ThinkingShift

Leading up to Christmas, there’s a lot of privacy reports and privacy related news. I’ll try to bring as much as I can to you before we totter off into the greatest display of contemporary society’s obsession with materialistic goods - the Christmas shopping and gift giving period.

But let’s start off with the Department of Invasion into Your Personal Life, sorry, I mean Department of Homeland Security. DHS has decided that whacking two of your fingers into ink to obtain fingerprints isn’t enough. Nope. The DHS is now collecting scans of 10 fingerprints from foreign travellers entering the US at Dulles International Airport. The 10-print system will extend to all other airports in the US in 2008 through which foreigners can enter the US. The DHS is very proud of its biometric technology:

“We rely on biometrics, unique physical characteristics like fingerprints, to keep dangerous people out of the United States and at the same time to keep the lines moving so that travel is fast and convenient for legitimate citizens and visitors“.

Mmmm…perhaps they should do some research because it’s pretty well known there are major flaws in biometric technology, particularly when it comes to fingerprint scans. Nine out of ten commercial scanners can be “tricked” by fake fingers for example.

Astutely, the DHS realises that the 10-point scanning system might be a barrier to entry. To overcome this, they might want to come up with a smart advertising campaign to lure us to visit the US. Here’s a great campaign they could use.

Similar stupidity is displayed by DHS’s escalated attempts to get you to prove who you are. A Delaware Online journal article brings us news of two instances where domestic US citizens had to go through hoops to prove their identity. There’s a small fishing village in the Florida panhandle. There are only a few hundred residents and there’s no postal service. Everyone has a post office box and the postmistress knows everyone by name (shock, gasp: you mean the feeling of being in a community still exists??). But the DHS seems to think these people are a pretty suspicious bunch because they’ve all received letters from the DHS saying they have to comply with DHS regulations and identify themselves within 10 days.

The DHS will not accept social security cards or birth certificates as forms of identification. What the?? Are we now living in a world where a birth certificate is no longer a valid form of ID?? The hapless Florida residents have to cough up two forms of ID and they are also required to provide a list of anyone who might receive mail in that post office box and supply identification for them as well. Hello?? Intrusion and snooping into people’s private lives DHS!!

I’m not sure how much more absurd this whole US national security thing can get. Any expectations of privacy that US citizens (and increasingly the rest of us) may have are going down the gurgler as the DHS and US Government seek to track and control. Not only will people (like me) refuse to step foot in the US; the US runs the high risk of becoming increasingly isolated.

Mmmmm…..well maybe I was a bit hasty with my Fortress Britain post when I said that the UK was fast becoming a police state, surveillance society, fortress - take your pick. Because like a seasoned galloper in a horse race, the European Union (EU) has burst forth with its own plans to become a locked-down space.

The EU has just unveiled new measures that could make Gordon Brown jealous. Draft laws propose that use of the internet be criminalised if used to incite or recruit for acts of terrorism and passenger lists for airlines flying into or out of the EU will have to be coughed up by the airlines. And…passenger list data will be stored for 13 years (13? why 13 - is this some magical number?).

Apparently, the European Commissioner for Justice and Security thinks the internet is a pretty suspicious place because it breeds international terrorists. Hello! There were “terrorists” way before the internet. I’m sure the British would say that the IRA and their campaigns in England in the 1970s might have fallen into the category of “terrorist activity”. And the Commish says that: “Those telling others how to commit acts of destruction - with a clear terrorist intention - should be put behind bars. Be it on the internet or print“. Now, I wouldn’t for one hop onto a plane brandishing a manual in Arabic on how to fly a plane, but Mr Commish might have forgotten that there are many, many books published over the years that have never managed to get their authors thrown into jail. For example, I read Hayduke Lives! by Edward Abbey way back in the early 1990s. Check out the illustrated front cover of the book here on Amazon - it is a man’s hand holding several sticks of dynamite. I remember really liking this novel about George Washington Hayduke III (who nearly carked it in an earlier novel). He runs around blowing up bridges or anything that ruins the pristine beauty of a landscape filled with deep canyons and sprawling deserts. In other words, Hayduke is an environmental activist using violent means to protect nature. Last time I heard, Abbey (who died I think in the mid-90s) didn’t get hauled off to jail for inciting environmental terrorism.

