Saturday, 11 October is the International Day against Governmental Surveillance. There are protests as well; they come as a reaction from the people to some projects of legislative modification which enable governmental secret services to broaden their scope of action. These modifications are reactions to terrorist danger. The hot debate is made on the law about data from telecommunication services.
I will take this opportunity to go back to an old theoretical issue my CADI colleagues had on the relationship between freedom and security, and I will try to formulate this is general terms. The way this is usually tackled is from the perspectives of “right to a private area”, and the limits to rights which are being altered by the technological advances readily available to both the good and bad. Why is the right to a private area important? The first danger is the uncovering of certain things that the individual would rather keep secret. A bit of ‘institutional analysis’ reveals a more profound threat in competition.
Firstly, political competition. Our world as we know it, depends on the well-functioning of democracy, the balanced duel between those in power and the opposition. With the help of secret services, those in power will be able to discover their competitors’ strategies. If the tool secret services use is being consolidated and only available to those in power, the political opposition will be constantly weakened and controlled, in the detriment of the people.
Secondly, economic competition. If the telecommunication and internet services companies will be compelled by law to store the entire content of their clients’ data, this is will raise the cost of their services. But the cost will rise from another reason, as well. Facilitating the access of existing companies to the communications of other economic agents means providing them with the content of the business strategies made by other entrepreneurs and potential competitors.
On the other hand, what type of protection can we reasonably expect from a state with too narrow scope of action?
Ionut Sterpan presents
Special guest: Marian Zulean, CADI associate, Lec. Bucharest University, specialist in national security issues.
