Liberal Road Blog Individual Freedom and Equality

Today a Swedish TV station told that the Swedish troops in Afghanistan are spying on civilians as well as the local police and military.

Phone lines of whole towns are listened to at times, which is especially worrying and wrong. It’s not the first time that Sweden doesn’t care about the privacy of private people, unfortunately. Even in wars we should care more about privacy and human rights; these rights are too important to be lost.

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The problem with giving more powers to law enforcement to monitor people is that these powers are often abused. That’s why I’m not surprised that the FBI has been repeatedly abusing the law to get phone records and customer records (sources: Los Angeles Times, ACLU).

According to a published report, the FBI has sent letters requesting companies to give it personal information such as phone and email records and education information in cases it is not allowed to do so. The Patriotic Act passed after 9/11 gave the FBI more powers, powers that the FBI has been abusing.

Spying and illegally obtaining phone and other records is nothing new for law-enforcement authorities in different countries. Unfortunately often when they are given wider rights to monitor people, they abuse these rights. We should be very careful about what rights are given to the police and the intelligence agencies and there should be a much stronger control of these agencies.

Many countries have some kind of spying programs (on domestic or foreign citizens). The United States is also participating with some other English-speaking countries in the Echelon program which is listening to phone calls worldwide (probably by picking automatically the phone calls to be listened to based on keyword of the conversation). We may well wonder: are you too being spied upon?

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The Swedish government is going on with plans of a new law allowing the wiretapping and monitoring of all phone and data traffic in Sweden (Source:Svenska Dagbladet, in Swedish. See also my old post about this proposition). The law proposition will be voted in the parliament later.

It is a pity the government isn’t listening enough to critics. Although the proposition has slightly been changed, the spying for the need of the government will not require any approval by a controlling authority.

Allowing the listening of phone calls and the monitoring of all data traffic is a violation of the privacy. I understand that to solve crimes phone listening is sometimes necessary, but in that case there should be some evidence that the persons in question may have committed a serious crime. Secondly the listening should be submitted to a court.

But in this law proposition the listening would be more based on keywords. For example if a phone call contains some keywords it would be listened to. This means non suspects would be listened to.

This law proposition shows that the government clearly doesn’t care about the rights to privacy of people and this is a dangerous step toward a Big Brother state.

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I am fervant defendent of the freedom of speech and think that most European countries are still limiting too much the freedom of speach in some situations.

However there is one thing in which the freedom of speech laws in Europe and North America have completly missed the point: they don’t offer any privacy for famous people.

Tabloids and some magazines are constantly writing details about the private life of stars without their concent. And unfortunately most of the time they have the right to do so according to the law. However sometimes it leads to lawsuits like now that Paris Hilton is suing a website to stop them publishing personal items and information (source: article on CNN).

I think it’s sad that once you are famous you often no longer have the right to privacy. I think the media shouldn’t be allowed to tell the private life of famous people without their conscent.

Why do I support this? Because I believe everyone should have the right to live in privacy if they want to. Publishing details about their private life without their conscent is violating their rights to privacy. I believe it’s a sufficient reason to limit the freedom of expression (the individual freedom should be limited only if the action violates the rights of others and I think it’s the case here).

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As I surfed on the web this weekend I ran into this interesting video: Busted - The Citizen’s Guide to Surviving Police Encounters. It describes well the rights you have when confronting the police (applies only in the USA) and what you should do.

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The video has been made by Flex Your Rights.

I think it’s important that everyone has rights against the police for privacy reasons. The privacy should be limited only to a reasonable extent as necessary to guarantee the individual freedom of others (for ex. to reduce crimes that violates the individual freedom of others).

If the police was allowed to search anyone at any time for no special reason it would be a dangerous step toward a surveillance state (Big Brother -state at the end).

As laws are different in every country the information on the video applies only to the United States (but apparently not if you are suspected of terrorism as described in the Patriotic Act). Local laws of other countries should be checked.

I’ll make a small research about the rights in Sweden in similar situations when I have a bit more time. I’ll put a link here when I’ve done it.

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Today as I read the news on the Internet I came across an article about an interesting Swedish opinion poll (link: SVT in Swedish). According to this poll 91% are for camera surveillance in public places, 87% are for secret wiretapping of phone calls by the police and 51% wants that a dna-register is created about the whole population.

Hang on a second. 91% is for camera surveillance in public places? Every other person is for a dna register covering the whole population? Yes, that’s the numbers. I knew that many have become positive to increased control and less privacy the last years. But still I had to double check the numbers before I believed I read correctly.

The strength of the support surprised me. And I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one.

But opinion polls should always be taken with precaution. It all depends about how you ask it. By changing a little bit how the question is asked you may get a different result. For example if instead of asking “Do you support secret wiretapping of phone calls?” you ask ” Do you support secret wiretapping of phone calls without a court order?” you will get a different result.

Unfortunately the media didn’t report the exact questions asked. It would have been interesting to know them.

Maybe I shouldn’t have been so surprised. After all Sweden is a country where a lot of information is public and privacy is already limited more than in many other countries. For example the tax information is public. It means that anyone can get the information about how much you earned in the past years. And that’s just an example.

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According to the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter (link in Swedish) the Swedish ministry of defence has announced his support to a proposition allowing the monitoring of all phone calls in Sweden.

If this proposition is accepted an organization under the Ministry of Defence (the National Defence Radio Establishment) will be allowed to listen to all phone calls and monitor all data traffic passing through Sweden. No court orders would be needed.

The National Defence Radio Establishment may already nowadays wiretape some phone calls, but this right would be extended. Furthermore, the information collected would be allowed to be transferred to intelligence agencies in other countries.

This is yet another example of an unacceptable violation of the privacy in the name of potential terrorist attacks and threats to the national security.

In the recent years privacy has been more and more sacrificed worldwide in the name of potential terrorist attacks. It is a dangerous trend that may eventually lead to a Big Brother state.

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