Loss of Privacy

Europe has been known as the place where privacy is valued and defended that belief rigorously.  Now, many individual countries are preparing legislation that would be more stringent in tracking individuals than the European Union directive already in place.  In particular, Germany and The Netherlands have proposed the most invasive laws of their European counterparts.

In Germany, a proposal from the Ministry of Justice would essentially prohibit using false information to create an e-mail account, making the standard Internet practice of creating accounts with pseudonyms illegal.

A draft law in the Netherlands would likewise go further than the European Union requires, in this case by requiring phone companies to save records of a caller’s precise location during an entire mobile phone conversation.

Of course, there will be many who will find a way around this type of system but the question is, why is it that we need this type of tracking in order to feel safe?  Why do we allow ourselves to be tracked?  Why do we not realize that any data like this can be manipulated to say whatever the authorities want it to say.  These draconian measures are completely unnecessary, yet, individual EU countries are still pushing these laws because their governments are starting to realize that those in dissent to what is happening in their respective countries are voicing their opinions and organizing online.  These governments see their citizens as a threat and will do whatever it takes to track them and stop them.  Claiming that it is to provide security is, yet again, a red herring.

The problem, as usual, is that this will not work.  These legislative officials, sitting behind big desks with pretty views have no clue how easily this will be defeated.  Encryption, proxies, and other ways not yet devised, will be used.  What will happen is that honest, hardworking people, such as your grandma, me, you, your little cousin, and clueless people will be the only ones that are tracked.  Those that know and understand the game will not.  This will necessitate special task forces to be created to track those that would elude the law.  Oh, wait.  We already have this.  So, why create this new law if it isn’t to keep track of ordinary citizens?

It has also been suggested that tracking emails would be done by requiring a person to register with something else that is trackable, such as a national ID card.  However, it’s unknown if European law would apply to places such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, and other providers who are based in the United States.

Jörg Hladjk, a privacy lawyer at Hunton & Williams, a Brussels law firm, said that might also mean that it could become illegal to pay cash for prepaid cellphone accounts. The billing information for regular cellphone subscriptions is already verified.

We aren’t any safer than we were pre-9/11 and we aren’t any more at risk.  9/11 was just the galvanizing force for governments to claim that we need more laws to protect people from terrorists.  Then, when you are tracked a little bit more, they claim that the bad guys are doing something else and we must take a little bit more privacy so that you can be a little more secure.  But it’s all a false sense of security.  They know it.  Your average citizen does not.  In the five years since 9/11, there has been no definitive proof that we are safer, better off, or more secure than we were before.

As it stands now, it would be difficult to get this legislation passed.  It violates several German and Dutch laws already in effect, as well as violating the European Convention on Human Rights.  Most people do not support the current draft of the legislation but, it is only a matter of time before it is modified and the general population is convinced that this new law is vital to the safety and security of Europe.  We must object to it now before it is, once again, too late.

Beginning next year, law enforcement all over the European Union will have access to the United Kingdom’s car registration, DNA, and fingerprint databases as the EU moves closer to the UK and its Big Brother society.  Currently, the UK has the world’s largest DNA database, with four million samples.  The new network will share data between twenty-seven EU countries.

Shadow Home Secretary David Davis called it “deeply troubling”. “The information includes personal data, it is not limited to criminals and there are no reliable means to guarantee the safeguards on the use of that information by criminal gangs or those not entitled to use that data,” he added.

Innocent British tourists can now be swept up in criminal investigations, solely because their fingerprints happen to be at a crime scene, while those in Brussels dismiss privacy issues, claiming the database will be essential for more effective crime control throughout Europe.

And how did innocent Britains get their fingerprints in a database to begin with?  Well, with the new policy of fingerprinting all motorists who are pulled over in Britain, those that are guilty of minor traffic infractions have the luxury of being placed in a database that includes criminals.  Though it is in its initial trial phase, if all goes well, the British government has admitted that they want to make such policy mandatory.

Since this databse policy is reciprocal, the UK will obtain similar data from the rest of the EU.  All that is left is to require tourists from non-EU countries to submit their DNA and fingerprints.  Only then will all of Europe be safe.  Of course, the United States has implemented REAL-ID and new passports which can, and most likely will, hold biometric data.  Once you fly to Europe, they will collect all the Americans’ information, thereby securing Europe and preventing terrorism.  *cough*cough* Sorry, I nearly choked writing that part.

The good news is that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is abandoning their plans to embed RFID chips in the arrival and departure forms used by foreign nationals visiting the USA.  The bad news is that they are testing a data mining program, whose purpose is to identify terrorists by collecting information on average American citizens, including their flight and hotel reservations.  The General Accounting Office (GAO) decried the violations of privacy because the DHS intends to use private information on American citizens for purposes other its original purpose and the DHS also has not plans to notify its citizens that they will be conducting such information gathering.

The plan had been to speed up the length of time it takes to process foreigners at the borders by scanning the forms automatically.  The DHS made this decision after a GAO report concluded that it did not function properly and that it was impossible to know if the person carrying the RFID chip upon entry was the same person who would be carrying it upon departure [pdf].

RFID chips may be read by any person with a properly configured scanner, so privacy groups feared that private individuals would be able to identify foreign nationals on the street simply by scanning them for a chip.  Moreover, such a scan would reveal a unique ID number, which could allow someone with access to a government database to discover the “name, date of birth, gender, country of citizenship, passport number and country of issuance, complete U.S. destination address, arrival and departure information, a digital photograph, and digital fingerscans” of the person scanned.

With that problem defeated, though mostly due to it being unfeasible, there is still the problem of collecting vast amounts of information in US citizens.  This data mining program is similar to one that Congress killed in 2003, which also raised concerns of civil liberties.  That program, Total Information Awareness, was created by DARPA.

Analysis, Dissemination, Visualization, Insight and Semantic Enhancement (ADVISE)…..is on the cutting edge of analytical technology that applies mathematical algorithms to uncover hidden relationships in data. The idea is to troll a vast sea of information, including audio and visual, and extract suspicious people, places and other elements based on their links and behavioral patterns.

ADVISE is also using subcomponents of Total Information Awareness, which is what prompted officials to ask the GAO to investigate.  The GAO is reporting that privacy violations have probably already occurred, due to the fact that the testing phase is reviewing real instead of fake information.

The violations involved the government’s use of citizens’ private information without proper notification to the public and using the data for a purpose different than originally envisioned, said the source, who declined to be identified because the report is not yet public.

DHS officials admit to using real information, but they claim to have made it anonymous so that the real identity could not be discovered.  This ignores the fact that the DHS should never have had access to such information to begin with.

While some aspects of Total Information Awareness were used to identify likely terrorists in Guantanamo, using ADVISE on a mass scale will, inevitably, implicate many innocent Americans.  What happens when an innocent person is subjected to ADVISE, unknowingly, and has their life ruined, while the government takes its time to sort things out and then say, “sorry about that” and move on to the next “terrorist” on their list?

Just because they have some success with a small group of people who were targeted in the first places as likely terrorists, doesn’t mean that such a program, on a large scale, is going to work.  This program is another example, in an ever-growing list, of how laws are made without thinking of logistics and constitutionality.  If this new Congress is wise, and listens to its constituents, ADVISE will die just like Total Information Awareness.  If not, watch your privacy disappear.