Is democracy possible in the surveillance state?

For today's contribution to our digital citizenship strand, Susan Halfpenny tries to post to the blog without anyone noticing...

In recent years we've seen a growth in mass surveillance of citizens by state and intelligence agencies, through the monitoring of digital communications and the gathering of internet usage data. In the brief time that you have been reading this article, the United States National Security Agency (NSA) alone will have selected close to two terabytes of data for review; that’s the equivalent of about 50 two-hour high-definition movies.

In 2013, NSA sub-contractor Edward Snowden leaked classified information from the NSA that revealed numerous global surveillance programmes. The first and most controversial story revealed that the NSA were gathering phone records from telecoms company Verizon, with evidence quickly following that this mass mining of data extended to virtually every other telephone company in America and that data taps were happening on a global scale.

A 2015 report by US think-tank Freedom House found 14 countries imposing new laws or directives increasing surveillance or restricting online anonymity. The level of surveillance already undertaken by the state and intelligence agencies has reached levels that are almost Orwellian. Big brother is watching you… we are just missing the slogan being ubiquitously displayed to remind us of the fact.

“If you've nothing to hide, you’ve nothing to fear”

A common position presented by government surveillance programmes in opposition to their threat to privacy is the ‘nothing to hide’ argument. In Britain, for example, when the government installed public surveillance cameras in towns and cities, a government campaign slogan for the programme declared “If you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to fear”. We have seen this argument emerge again in Britain in response to the provisions of the Investigatory Powers Act, which enables the interception of communications and the retention of communications data, and to the data gathered by UK signals intelligence service GCHQ.

The ‘nothing to hide’ argument is founded on the idea that if you are a law abiding citizen then the data gathered should be of no concern; that the surveillance provides no threat to privacy but rather offers us protection from criminals and terrorists.

Why privacy matters (even if you have nothing to hide)

“Arguing that you don’t care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say.

— Edward Snowden on Reddit

Perhaps the most rehearsed response to the ‘nothing to hide’ argument is that benign governments can so easily give way to malign ones. This is a significant reason for caution. But stakes are high even without a fully realised dystopia. The ‘nothing to hide’ argument narrows the understanding of privacy to a singular essence, ignoring the complexity of the concept. Privacy is multifaceted; in a 2011 piece for Wired, Bruce Sterling described it as a plurality of different things that bear resemblance to one another but do not share any one element. For example, the invasion of privacy might be the disclosure of your secrets, maybe revealing how much you get paid, something you didn’t want others to know. In this case the harm to you is that information that you would have preferred to keep concealed is revealed to others. Another example of invasion of privacy may be that you’re being watched by a Peeping Tom – someone observing you as you go about your personal business (maybe taking the kids to school, or eating dinner with family or friends). In this case the harm is that you are being watched, something that you would probably find creepy even if the person watching you doesn’t find anything sensitive or doesn’t share the information with anyone else.

There are lots of other examples and forms of invasion of privacy. These include, blackmail, misuse of personal data, deception, violation of confidentiality, intrusion, misappropriation, and the gathering of extensive data (to state but a few). So, to go back to the concept of privacy, we can see that this involves many things and cannot be reduced to just one simple idea.

Civil Liberties and intellectual freedom

Being able to access information confidentially enables citizens to research, investigate and seek out ideas that challenge the status quo. It enables us to freely explore without fear of retribution; to question politics, culture, democracy and society.

Mass surveillance therefore inevitably poses a threat to citizens’ civil liberties and intellectual freedom, but so does another aspect of state control: censorship. That's an area we'll take a look at in our next post in a fortnight's time.