Nothing to hide. Everything to fear
An illuminating conversation with a friend yesterday.
The fast encroaching surveillance society has worried and infuriated me for some time now, the explosive proliferation of CCTV cameras - now one for every 14 people - being only the most obvious example on a list that includes the terrifyingly imminent National Identity Register; the NHS database to which one appears to need at best only a nodding acquaintance with the practice of medicine to qualify for access and which will by law contain the entirety of an individual's medical records; the stated policy of the Serious Organised Crime Agency (which doesn't require its agents to swear the standard British Policeman's oath but does empower them to work in secret, unmarked and nonuniformed, with the power of arrest explicitly denied the similarly-attired intelligence servcices: in this respect SOCA is indistinguishable from a secret police) of reviewing public- and private-sector databases to find data-matching opportunities that could highlight suspicious behaviour by individuals that implies that they are involved in organised or financial crime; the use of individually-registered data cards as transport tickets enabling the tracking of individual movements and travel patterns and the accompanying fiscal punishment in the form of higher prices meted out to those that prefer untrackable paper tickets; the imminent passing of the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Bill which would prevent "listed" individuals (don't ask me what the criteria are for being listed, or why there is no oversight of such listing, or why there appears to be no legal recourse for those accidentally or maliciously listed for no good reason) from engaging in regulated activities, among the practical effects of which would be to enable the state to elbow its way into every personal transaction such as the paying of a trusted party to look after a relative without both parties involved having first gained offical sanction - I could go on. Well, I have, rather.
The most worrying aspect of this is not these transparent attempts by the state to control every aspect of everyone's lives in the most minute detail, although that is, in the scheme of things, a cause for grave concern; the most worrying aspect is the ignorant, incurious, blindly trusting acquiescence with which the majority of the populace greets each fresh assault on its self-ownership. The mantra is, of course, "if you've nothing to hide, you've nothing to fear" - the motto of fascists everywhere. It is, needless to say, only true if a) the thousands of individuals involved in the day-to-day running of the state's institutions are, to a man, utterly incorruptible; and b) the systems and technologies behind all these means of surveillance work perfectly, all the time. These are, I don't think I'm being unfair in suggesting, two monstrous unlikelihoods, even if you believe that there are people with nothing to hide - which there aren't. Everyone has something to hide. It might not entail blowing up rush-hour trains or sneaking back into a foreign country to ride its benefits gravy-train, but everyone has things that they'd rather not be made known to anyone else, particularly officialdom. The seemingly inexorable rise of the surveillance state will increasingly make such harmless secrecy (read: dignity) impossible.
Neither do people seem overly concerned about the rapidly-changing relationship between the individual and the state. The proliferation of surveillance on this level suggests nothing so much as an abandonment of the presumption of innocence: if in a free society only suspects are surveilled, then we are all becoming suspects - moreover of crimes we have not yet committed. Not so free.
The fatuous Charles Clarke, who clearly still hasn't either contrived to bump into a razor or found the time to grow a full beard, despite the considerable easing of his schedule in recent months, made perhaps the most ludicrous of all such claims in the middle of a Question Time of considerable vapidity last week. Casually dropping into his point the recent death of his mother (yes, Charles, our instinctive human sympathy will easily over-ride our intelligence), he asserted that the NHS database was absolutely vital because it enabled doctors as quickly as possible to access information about any drug courses a patient may be on; his mother, he said, had not had such a facility available to her ... it was coyly left hanging whether this had resulted in her passing.
What nonsense, anyway. If people are taking drugs which may cause an adverse reaction to others, or to a surgical procedure, or anything like that, why can't they simply carry a card which says so? Why can't doctors who prescribe these fabled drugs inform the patient that they are at risk if given other drugs in an emergency situation and therefore they must make this known to any other attending physician?
Because they can't be trusted to, of course - despite the fact that they'd only be putting their own life at risk.
This notion of cradle-to-grave tracking has more in common with the notion of cradle-to-grave welfare than may at first seem apparent. Just as the idea of a national health service begets the enforcement of nationalised health standards ("Why should we pay for your lifestyle?"), so the notion that the state will look after you from birth to death inculcates in people the idea that only the state can look after them, and that whatever the state wants to do in the ostensible furtherance of this aim must be not only sage but also benign.
Cradle-to-grave will keep you in the cradle until you go to your grave.
