How much surveillance are we willing to accept?

I live in one of the safest countries in the world, and probably one of the safest cities and yet find myself in the midst of an election where the party likely to win is doing so based on a plan to build more prisons and reduce crime, in spite of the fact that all the data shows that increased incarceration has no impact on crime rates, and the actual crime rate has been steadily declining for more than ten years. So I get that "tough on crime" plays well with people who care little for data and being tough on people who do bad things always play well with the populace, since the false dichotomy that it creates whereby the other guy is necessarily soft on crime is an untenable position. Moreover in politics it can be tough to take the road of not being soft or tough but being intelligent on crime and creating policy that makes sense based on data not an intuitive sense of justice.

The road I want to take here is to criticize the people who vote emotionally and ignore the data about crime, and it is the easy road; to blame ignorance for the popularity of this argument, but I've learned that while it may be true it is an argument that rarely wins the day and usually causes other people to dig in their heels rather than accept the data. But I've made the argument in other posts, and I think that one of the premises of this blog, is that living by the numbers is actually not very human. The flip side; however, is not to live according to our own unconscious impulses, but to consciously question our beliefs and our emotional responses. When we fail to both understand the data and skeptically consider our own decisions, it is then that we risk unintended consequences.

But I am probably belabouring this point in my posts. What I actually want to write about today is the impact technology has on crime prevention. This has gotten a fair bit of play in the media in the past year with the introduction of the full body scanners at airport security stations and previously photo radar and police surveillance cameras of public spaces caused similar debate. As these technologies get cheaper and cheaper and easier to implement the possibility of using them to reduce crime becomes becomes more appealing. And when we frame the argument in terms of reducing crime, it is pretty irrefutable that we ought to implement them as much as we are able, for the false dichotomy suggests that to otherwise would be to accept increased crime.

Civil liberties groups which get poor play these days argue that it is an infringement of our personal rights and a transgression of our privacy. The counter argument is if you are an honest, law-abiding citizen you have nothing to worry about so carry on and let the authorities go about catching the criminals.

The question, I think we deserve to ask is whether honest law-abiding citizens lose anything by being under constant surveillance and what if, hypothetically, we could make the crime rate 0 or near 0 by putting the entire populace under constant surveillance. While this might seem like some sort of Orwellian fantasy the truth is, the pace of technological advancement is accelerating such that the Big Brother of Orwell's 1984 is becoming a greater possibility and given the popularity of crime prevention a not unpopular scenario. I would argue that similar to 1984 if we submit to constant surveillance we risk losing something of our humanity. The possibility of doing something illicit, even small, is part of what makes life worth living as Winston Smith and Julia discovered in the book. The consequences were obvious.

People are also likely to behave differently, even in honest ways, when they know they are being watched, are we prepared to have our public personas shaped by the presence of cameras. I suppose the popularity of reality TV might suggest that yes we are, but I'm not so sure we would all be so welcome to have cameras following us all the time and what does this say for individual self-expression?

Moreover the irony of all this surveillance is that it becomes a crutch for not spending time and effort on catching real criminals. We are counting on the numbers game, and frankly the stupidity of criminals, for these things to work. The smart ones, figure out ways of avoiding our new surveillance plans, while the honest sit in line throwing out their nail clippers and their hair gel. We want a solution that says we searched x number of million people last randomly last year and it cost us y millions. If we spent the same amount of money catching one criminal people would be in an uproar about the amount of money spent to catch one criminal. But it's okay to spend the same amount to search x number of millions of honest people. Somehow the math seems wrong, even though it represents popular opinion.

As the possibility of more surveillance grows we need to start asking ourselves how much are we willing to accept, at what cost a reduced crime rate, and perhaps there is a minimum level of crime that we are willing to accept as a society that must balance individual self expression and personal freedom with the need to create safety. Before we accept the "tough on Crime" platform, let's ask ourselves at what point is does tough on crime start to threaten honest people.

In Defence of Democracy:

This posting might be a bit more polemic than my other posts and I apologize to my international readers if this takes on too much of a Canadian spin but sadly I live in a country where democracy is more threatened than in any other western nation (see this great summary from Australia). If I lived in any other democratic country in the western world there would have been protests in the streets and we would have been burning our government buildings in protest at the anti-democratic antics of the government, in Canada we are instead prepared to reward that same government with potentially even more legislative power than they had previously. I am not a died in the wool partisan of any ilk, I am known to think that Brian Mulroney, a Conservative, was the best Prime Minister of my lifetime, but I usually vote Liberal or Green so this is not an attempt to support one party over the other, but to ask at what level we are prepared to sacrifice our democratic institutions through our complacency and our financial self interest.

The level of complacency in Canada relative to it's democracy is alarming and, moreover, it seems to be taken for granted, as if it could never come under real threat and any supposed threat is just partisan posturing. Now I don't disagree that the last several years there has been a lot of political antics in the Canadian parliament of a partisan nature, but when the government refuses to report directly to parliament on how it spends its money and on it's policy platforms as well as blatantly lying and forging documents, it is effectively refusing to report back to the people. The role of parliament is to keep the government accountable to the people of Canada. I am not arguing about the efficacy of the institution, only the fundamental role that it plays in our democracy.

If the government is no longer accountable to parliament and by extension the people then who is it accountable to. We have slowly absconded this responsibility to the media which now seems to play the role of official opposition and the role of parliament in protecting our democracy. This is potentially dangerous. Firstly the media has a corporate agenda of profit-making; while there are a lot of great journalists out there, ultimately the goal of media is to make money and support a political agenda that is favourable to corporations. I am not convinced that it is safe to put our democracy in the hands of a few select corporations where we have no say in who is running them or making the decisions on  what is important on our behalf.

Secondly there is always the danger that the media becomes just another arm of the government, it's happened before it can happen again. Maybe not today, but I am not arguing that democracy is about to fall off a cliff, only that it is slowly eroding, if we accept a few small infringements on our democracy today and a few more tomorrow eventually things might happen that we thought never could and it might be harder to get them back than we think. It's a bit like a china cup that falls on the floor and shatters, once it's broken it is difficult to put back together. Putting our democracy in the hands of few select corporations is has risks that we need to be aware of.

Consider also the reason that most people cite for not being alarmed at the erosion of democracy. It's about jobs we are told and the economy and this government is the best one for making jobs and managing the economy. I don't want to go over the top on this one or dismiss the importance of the economy and jobs, but look at fascist Germany in the 1930's it created thousands of jobs and turned the German economy around, but we saw where that got them  Not that we are even close to what happened  in Germany, I am using hyperbole to demonstrate that sometimes there are things that are more important than the economy and jobs. It is a sad state of affairs if we are prepared to sell our democracy for money in our pockets. If we continually do that we might just find we've sold our souls.

Which is the point of this blog which is to inspire good men to good works which is the ultimate renaissance man, to go beyond the pecuniary artifice of everyday and stand for something other than what fills his bank account. Not to be idealistic, because I am not a socialist but a believer that man is greater than the sum of his financial assets and some things, like democracy, freedom of the press have intrinsic value. Ask an Egyptian or a Libyan.

As I said democracy is not about to fall into an abyss in this country, we will not likely find ourselves in a fascist dictatorship after the current election,  but we must not take our democracy for granted or we might just find at some point after a long slow erosion we don't have much of one left and the result might not be the one we were hoping for. We must always be on guard to protect our democracy and fight the complacency that is so easy to fall into or be prepared to suffer the consequences.