Fear itself is to be feared

There should never be a circumstance by which the government can survey the communications of the general population. If someone is suspected of actions untoward or threating to the state, get a warrant. There have been generations of people fight to prevent state intrusion and the potential of oppressive government actions that flow from state intrusion. Any data that singles out an individual and their associations, needs to be considered private and should require judicial review to access; this is inclusive of “meta” data in telecommunications and server data on the internet. 

Under the guise of public interest much evil has been perpetrated by states, in Canada or the United States there is no immunity to evil conduct. We have built into our laws, at the most fundamental level, protections for the citizenry against state coercion; an individual’s privacy is the cornerstone to a citizen being an automatous agent, to relinquish that is to relinquish democracy and the accompanying liberty that is our right.

The United States constitution has freedom of association as a cornerstone and has contributed to a tradition of strict controls on search and seizure, these traditions have been severely challenged since 911. There has been fear mongering to gain support for law enforcement and government in general to take the state deeper in to the daily lives of people. 911 was an awful event, to be sure, however, context is required – 911 killed 3000 people, in the same year there were 100,000 preventable fatal medical accidents, 100,000 deaths no one heard of. Law enforcement and those charged with protecting the public need tools and they have a difficult job; however, we do have to resist streamlining access to people’s personal lives. This US newly created meme has a contagion; it has come to Canada on several occasions.

   

The nature of the information flow to the public given our modern communications structures bring saliency to the most dramatic, rather than the biggest threat. Dwight Eisenhower warned us about the “military complex”, while the US military is enviable and has provided stability in the world, there is profit motive at work in the expansion of security concern, problems present opportunity – in that reality the amplification of a significant event to a national catastrophic event can serve a multitude of uses in exciting the population to relinquish basic rights and to expand state control. There has been mission creep is western security, we need to be vigilant that out of the mire of fear and threat, a rational response emerges as opposed to a police state(s).

Over the course of my life there has been an insidious movement of state expansion and a resulting deepening of state involvement is the private lives of the citizenry. My pharmaceutical records are on line and any pharmacist in British Columbia can look at them, my medical billing records are on line and easily accessed, the government requires I keep my address on my driver’s license current so the state always knows my whereabouts, there is contemplation of RFI license plates for cars that permit the location and speed of your car to be transmitted to a central data base, there are black boxes in automobiles that record accident events that can incriminate as well as exonerate, I am forced in BC to accept a single medical provider, I am forced in BC to purchase car insurance from a single insurance provider … the list is long and growing. If you believe as I do that liberty should be the paramount concern of government and that private lives are a critical component to liberty; then you should be as afraid of fear as I am.