Governments have always been interested in the private lives of citizens and surveillance has been an important instrument in maintaining government power and national security. With closer global integration of the recent decades, and especially in a post-9/11 world, security and Government surveillance have gained new impetus, with implications transcending national borders.
Many new surveillance programmes have been adopted in the name of national security, but their implications run further than citizens’ protection. Ben Hayes of Statewatch, Patrick Radden Keefe of The Century Foundation, Larry Siems of PEN America and Jameel Jaffer of the American Civil Liberties Union share their thoughts on the implications of mass surveillance and its challenges to government policy and practice.
Surveillance states talk
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Patrick Radden Keere discusses how following the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States, the surveillance landscape has been transformed into one where the government has become much more active in collecting private information about monitoring its citizens. |
Jameel Jaffer discussed how instead of rolling back the extent of government surveillance, the US Congress has institutionalized the surveillance practices that the Bush administration has put in place after 9/11 |
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Ben Hayes discusses how the UK Government has followed a similar pattern in eroding the system of regulations set up to control surveillance. |
Larry Siems warns of the danger of citizens’ acquiescence to the government’s increasing use of mass surveillance: history to secure its own power, rather than to provide security to the citizens. |
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All the panelists agree that what is needed is for the citizens to be better-informed about the nature and extent of government surveillance. |
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