A little while ago, I blogged about a (then) secret report by the EU Future Group. That report informed part of the process currently under way to roll out state surveillance and control of individuals across Europe on an unprecedented scale.
Today, statewatch.org have released a 60 page report that looks at what is going on, and what is planned, in far more detail. Tony Bunyan, the Director of Statewatch and the report's author, makes some very pertinent observations:
There is now only a slim chance that the political elites in Council of the European Union, the European Commission, national governments, the law enforcement agencies and the multinationals will change course – they have already invested too much to allow a meaningful public debate to take place.
This is because they actually believe that technology, not values and morality, should drive change. They believe they have balanced freedom and security when all with eyes and ears to see and hear know that liberties and freedoms have been made subservient to the demands of security.
The national and European states require unfettered powers to access and gather masses of personal data on the everyday life of everyone so that we can all be safe and secure from perceived “threats”. But how are we to be safe from the state itself, from its uses and abuses of the data they hold on us?
The outrageous proposal that the EU should tie itself in with the USA across the whole justice and home affairs field will place our privacy and civil liberties in great danger.
If we do not have an open and meaningful debate now we never will, because by then it will be too late.
Do go and read the whole report.
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