The Lair

No, it’s not this war that I allude to; but a slightly more topical conflict. The war for privacy and civil liberties. Or the war on it, depending on which side of the fence you’d base your perspective. It seems odd that this should concern me, on a day when Egypt was attacked (ob note: a friend of mine had high praise and recommended that I visit Sharm El-Shiek when I mustered the finances for it. Wonder if he still says the same now. Not that the Sinai peninsula was ever the most peaceful of spots, but anyway, I digress), a day when it was uncovered that the supposed South Asian suicide bomber pinned to the floor by police officers and shot repeatedly in the head was in fact Brazilian and innocent.

This is actually funny (in a grim, gallows humour sort of way) because I happen to fit the target profile of a purported suicide bomber perfectly. Yes, I’ve taken to wearing a black baseball cap, mostly to stop my hair from blowing all over the place. Yes, I also have tshirts (not with New York emblazoned on them, admittedly). And sadly, yes.. my complexion fits and I am nowadays rarely seen without an innocuous (and very cheap) shoulder bag in which my (cheapass, and thus extremely heavy) laptop nestles. It’s not an exaggeration to say that people have been killed for less. And factor in my extreme distrust of UK weather forecasts and my tendency to go for massive overkill in all-weather jackets and …. there you go.

I could, perhaps, wear a tshirt which proclaims my dislike and distrust of holy men and organized religion of all shapes, sizes and creeds. Unfortunately, I doubt the trigger happy types would stop to read the trendy anti-jihadist slogan on my tshirt. And then, the inevitable attention my tshirt is going to draw from the religious fundies… well, I just can’t win, can I ?

Ok. I don’t know if I’m being humourous or sarcastic. Maybe it’s both. Or neither. I do know that young-Asian-male-carrying-shoulder-bag-and-travelling-on-public-transport-in-London produces an almost visceral fear in people now.

But skating swiftly onto the relatively firmer ice of civil liberties (ha!); it now seems inevitable to me that - regardless of protests and remonstrations and demonstrations to oppose - the basic expectations of privacy in communications is now receding swiftly from most parts of the Western world. The Patriot Act in the US was renewed… and new powers for UK police mean, among other things, that encrypted keys must be produced on demand and that using the internet to prepare for terrorism is now a valid offense (what the heck happened to the old fashioned conspiracy charges anyway ?)

Here’s the odd thing though. I agree that most of these things are necessary. Coppers need to do their job too. And my definition of “reasonable expectation of privacy” doesn’t include obstruction of the law.

Had you going for a minute there, didn’t I? The thing is, I don’t think that it’s going to be possible to stop more and more legislation in a similar vein being introduced in future. Each terrorist attack, each high tech discovery essentially leads to the knee jerk reaction of clamping down on encryption, on retention of telephone records and things of that nature. Well, the CCTV footage of the underground certainly served it’s purpose, did it not ? After that huge success and validation of CCTV surveillance, how can anyone in their right minds deny the need for even more public surveillance ? If your communication is mere electrons travelling on an open wire, why should it not be recorded somewhere ?

It’s not possible to make a convincing argument for privacy that will appeal to the masses. Not anymore. Privacy versus security ? People will pick security each time. And so they should. So would I. Even the illusion of security is better than nothing at all. What is privacy but an ephemeral thing ? Who could possibly be interested in yours or my nattering on the telephone ? Is the email I send to someone important enough to bring the full weight of governmental security to bear ? Why would the government be interested in my email ? Hahaha. This is just for terrorists.

In the words of Sun Tzu (yes, I’ve quoted Sun Tzu. My claim to pseudo military history intelligentsia is complete); the [positions] that I shall hold are precisely those that the enemy cannot attack. I don’t think asking the police to stop surveillance or reduce it is a defensible position.

Pushing for a cease to the curtailment of civil liberties isn’t really working. Are people or governments shamed by the rabid NGOs’ du jour accusing them of human rights violations anymore ? I don’t think they are. What I think might work is a withdrawal to the defensive position of asking for better accountability and an adherence to regulations when these new laws are applied. Stop these new laws being passed ? But then the terrorists would win!