(Or On Selling the Global Surveillance Society)

Homeland Security czar Michael Chertoff’s recent remark in Ottawa that our fingerprints are not really our personal information, because we leave them on glasses and silverware, is bizarre. Last I looked, fingerprinting was associated with totalitarian regimes and, in most Western nations, it was restricted to those arrested and certain government workers. Fingerprinting was the tried and true means of identifying people who might need to be identified again.

Canadian privacy legislation specifically includes fingerprints in the definition of personal information, so Mr. Chertoff is wrong at law, including US law. This is from the American Privacy Act:

(4) the term "record" means ..... information about an individual that is maintained by an agency, including ..... his education, financial transactions, medical history, and criminal or employment history and that contains his name, or the identifying number, symbol ....... such as a finger or voice print or a photograph;"

Mr. Chertoff is trying to do two things in selling the global surveillance society to other countries and to we, the data subjects. Continue to scare the hell out of us daily about the threats posed by terrorism (crime, illegal immigration, drugs, communism, etc.). And continue to downplay the risks to those of us who have “nothing to hide.”

Mr. Chertoff was speaking of an all-Anglo project by the US, the UK, Canada and Australia to collect and share fingerprints, facial images and iris scans to improve border and immigration "controls." Throw in police and security "work." These people really want to know who you are and what you're up to. And not just when you fly or cross borders. Always. "Total Awareness" remains what it's all about to these folks.

Bush’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are widely recognized as disasters but our own governments' wars against our privacy and other rights and freedoms continues with shockingly little resistance. Even the Ontario Privacy Commissioner recently caved on a plan to install surveillance cameras on all Toronto subways, buses and streetcars. Necessity? Unproven. Cost-benefit? Unknown.

For almost seven years, our political leaders and the mainstream media have hammered away at us that the threat of terrorism is real, and it is. But compared to other causes of death, it is so miniscule it can’t even be picked up by normal risk management models. Three thousand deaths a year, world-wide. There are countless more humane ways to spend the money being wasted on "security," such as fighting poverty, famine and disease.

If even privacy commissioners can’t stop the surge to watch, identify, search and report us, wherever and whenever, who can? That would take new laws to reestablish the primacy and privacy of individuals over unwarranted government intrusions, especially if one is a “targeted individual” or on a watch list. Right now, if you’re on such lists, you can’t find out why and you can’t get off. How’s that for freedom!

Right now, our only protection from these absurd projects to amass and integrate data bases on us all is that they crash before take-off, due to over-ambitious or ever-changing goals. However, the technology companies are getting the profits, and we are getting the tab.

We need to take a closer look at Big Bro' because he is one scary dude.

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Richard Sharp



About author Richard Sharp has been a privacy and human rights manager, consultant and advocate for three decades.