Pär Ström refutes arguments for a society of surveillance

Här är Per Ströms Argument översatta av Unnamed på OMC till engelska.

Taken from Pär Ström’s Integritetens lilla röda (”The Little Red Book of Integrity”).

Big brother’s most common arguments are refuted.

”New technologies makes integrity nevertheless lost”

No. Not everything technically possible has to be realized. Above all, it does not have to be decided during political assemblies and then legislated. The Parliament does not at all have to change the laws to facilitate different types of supervision. Even less does The Parliament, through legislation, have to force supervision onto society. If the political establishment protected integrity, instead of attacking it, the losses for the personal integrity would be much lesser in comparison to todays situation. Certainly, we can never again have the integrity-protecting anonymity of the 1980’s, but still we can, to a high degree, affect how much of the integrity that goes lost.

”The technologies that threatens integrity actually contributes to public welfare ”

Surely it is like that sometimes, and in some situations we must therefore accept certain violations of integrity. But the very same public welfare might possibly be reached through other means of technology that does not constitute the same threat to integrity. If that is not the case, the public welfare of the new techonolgy must nevertheless be weighed against the risk of infringements upon personal integrity – is it really welfare? This is usually refered to as “estimation of proportionality”. If a society uncritically imposes every technical solution that offers some kind of public welfare, the risk is impending that the society quickly evolves into what we usually call a police state.

”Measures that protects integrity becomes too expensive”

It depends on what kind of values you have; how much you consider that protected integrity may cost. It is thereby partly a political question. Automobile emission control costs large amounts of money, but most countries in the world have reached the conclusion that it is worth the cost, and have thus legislated on emission control. Most fields in technology are surrounded by legal demands. Furthermore, the additional cost is usually not large – if it exists at all – provided that protection of integrity, already from the beginning, is merged into new technological systems. Besides, the very same argument could be used against courts of law. Imagine how much expenses could be reduced if we abolished lawcourts and instead judged people in summary proceedings. Certain things must be allowed to cost.

”Why are you an opponent to crime prevention?”

The question is faulty, since the factual matter cannot be simplified as to being either for crime prevention or against it. It is intellectually unfair to insinuate that the one who does not accept just whichever measures taken by the Government authorities, thereby would automatically be siding with the criminals. Us citizens should stick to the police the same way as to the military forces: It is needed, naturally, but we are entering a perilous path if it is going to be in the centre of society and be governing everything.

”The threat of terrorism requires extreme measures”

The terrorists wish to destroy our societal structure. If we try to defend the free society by degenerating methods – which have thus far been characteristic of totalitarian regimes – we have obviously lost what we were trying to defend. Police and other public institutions of course have to be permitted use of IT and electronics, just like everybody else, but the use must be weighed against other values, such as respect for the sanctity of private life. Different types of surveillance are furthermore often suggested, with the threat of terrorism as an argument. Despite that, there are no existing scientific proof supporting the claim that these measures, in reality, would have any evident effect on the terrorists. It is often taken for granted, without substantiation, that new surveillance reduces terrorism. There are many of us who think that not even a real society, identical to Orwell’s “1984”, actually would eliminate terrorism – the terrorists would simply change their methods. One could moreover reflect on which effect against terrorism one could achieve, by using a part of the very large amounts of money that, in todays world, are invested in surveillance in various ways.



”You are paranoid if you think that anyone cares about your doings”

The risks for the personal integrity does not commonly lie in the possibility that a certain person is subjected to focused persecution by the authorities or corporations. Every person is just one in the multitude, that is correct, but it does not prevent the fact that he or she suffers greatly from leaking of or abuse of personal information (such as identity documents), or that it becomes subject to a slide in purpose. With this being said, one must establish the fact that the risk of private persons being subejcts to focused persecution nevertheless exists. This can, above all, come to strike down on disobliging truthsayers in the private or the public sector, as well as on political dissidents. In many democratic countries, there exist documented cases where law-abiding “dissidents” become subject to, in reality illegal, surveillance by the authorities. Even in Sweden, where SÄPO (the Swedish national security service) during many years, on a large scale, broke the law. The fact is that Sweden has a very bad track record on the subject.