Je vrijheid opgeven voor tijdelijke veiligheid
08 september 2013
Het blijft de moeite waard om het werk van Dan Gillmor te volgen. In augustus publiceerde hij een speech in The Guardian die hij in 2016 graag uitgesproken zou zien worden door de toekomstige president van de Verenigde Staten. Wat mij betreft zouden alle politici een variant op de speech mogen uitspreken. De passage No precedent:
But the current threat to liberty has no precedent. It starts with expanding and, often, unchecked executive power. Then it adds an inexorable push for total surveillance. Big Brother is expanding his reach directly, spying on our digital communications in almost every form. Cameras are capturing us on city streets, and watching where we drive, and you can be sure that Big Brother wants access to that, too. And he has has co-opted the businesses we patronize, forcing them to turn over information we thought we were sharing only with them. It is all going into massive databases.
Soon, if we don’t change course, everything will be captured and stored. Everything we do and say will be visible to government, and it will be available retrospectively when someone wants to know what we were saying or doing in the past. Even though the vast majority of people who enter public service are good and honorable, we know from history that the ones who are not will abuse their positions – and that power inevitably corrupts.
Surveillance of everyone, all the time, may – may – lessen the risk of one kind of disaster. But it guarantees another kind. We know from all kinds of research that pervasive surveillance is bad for society. It fuels distrust. It chills free speech, the foundation of liberty. Massive surveillance isn’t just un-American as a civic matter. By turning people who would be innovators into timid conformists, it is economically damaging as well.
When people say, “You have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide,” ask them if it’s fine to install cameras in their homes, not just in the living room but the bedroom and bathroom. Ask them if they’d mind wearing a microphone and video camera every day, so others can check on what they’ve said and done.
You are guilty of something. I guarantee it. Lawmakers have created countless new crimes and punishments, and allowed law enforcement to extend old laws in dangerous ways. Have you ever told anything short of the absolute truth when filling out an online form to use some service? We can charge you with a felony for that. And, by the way, we don’t need to convict you at trial. If you are a target, we can ruin you financially if you try to defend yourself. This is what we expect in banana republics and police states, not here. And as the surveillance state expands, it will create more targets among people like you.
Our political leaders have made a calculation in recent years. They believe you are too frightened, too cowardly, to face the truth – and that you think liberty is much less important than temporary safety.
We are human. Terrorism unleashes our deepest fears, and our most lethal fury, even though the risk for any one of us is vanishingly low. We must challenge the fear mongers, and ourselves.
Lees de rest van de tekst in America’s next president had better believe in restoring liberty.
Gerelateerd:
Leestip: Mediactive van Dan Gillmor (mei 2011)
We the media: je eigen krant samenstellen met The Guardian (juni 2006)
Picnic 06: Dan Gillmor (september 2006)
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