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International: Follow the white rabbit
Tagged As: UK, Surveillance, Obama, EU, Foucault, Database State, Tony Buyan
Call it a Database State or National Surveillance State, the protection of our civil liberties in this digitalized world is in danger.
As prof. Jack Balkin writes in his blog Balkinization: “The Obama Administration is continuing a long term bipartisan project of constructing our National Surveillance State”. This new kind of State “uses surveillance, data collection, collation and analysis to identify problems, to head off potential threats, to govern populations, and to deliver valuable social services”. This growing use of digitalized information to classify and record actions by citizens is not only confined to the United States. In a flat and global world this does not make any sense. The surveillance society is not only a Foucauldian philosophical intuition, but also an “EU-wide issue”. Read this article by Tony Buyan published by the Guardian in May.
Whether you live in the U.S. or in Europe the Matrix has got you. Follow the white rabbit.
1 Comment:
Former Information Commissioner Richard Thomas’ statement that we are “sleepwalking into surveillance society” is pretty accurate in my humble opinion. The big threat to our privacy seem to be the interlinking of various national and pan-European databases (especially in the area of police and immigration) and the access to private date (e.g. via data retention).