I asserted a few weeks ago, in my last article, that privacy is everybody’s concern. Everyone seems to agree: Try finding an organization these days – any kind of organization – that doesn’t have a privacy policy.
The kind of social control that monitoring and surveillance make possible can take many forms and benign motivations will always be invoked (indeed, reasons given will always sound very compelling in the moment), but when it comes to the very foundations of individual and collective freedom, the bar should be set very high indeed.
For most people, the words “state surveillance” conjure up images of some dystopian fiction: Round-the-clock scrutiny, ubiquitous video cameras, monitoring of electronic communications, identity checks, informants and agents of the state discretely mingling with ordinary citizens for the purpose of gathering intelligence.