Clearly, reading the “wrong thing” in public from some “forbidden library” of books might land you in trouble these days. US airport screeners pounced on the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s co-founder, John Gilmore, recently because he was reading a book entitled “Drugs and Your Rights”. And here is the book he was reading - part of a Cambridge University series in studies in philosophy and public policy. John Gilmore is a civil libertarian not some dangerous drug smuggler.

As Gilmore says: ” The Gestapo cared what works of philosophy you were reading. So did the Stasi. Those of you who live in free countries may find it a bit hard to understand why any populace wouldn’t tear to bits any bureaucrats that would take away the fundamental right to read whatever you like without it being used to determine how your government treats you as you cross borders or travel within your own country“.

Instead of hauling hapless travellers aside because their book might look suspicious, it might be a better use of time if officials considered the plight of individuals who are persecuted because of the writings they produce or circulate. Two prominent Egyptian bloggers for example, Abdul Karim Nabeil Suleiman and Abdel Moneim Mahmoud, have been arrested over their blogging activities or writings.

And if you don’t think that you could get a visit from the FBI or ASIO (Australia) because of what you’re seen to be reading in public - check out this article on Creative Loafing.

Back to the EU: just like the UK, the EU will collect information about you such as name, passport number, address, credit card details, email address and phone numbers. And in the most sensible observation I’ve seen in awhile, Syed Kamall, a Conservative MEP stated: “This is just another extension of the surveillance society being built across Europe. If we continue to remove people’s basic liberties in this way, the terrorists will have won“.

Fortress Britain is an apt title - UK Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, has just unveilled (wait for it) new border control security plans that would require hapless travellers passing through electronic check points to cough up to 90 (yep, that’s right 90) pieces of information. This would include information like credit card details, travel plans, email addresses, contact phone numbers and the like.

So….the idea as far as I can tell is that when you book your ticket with the travel agent, the agent would be collecting all this sort of information, which is then accessible by police, customs and immigration officials. Sorry, but I’m not comfortable with a whole lot of dudes knowing my credit card details. If you decide that this is all too much and opt for rail travel around the UK instead - forget it, you’ll still be subject to increased passenger screening at railway stations.

Brown is clearly making a fortress out of the UK. He’s announced plans to redesign buildings that could be terrorist targets making them “blast resistant”. And this is what it might be like to get into a public building in the future - external security checkpoint, vehicle exclusion zone, barriers made from concrete and the like.

And the new UK Border Agency will be given new powers of arrest and biometric visas (including fingerprint technology) will be introduced for all foreign citizens needing visas. At the moment, UK officials can hold a suspected “terrorist” for 28 days without charge (double the previous 14 days), but the Government is seeking to extend this period.

Now, this new UK Border Agency interests me. It’s a single agency passenger screening system uniting customs, immigration and visa procedures and consisting of 25,000 staff. From what I’ve read, Trusted Borders, a consortium of technology and service providers, will provide the technology for the passenger screening system, which will be based on fingerprint visas. So before you even enter the UK, the system will have screened passengers against immigration, customs and various watch lists. Apparently, staff from immigration, customs and visa agencies are being transferred into this new agency and with only 3 hours training or less are expected to be proficient at passenger profiling.

And if you go off and read Brown’s statement on national security you can get a sense of the mind-set. Brown refers to “the measures we are taking at home to root out terrorism and strengthen the resilience of communities to resist extremist influences..” and more policing and intelligence to “win hearts and minds“. And from now until 2011, Brown has pledged “an additional £240 million will finance counter-terrorism policing, which is focused as much on preventing the next generation of terrorists as on pursuing current targets“.

Hearts and minds will be won by waging a battle. Brown envisages “..a generational challenge that requires sustained work over the long term, through a range of actions in schools, colleges, universities, faith groups and youth clubs, by engaging young people through the media, culture, sport and arts, and by acting against extremist influences operating on the internet and in institutions from prisons and universities to some places of worship“. And he hints that the “governance” of mosques, which have existed in the UK for over 100 years, will be “strengthened”. And a new forum of head teachers from schools would be established to find ways to protect pupils from extremist propaganda.

