Stallman: How Much Surveillance Can Democracy Withstand?
There are some things I do not agree with in this article. that having been said, it’s a worthwhile look at where a surveillance society should or perhaps should not go. Such as that no fly list.
Remedy for Collecting Data: Leaving It Dispersed
One way to make monitoring safe for privacy is to keep the data dispersed and inconvenient to access. Old-fashioned security cameras were no threat to privacy. The recording was stored on the premises, and kept for a few weeks at most. Because of the inconvenience of accessing these recordings, it was never done massively; they were accessed only in the places where someone reported a crime. It would not be feasible to physically collect millions of tapes every day and watch them or copy them.
Remedy for Travel Surveillance
We must convert digital toll collection to anonymous payment (using digital cash, for instance). License-plate recognition systems recognize all license plates, and the data can be kept indefinitely; they should be required by law to notice and record only those license numbers that are on a list of cars sought by court orders. A less secure alternative would record all cars locally but only for a few days, and not make the full data available over the internet; access to the data should be limited to searching for a list of court-ordered license-numbers.
The U.S. “no-fly” list must be abolished because it is punishment without trial.
But Some Surveillance Is Necessary
For the state to find criminals, it needs to be able to investigate specific crimes, or specific suspected planned crimes, under a court order. With the internet, the power to tap phone conversations would naturally extend to the power to tap internet connections. This power is easy to abuse for political reasons, but it is also necessary. Fortunately, this won’t make it possible to find whistleblowers after the fact.
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