Monitoring all traffic on the Internet is the same thing as putting up a survellance camera in every home, in every school, in every business, record everything and save that that in a huge database at the government. No one would have accepted that, so why should we accept that they monitoring the Internet?
In an article in the swedish newspaper IDG it was written that a british minister wants to store all traffic from MSN and Facebook. It is proposal for a new law which is discussed in the UK.
In the article it is written:
“Vernon Coaker, vice president of internal affairs in UK, wants to a extended surveillance of Internet. He suggests that traffic on social networks, including MSN, should be stored for 12 months.”
I think we need to take a step back.Why should we monitor, just because we can?
Before Internet it was impossible to mass-monitor people, what they were discussion and thinking, what they interests are and who they know. But now we have that possibility and there are forces who wants to do that, for different reasons. Stop terrorattacks, sell systems or create power.
With the introduction of Internet we have introduced a whole new level of surveillance possibilites and I can see more and more initiatives going towards to monitor citizens. The reason is as always the threat of terror.
I believe that the terrorist who really want to comit an attack, will use encrypted services in countries where traffic is not monitored so the actual effect of monitoring the open Internet, MSN traffic, social networks is that governments build gigantic databases of people, what they like, what they think, what they know and who they know. And we have to pay for it.
Usually when argumenting against surveillance the first answer is: “If you don’t have anything to worry about, you will not be affected. Because you don’t have anything to hide, do you?”
But my question is. Why should we monitor everyone, doing everything, just because we can?
No one would have come up with the idea of monitoring all communication in homes, familys, in schools in the real world. The Internet is a part of the real world. We have laws in the real world and they are used on the Internet as well. It is not ok to open up a shop and sell child abuse images in the real world and neither on the Internet. So why is it ok to mass-monitor people on the Internet but not in the real world?
We have seen in history that to much monitoring of people with the wrong person could lead to disasterous things, and we can not be sure that such people will have the power in the future.
But if we start to monitor we can be sure that the information is there, because I have never heard of that monitoring going the other way: “We see no need to monitor anymore, let´s shut down this department with 1000 people.” There are several reasons: People are working with this and they do not want to loose their jobs. Companys selling the equipment wants to earn money and if you start to look under all rocks you will find things.
But why should we start to monitor all people, just because we can? We have survived without the surveillance and it is very hard to step backwards.
Related posts:
- (English) Light a million candles I got this link “Light a million candles” from a...
- (English) NetClean is helping DIA in New Zealand Here is an article from New Zealand press regarding that...
- (English) Exetel in Australia trials The ISP Exetel in Australia has finished their first trial...
- (English) The Criminalisation of Virtual Child Pornography – Protection of Children or a Thought Crime? There is an ongoing debate whether the possession of virtual...
- (English) What is a child abuse image? Most people have never seen a child abusive image or...
