email and admit as court evidence transcripts of telephone conversations bugged by MI5. It is a criminal offence to speak at the same meeting as someone from a proscribed organisation.

The Act also introduces a criminal offence of "incitement" - an offence which could catch, for example, anyone calling for the overthrow of undemocratic regimes abroad. It would have caught Nelson Mandela and other ANC leaders who supported armed struggle against the apartheid regime in South Africa.

The Act gives police stop and search powers on the basis of "expediency" and of "suspicion", not of committing any offence, but of being connected, or potentially connected, to the bill's vague description of "terrorism".

Under the Act it is a criminal offence to possess any "article" or "information", including photographs, in circumstances which give rise to a "reasonable suspicion" they would be used for "terrorist" purposes - a clause which has serious implications, not least for journalists.

The Act reverses the burden of proof - it will be up to the accused to prove their innocence, in other words, to prove a negative.

That is not all. The definition of terrorism in the bill includes "the use or threat, for the purpose of advancing a political, religious, or ideological cause, of action which involves serious violence against any person or property". This could embrace not only armed extremists but also environmental activists attacking GM crops.

-The UK is part of a global spy-network that can eavesdrop on telephones, faxes and computers and can track bank accounts is in place. It is called Echelon. The US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand created Echelon as part of an Anglo-Saxon club, set up by secret treaty in 1947. The five countries divided up the world to share the product of global eavesdropping.

Officially, however, Echelon doesn't exist. Although evidence of Echelon has been growing since the mid-1990s, America flatly denies that it exists, while the UK government's responses to questions about the system are evasive. According to an article on The Register earlier this month, the UK doesn't have much of a choice whether to admit its existence or not...

In addition to Carnivore, this makes for a dangerous situation online, where our privacy is increasingly eroded.

-The UK also seems determined to implement ID cards. The US is also considering draconian measures of this kind by updating terrorism laws. Formerly terrorism was defined as "any use or threat of use of a firearm other than for mere personal monetary gain" (which thus excluded armed robbery). Now any weapon can be involved, which means a foreigner could be detained without trial for pulling out a penknife. Professor David Cole of the University of Georgetown Law Centre said: "My concern is that the US has historically over-reacted in times of fear, indulging in guilt by association and giving government the power to act against individuals without procedures necessary to distinguish the guilty from the innocent."

Precedents include not only the long-discredited round-up of Japanese-born Americans after Pearl Harbour and the anti-communist excesses of the McCarthy era in the 1950s but the lesser-known Red Scare roundup of 1920.

There is also the response to the Oklahoma City bomb of 1995 which first widened the definition of aiding terrorism so that, according to Prof Cole, anyone sending a textbook to a West Bank school which turns out to be run by Hamas could face a 10-year jail sentence. If apartheid still existed, supporters of the African National Congress would have been equally vulnerable.

Most citizens are docile in their submission to authority, and neither Congress nor the public has any taste for rebellion at present. But the lesson of history is that the consequences of ill-considered legislation usually outlast the danger - however extreme - it is designed to combat.

In a recent survey 86% of Britons support ID cards. Added to further invasions like face-recognition software coupled with CCTV, the possible selling of genetic information to private companies and the increasing trend towards voyeuristic entertainment like the puerile Big Brother, our privacy is endangered as never before.

But what are you afraid of if you have nothing to hide?

Some groups are fighting these developments. Privacy International Privacy International (PI) is a human rights group formed in 1990 as a watchdog on surveillance by governments and corporations. PI is based in London, England, and has an office in Washington, D.C. PI has conducted campaigns throughout the world on issues ranging from wiretapping and national security activities, to ID cards, video surveillance, data matching, police information systems, and medical privacy.

Privacy Foundation exists to educate the public, in part by conducting research into communications technologies and services that may pose a threat to personal privacy. The foundation will attempt to be fair and objective in its research projects and public reports.

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