Now, I think we need to give a cautious welcome to this crackdown. I’m not saying terrorists don’t exist. But there are two models of struggle. The first is the violent extremist model and if you meet this with defensive measures, it goes a long way to feeding into this extremist model by potentially escalating violent extremist efforts to overcome any “anti-terrorist” measures. And security measures that could be construed as “anti-Muslim” by Muslim communities or other ethnic groups could engender more hatred and violence, leading to the UK becoming a breeding ground for terrorism.

The other model is surely non-violent responses to terrorism. By understanding typologies of violence, sources of conflict, by differentiating between nonviolent Islam and Islamic Terrorism, understanding the grievances of people and knowing how discontent can be exploited and turned into hatred, refusing to support countries that don’t promote democracy or human rights - surely these responses would start to attack the roots of terrorism rather than erecting e-borders and increasing surveillance of citizens in the hope that terrorists will be flushed out.

The UK is fast becoming a no travel zone for me. It’s becoming travel terror. And if you look or act “different” - watch out.

Source: image credit BBC News, Washington Post, KableNet

I last visited Japan about 10 years ago. Been there; done that. Probably a good thing, as Japan is now off my list of countries to visit. Like the US (and soon Australia with its proposed biometric registered traveller programme), Japan will soon be requiring visitors to submit to photographic and fingerprinting procedures to “help prevent terrorist attacks”. Last time I looked, Japan was the victim of domestic terrorism with the sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system by members of Aum Shinrikyo.Long time foreign residents will be included in the new measures. Human rights groups are concerned that the perception could be that foreigners equal terrorists. But in my mind, it’s all that biometric data on the loose that concerns me - where’s it stored? who has access? what do they do with it? Apparently, under certain circumstances (not outlined of course) the Japanese Government can share biometric data with other Governments.The new procedures are part of an amendment of Japan’s Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act, which contains measures to prevent terrorism.

The measures come into force on November 20. And in a wonderful display of openness and transparency, public comments on the new procedures were invited, but if you can’t speak Japanese you wouldn’t have bothered as comments were only accepted in the Japanese language.Should you decide to stand on your dignity or claim fingerprinting and taking of photographs is an invasion of your privacy - well, forget it, you won’t be allowed in the country. So if you’re a longtime permanent resident, you’ll get rounded up and subjected to fingerprinting and photographs - this reminds me of another country in recent history. From what I’ve read, the new measures could very easily be seen as Japan equating terrorism with foreigners and it could all play quite nicely into the hands of xenophobes. Let’s hope they’ll get busy and fingerprint their own domestic terrorists too. Seems the world is getting pretty small for me - soon I’ll be running out of countries I can visit, because I refuse to go through fingerprinting, iris scanning, facial recognition procedures.Source: Financial Times

Following my post the other day on the Department of Homeland Security’s airport screening programme, here’s what it’s come to - an elderly Catholic nun being frisked by airport security in the US.

Dean Shaddock, who snapped the shot and plonked it on Flickr says:

“This was captured as I collected my things from airport security (Detroit Metro Concourse A). I think of it as something like a Rorschach test. Is an elderly Catholic nun being frisked by a Muslim security agent the celebration of blind justice? Or is it simply an admission of absurdity?“

There’s a lot going on in this image if you look closely - a Muslim woman frisking a Catholic nun against the backdrop of the American flag. A bored onlooker - reminds me of how complacent we’ve become in a society that is increasingly controlled, monitored and suspicious. I presume the photo was snapped on a camera phone - an example of sousveillance.

I guess you can react to this image in many ways. For example, why shouldn’t a nun be frisked? You can conceal a lot under the religious garb. And cunning terrorists might just adopt a religious habit to get through security. Then again, you might be offended that someone from a religious order, and an older person, is being frisked.

You might also ask why a Muslim woman (she is wearing a hijab) is a US security official, but then again why on earth not? Not all Muslims are terrorists of course. Anyone has a right to a job. So maybe this image is entirely normal and reflects the reality of the age we live in.

I guess the power of the image and its story lies within the reaction it stirs in different people. What’s your reaction?