[PiN-diskusjon] Neil M. Richards: The Dangers of Surveillance

[Petter Reinholdtsen]

Fant
<URL: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2239412 > via
Slashdot.   Oppsummering:

  From the Fourth Amendment to George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four,
  our law and literature are full of warnings about state scrutiny of
  our lives. These warnings are commonplace, but they are rarely very
  specific. Other than the vague threat of an Orwellian dystopia, as a
  society we don’t really know why surveillance is bad, and why we
  should be wary of it. To the extent the answer has something to do
  with “privacy,” we lack an understanding of what “privacy” means in
  this context, and why it matters. Developments in government and
  corporate practices, however, have made this problem more
  urgent. Although we have laws that protect us against government
  surveillance, secret government programs cannot be challenged until
  they are discovered. And even when they are, courts frequently
  dismiss challenges to such programs for lack of standing, under the
  theory that mere surveillance creates no tangible harms, as the
  Supreme Court did recently in the case of Clapper v. Amnesty
  International. We need a better account of the dangers of
  surveillance.

  This article offers such an account. Drawing on law, history,
  literature, and the work of scholars in the emerging
  interdisciplinary field of “surveillance studies,” I explain what
  those harms are and why they matter. At the level of theory, I
  explain when surveillance is particularly dangerous, and when it is
  not. Surveillance is harmful because it can chill the exercise of
  our civil liberties, especially our intellectual privacy. It is also
  gives the watcher power over the watched, creating the the risk of a
  variety of other harms, such as discrimination, coercion, and the
  threat of selective enforcement, where critics of the government can
  be prosecuted or blackmailed for wrongdoing unrelated to the purpose
  of the surveillance.

  At a practical level, I propose a set of four principles that should
  guide the future development of surveillance law, allowing for a
  more appropriate balance between the costs and benefits of
  government surveillance. First, we must recognize that surveillance
  transcends the public-private divide. Even if we are ultimately more
  concerned with government surveillance, any solution must grapple
  with the complex relationships between government and corporate
  watchers. Second, we must recognize that secret surveillance is
  illegitimate, and prohibit the creation of any domestic surveillance
  programs whose existence is secret. Third, we should recognize that
  total surveillance is illegitimate and reject the idea that it is
  acceptable for the government to record all Internet activity
  without authorization. Fourth, we must recognize that surveillance
  is harmful. Surveillance menaces intellectual privacy and increases
  the risk of blackmail, coercion, and discrimination; accordingly, we
  must recognize surveillance as a harm in constitutional standing
  doctrine.

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-- 
Vennlig hilsen
Petter Reinholdtsen