The fast encroaching surveillance society has worried and infuriated me for some time now, the explosive proliferation of CCTV cameras - now one for every 14 people - being only the most obvious example on a list that includes the terrifyingly imminent National Identity Register; the NHS database to which one appears to need at best only a nodding acquaintance with the practice of medicine to qualify for access and which will by law contain the entirety of an individual's medical records; the stated policy of the Serious Organised Crime Agency (which doesn't require its agents to swear the standard British Policeman's oath but does empower them to work in secret, unmarked and nonuniformed, with the power of arrest explicitly denied the similarly-attired intelligence servcices: in this respect SOCA is indistinguishable from a secret police) of reviewing public- and private-sector databases to find data-matching opportunities that could highlight suspicious behaviour by individuals that implies that they are involved in organised or financial crime; the use of individually-registered data cards as transport tickets enabling the tracking of individual movements and travel patterns and the accompanying fiscal punishment in the form of higher prices meted out to those that prefer untrackable paper tickets; the imminent passing of the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Bill which would prevent "listed" individuals (don't ask me what the criteria are for being listed, or why there is no oversight of such listing, or why there appears to be no legal recourse for those accidentally or maliciously listed for no good reason) from engaging in regulated activities, among the practical effects of which would be to enable the state to elbow its way into every personal transaction such as the paying of a trusted party to look after a relative without both parties involved having first gained offical sanction - I could go on. Well, I have, rather.
The most worrying aspect of this is not these transparent attempts by the state to control every aspect of everyone's lives in the most minute detail, although that is, in the scheme of things, a cause for grave concern; the most worrying aspect is the ignorant, incurious, blindly trusting acquiescence with which the majority of the populace greets each fresh assault on its self-ownership. The mantra is, of course, "if you've nothing to hide, you've nothing to fear" - the motto of fascists everywhere. It is, needless to say, only true if a) the thousands of individuals involved in the day-to-day running of the state's institutions are, to a man, utterly incorruptible; and b) the systems and technologies behind all these means of surveillance work perfectly, all the time. These are, I don't think I'm being unfair in suggesting, two monstrous unlikelihoods, even if you believe that there are people with nothing to hide - which there aren't. Everyone has something to hide. It might not entail blowing up rush-hour trains or sneaking back into a foreign country to ride its benefits gravy-train, but everyone has things that they'd rather not be made known to anyone else, particularly officialdom. The seemingly inexorable rise of the surveillance state will increasingly make such harmless secrecy (read: dignity) impossible.
Neither do people seem overly concerned about the rapidly-changing relationship between the individual and the state. The proliferation of surveillance on this level suggests nothing so much as an abandonment of the presumption of innocence: if in a free society only suspects are surveilled, then we are all becoming suspects - moreover of crimes we have not yet committed. Not so free.
The fatuous Charles Clarke, who clearly still hasn't either contrived to bump into a razor or found the time to grow a full beard, despite the considerable easing of his schedule in recent months, made perhaps the most ludicrous of all such claims in the middle of a Question Time of considerable vapidity last week. Casually dropping into his point the recent death of his mother (yes, Charles, our instinctive human sympathy will easily over-ride our intelligence), he asserted that the NHS database was absolutely vital because it enabled doctors as quickly as possible to access information about any drug courses a patient may be on; his mother, he said, had not had such a facility available to her ... it was coyly left hanging whether this had resulted in her passing.
What nonsense, anyway. If people are taking drugs which may cause an adverse reaction to others, or to a surgical procedure, or anything like that, why can't they simply carry a card which says so? Why can't doctors who prescribe these fabled drugs inform the patient that they are at risk if given other drugs in an emergency situation and therefore they must make this known to any other attending physician?
Because they can't be trusted to, of course - despite the fact that they'd only be putting their own life at risk.
This notion of cradle-to-grave tracking has more in common with the notion of cradle-to-grave welfare than may at first seem apparent. Just as the idea of a national health service begets the enforcement of nationalised health standards ("Why should we pay for your lifestyle?"), so the notion that the state will look after you from birth to death inculcates in people the idea that only the state can look after them, and that whatever the state wants to do in the ostensible furtherance of this aim must be not only sage but also benign.
Cradle-to-grave will keep you in the cradle until you go to your grave.
posted by Novus at 10:14
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