Abstract ▼ AI-Helper

The revelations made possible by Edward Snowden, a contractor of the US intelligence service NSA, are a sobering reminder that the Internet is not an 'anonymous' means of communication. In fact, the Internet has never been conceived with anonymity in mind. If anything, the Internet and networking te...

The revelations made possible by Edward Snowden, a contractor of the US intelligence service NSA, are a sobering reminder that the Internet is not an 'anonymous' means of communication. In fact, the Internet has never been conceived with anonymity in mind. If anything, the Internet and networking technologies provide far more detailed and traceable information about where, when, with whom we communicate. The content of the communication can also be made available to third parties who obtain encryption keys or have the means of exploiting vulnerabilities (either by design or by oversight) of encryption software. Irrebuttable evidence has emerged that the US and the UK intelligence services have had an indiscriminate access to the meta-data of communications and, in some cases, the content of the communications in the name of security and protection of the public. The conventional means of judicial scrutiny of such an access turned out to be ineffectual. The most alarming attitude of the public and some politicians is "If you have nothing to hide, you need not be concerned." Where individuals have nothing to hide, intelligence services have no business in the first place to have a peek. If the public espouses the groundless assumption that State organs are benevolent "( they will have a look only to find out whether there are probable grounds to form a reasonable suspicion"), then the achievements of several hundred years of struggle to have the constitutional guarantees against invasion into privacy and liberty will quickly evaporate. This is an opportune moment to review some of the basic points about the protection of privacy and freedom of individuals. First, if one should hold a view that security can override liberty, one is most likely to lose both liberty and security. Civilized societies have developed the rule of law as the least damaging and most practicable arrangement to strike a balance between security and liberty. Whether we wish to give up the rule of law in the name of security requires a thorough scrutiny and an informed decision of the body politic. It is not a decision which can secretly be made in a closed chamber. Second, protection of privacy has always depended on human being's compliance with the rules rather than technical guarantees or robustness of technical means. It is easy to tear apart an envelope and have a look inside. It was, and still is, the normative prohibition (and our compliance) which provided us with protection of privacy. The same applies to electronic communications. With sufficient resources, surreptitiously undermining technical means of protecting privacy (such as encryption) is certainly 'possible'. But that does not mean that it is permissible. Third, although the Internet is clearly not an 'anonymous' means of communication, many users have a 'false sense of anonymity' which make them more vulnerable to prying eyes. More effort should be made to educate the general public about the technical nature of the Internet and encourage them to adopt user behaviour which is mindful of the possibilities of unwanted surveillance. Fourth, the US and the UK intelligence services have demonstrated that an international cooperation is possible and worked well in running the mechanism of massive surveillance and infiltration into data which travels globally. If that is possible, it should equally be possible to put in place a global mechanism of judicial scrutiny over a global attempt at surveillance.