Sowing the Seeds of Surveillance

[Bart Meerdink]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

Een verhelderend artikel over hoe de beschikbaarheid van technologie op zich
alleen al aanleiding geeft tot onbedoeld en ongewenst gebruik (maar het
voorbeeld over veiligheidgordels vond ik wat minder overtuigend).

Sowing the Seeds of Surveillance
http://www.wired.com/news/columns/0,72608-0.html

By Jennifer Granick| Also by this reporter
02:00 AM Jan, 31, 2007

Circuit Court columnist Jennifer Granick
Circuit Court
Technology has an almost irresistible lure. When we build systems for
surveillance, experience teaches that we will inevitably use them for
purposes other than those for which they were originally designed.

Last weekend, the Stanford Technology Law Review held a symposium on the
Fourth Amendment, at which participants asked whether traditional
conceptions of constitutional privacy are adequate when modern technology
tracks personal information in entirely new ways.

One of the major issues discussed at the symposium was, of course,
terrorism. The threat of terrorism brings new urgency to debates over
surveillance, and makes increased surveillance and control seem justified.
There are many reasons why this choice between security and privacy is a
false one, but I want to explore how law and technology, once adopted for
counterterrorism purposes, morph into other uses.

We may still need stricter laws and more surveillance to protect our
national interests. But we should not be fooled into thinking that fighting
terrorism is the only use to which these laws and surveillance technologies
will be put.

Initial reasons for doing something evolve and change over time, and legal
regimes can end up far more restrictive than they were initially intended.
For example, state legislatures implemented seat belt laws with the
justification of promoting public health and welfare. Most states initially
prohibited police officers from stopping a car solely because occupants were
not wearing seat belts, and many states limited the law to drivers, not
passengers.

In time, though, states began amending those laws, and police began stopping
and ticketing motorists if anyone in the car wasn't buckled up. In 2001, the
Supreme Court in Atwater v. Lago Vista ruled that police officers could
actually arrest and physically search drivers without seat belts, even where
the state law doesn't allow jail time as a penalty for the offense.

Similarly, the FBI more often uses new antiterrorism laws against domestic
eco-terrorists and animal rights activists than al-Qaida operatives. [...]

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