[Infowarrior] - Book: Global Surveillance and Democracy in the Post-9/11 World

[Richard Forno]

Illusions of Security: Global Surveillance and Democracy in the Post-9/11
World
Are you scared yet?
By Wendy M. Grossman → More by this author
Published Friday 23rd March 2007 19:27 GMT
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/03/23/illusions_review/

Book review The World Trade Centre was still smoking when US lawmakers
hastily passed the PATRIOT Act; in the UK, it wasn't much longer before
Parliament enacted the comparable Anti-Terrorism, Crime, and Security Act)
Objections to the PATRIOT Act are legion, and they have been well
documented. Less well documented – until now – is how the PATRIOT Act and
the mindset accompanying it have played themselves out in the lives of real
people.

Canadian human rights lawyer and activist Maureen Webb begins Illusions of
Security with the chilling tale of Ottawa resident Maher Arac, whose life
was taken apart because a month after 9/11 he had lunch with a co-workers's
brother.

Unfortunately for Arac, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police had been
monitoring his acquaintance since 1998, and under 9/11-fuelled pressure the
RCMP's desire just to talk to Arac as a possible witness turned him into a
suspect. When Arac flew back early from a family holiday via New York in
September 2002, he was detained, questioned, and finally deported to Syria,
the country he had left at 17. There, he was imprisoned and tortured for ten
months before finally being released and returned to Canada.

Meanwhile, the Bush Administration embarked on a secret programme of
warrantless eavesdropping, even though it's officially illegal in the US.
Under orders, the National Security Agency began surveilling and datamining
all sorts of communications – voice conversations, email, fax. When Bush was
eventually challenged, he defended the practice by saying that one end of
the communication must be outside the US, and that the NSA was working on
"probable cause" standards.

Foreigners have not done well under this regime. A visitor to the US can now
expect to be fingerprinted (all ten digits), registered, and monitored. More
than 80,000 people were registered in the first year of the National
Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS), which requires registrants
to report changes of address, employment and other details. At the same time
the US government ethnically profiled and rounded up Arab and South Asian
men, often for trivial reasons. In one case Webb notes, a man was arrested
after casually saying he'd like to learn to fly one day. More than 13,000
people were detained and put into deportation hearings in NSEERS' first
year.

These tales are the tip of the iceberg. Many countries, including the UK,
are shifting to biometric passports (if not ID cards) and putting in the
infrastructure for a global surveillance system. The much-maligned Total
Information Awareness programme that proposed to mine commercial and
government databases never really went away; instead its spirit lives on in
programmes such as the National Intelligence Program and Secure Flight.

The key to understanding all this a major shift in thinking to "pre-emption
of risk". Instead of waiting for a crime to be committed and suspects to be
investigated, prosecuted, and convicted, the US government adopted the idea
of preempting and disrupting terrorism. Such a profound policy shift
justifies any amount of surveillance or guilt by association. And it isn't
just the US: governments share suspects, intelligence operation, and
policing, and are willing to jettison democracy in return.

The preemptive model means our liberty and lives can be removed at any time
on the most uncertain evidence, denied any right to face our accusers, and
presumed guilty. Is that greater security? Not to Webb. ®
Illusions of Security: Global Surveillance and Democracy in the Post-9/11
World

By: Maureen Webb

Publisher: City Lights (www.citylights.com)
ISBN 978-0-87286-476-4
Price: $16.95