Bruce Schneier: Slouching toward Big Brother

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

http://news.com.com/2010-1028-5150325.html?tag=nefd_acpro
Slouching toward Big Brother

By Bruce Schneier
 http://news.com.com/2010-1028-5150325.html

Story last modified January 30, 2004, 4:00 AM PST

Last week the Supreme Court let stand the Justice Department's right to
secretly arrest noncitizen residents.

Combined with the government's power to designate foreign prisoners of war
as "enemy combatants" in order to ignore international treaties regulating
their incarceration, and their power to indefinitely detain U.S. citizens
without charge or access to an attorney, the United States is looking more
and more like a police state.

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the Justice Department has asked for, and
largely received, additional powers that allow it to perform an
unprecedented amount of surveillance of American citizens and visitors. The
USA Patriot Act, passed in haste after Sept. 11, started the ball rolling.

In December, a provision slipped into an appropriations bill allowing the
FBI to obtain personal financial information from banks, insurance
companies, travel agencies, real estate agents, stockbrokers, the U.S.
Postal Service, jewelry stores, casinos and car dealerships without a
warrant--because they're all construed as financial institutions. Starting
this year, the U.S. government is photographing and fingerprinting foreign
visitors coming into this country from all but 27 other countries.

The litany continues. CAPPS-II, the government's vast computerized system
for probing the backgrounds of all passengers boarding flights, will be
fielded this year. Total Information Awareness, a program that would link
diverse databases and allow the FBI to collate information on all Americans,
was halted at the federal level after a huge public outcry, but is
continuing at a state level with federal funding. Over New Year's, the FBI
collected the names of 260,000 people staying at Las Vegas hotels. More and
more, at every level of society, the "Big Brother is watching you" style of
total surveillance is slowly becoming a reality.

Security is a trade-off. It makes no sense to ask whether a particular
security system is effective or not--otherwise you'd all be wearing
bulletproof vests and staying immured in your home. The proper question to
ask is whether the trade-off is worth it. Is the level of security gained
worth the costs, whether in money, in liberties, in privacy or in
convenience?

This can be a personal decision, and one greatly influenced by the
situation. For most of us, bulletproof vests are not worth the cost and
inconvenience. For some of us, home burglar alarm systems are. And most of
us lock our doors at night.

Terrorism is no different. We need to weigh each security countermeasure. Is
the additional security against the risks worth the costs? Are there smarter
things we can be spending our money on? How does the risk of terrorism
compare with the risks in other aspects of our lives: automobile accidents,
domestic violence, industrial pollution, and so on? Are there costs that are
just too expensive for us to bear?

Unfortunately, it's rare to hear this level of informed debate. Few people
remind us how minor the terrorist threat really is. Rarely do we discuss how
little identification has to do with security, and how broad surveillance of
everyone doesn't really prevent terrorism. And where's the debate about
what's more important: the freedoms and liberties that have made America
great or some temporary security?

Instead, the Department of Justice, fueled by a strong police mentality
inside the administration, is directing our nation's political changes in
response to Sept. 11. And it's making trade-offs from its own subjective
perspective--trade-offs that benefit it even if they are to the detriment of
others.

From the point of view of the Justice Department, judicial oversight is
unnecessary and unwarranted; doing away with it is a better trade-off. They
think collecting information on everyone is a good idea because they are
less concerned with the loss of privacy and liberty. Expensive surveillance
and data-mining systems are a good trade-off for them because more budget
means even more power. And from their perspective, secrecy is better than
openness; if the police are absolutely trustworthy, then there's nothing to
be gained from a public process.

When you put the police in charge of security, the trade-offs they make
result in measures that resemble a police state.

This is wrong. The trade-offs are larger than the FBI or the Justice
Department. Just as a company would never put a single department in charge
of its own budget, someone above the narrow perspective of the Justice
Department needs to be balancing the country's needs and making decisions
about these security trade-offs.

The laws limiting police power were put in place to protect us from police
abuse. Privacy protects us from threats by government, corporations and
individuals. And the greatest strength of our nation comes from our
freedoms, our openness, our liberties and our system of justice. Ben
Franklin once said: "Those who would give up essential liberty for temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." Since the events of Sept. 11
Americans have squandered an enormous amount of liberty, and we didn't even
get any temporary safety in return.


  

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