The faux dianoetic “If you have nothing to hide”

Keywords: profiling, dianoetics, confirmation bias, false positives

1.0 Introduction

“I am the Flail of God. If you had not committed great sins, God would not have sent a punishment like me upon you!” — Genghis Khan, 11^thC CE [115]

“You’d better watch out; you’d better not hide. I know if you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake!” --Pere Noel, Deus ex Machina

There is a universal assumption amongst the philosophical disciples of Genghis Khan and Santa Claus. Namely that dissent from their dictates is anathema.

Historically dissent has usually been reduced by the dual memes of enforced acculturation to a particular ontology (viz. the educational system); and by an internalized or externalized panopticon (viz. universal surveillance). In combination these usually obviate the need for violent suppression.

The first of these is the most successful, of course. Part of the acculturation process is the use of oxymoronic public relations phrases which reduce cognitive dissonance between fact and ontology. The “Nothing to hide, nothing to fear” faux dianoetic is an example of such an expression. It is essentially a logical error which infers a semantic property of an expression, through use of the expression. Producing in essence, a tautological null. Truth thereby becomes idiosyncratically rather than evidentially based - a postmodern relativism of the worst sort.

Below I discuss a few of the many reasons why the vacuous phrase “nothing to hide, nothing to fear” is unthinkingly accepted by so many as part of the progressive infantalization of thought. Despite what should be obvious - that this phrase is and always has been not merely false, but harmful.

2.0 A brief history

2.1 The Doomsday Book

The Doomsday Book was completed in 1086 CE. The king of England at the time, William I, wanted to ensure that everyone in the country was paying taxes and recognized that he owned every bit of land [9]. So he had teams of deputized legati go to every corner of the country to find out what a person owned, how much they owned, and how much it was worth. Of course the officers were, unlike police of our own time, readily subject to bribery, stupidity, and greed. Hence sometimes they would ask a neighbour what a person owned. If that neighbour wanted to get even and declare that the person in question was very rich, well, that was good enough for the officers [10]. They entered the information into the Doomsday Book.

Whatever was in the book, right or wrong, determined what a person had to pay in taxes or be jailed - or worse. There was no appeal [11], and no means of correcting the information once collected.

Further, since the Book was written in Latin, a language the average person did not know, the information in the Book may as well have been completely secret. Especially since very, very few people could read. As with no-fly lists in our own time, the Doomsday Book determined a person’s life, freedom of movement, and the like, with no appeal possible. The officers who repeatedly recompiled the information in the Book were part of the King’s universal spy network [ibid]. Their names were unknown, the lists they compiled were unavailable to the common man, the lists were frequently inaccurate, but appeal was impossible.

This was in effect a surveillance system whose primary purpose was to rape the land of its wealth and deliver it to the King and his cronies.

2.2 The Father of the Police State

The technologies of surveillance improved with time. The cumbersome hand written Doomsday Book transmogrified to vast keyed and code files. Even Richelieu recognized the utter incongruity of “Nothing to hide, nothing to fear” phrase under the ubiquity of surveillance:

"If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged." — Armand Jean du Plessis de Richelieu, Cardinal-Duc de Richelieu, 16^th CE [1]

Cardinal Richelieu worked throughout his life to centralize all power in France into the hands of himself, his king, and the handful of his cronies. To do so, he used some basic techniques:

He all but eliminated free speech, and the free press.
He introduced censorship around most publications [12].
He rid France of the right of free assembly without his expressed permission [ibid].
He ordered torture and/or execution, or secret assassination of any whom he did not like [13].
He ordered secret assassinations by the secret police using the latest technologies of the day [259].
He began one of the most successful propaganda systems in Europe, which basically argued that supporting him was the same as being patriotic [2].
He developed a system of laws which were impossible not to break, then used them against his enemies (i.e. everyone except himself and his friends) [14].
He created his own private police force of mercenaries who were allowed to force entry to any home or church at his say-so alone [ibid].
He worked tirelessly to eliminate the basic human right to privacy - his spy network recruited citizens, children, military, to spy and report back on the doings of their neighbours, colleagues, parents... everyone. It was so successful that people became afraid to speak in public, discuss even the most innocuous things, lest what they said be taken down and used in against them [3]. Scholarship virtually ground to a halt as a result [260].
He boasted that he could find out anything about anyone [261], and use that against them. Even if he knew they had done nothing wrong... for he (along with the king) and his ministers defined what was right and wrong, changing the definitions as it pleased them. He could therefore jail or kill anyone. Even if they had nothing to hide [15].

In sum it may be said that Richelieu was the father of both the modern police state and modern surveillance societies. Whether a citizen had anything to hide or not, he had plenty to fear from Richelieu and his minions.

2.4 Early Technology

In 1939, the German government sought to expand its census information. It conducted one of the most thorough questioning of all persons, citizens and others, in the country. Each person’s age, sex, education, profession, religion, residence, marital status, number of children, place of birth, and so on were collects. As well as, for the first time, a person’s race and that of her parents and grandparents. The newly acquired Hollerith machines from IBM were used to record and sort through all of this new information.

The data later proved very useful to Adolph Eichmann (one of several Nazis later tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity). It helped him and his staff to rapidly create the Jewish Registry, containing detailed information on all those belonging to the Jewish religion. Most of those on the Registry were later tortured or killed or used in medical experiments.

Hollerith machines nicely demonstrated that computer technology could not only be used to create a surveillance society, but to create, monitor, and update very rapidly those whom the state wished to kill. Secret lists held in government computer files was shown to be very useful as a means of locating victims. Technology is the key to registering large groups of innocent people for later demonization.

2.4 The Panopticon

A “panopticon” is a term from 18^thC Britain [16], meaning universal surveillance - everything is watched, recorded, and judged by anonymous bureaucrats working for those in power. It is a police state with no escape.

When the East German government finally rotted from within, the public finally became aware that the Stazi (the secret police) had compiled watch lists and profiles of almost every citizen (except those in power, of course) [17,18,19]. They did not spy on just a few dissenters, or as they called them “terrorists,” as they had claimed to do. No - they spied on everyone (except those in power). They created the first modern Panopticon.

They spied on people who were of absolutely no threat to the state. They gathered everyone’s personal medical records, their family relationships, their networks of friends, their work history, their shopping patterns, what they purchased, were they ate, who they talked to, what they did in their spare time, what their sexual preferences were, how much education they had, their employment history, their travel history, what books they read from the library, and so much more. Everything there was to know about a person was logged, recorded, and used against them.

The Stazi had no concern for the basic human right to privacy. As the records show [19,20], anything which the state had the power to do, they did. Including assassinations, arbitrary jailing, torture of known innocents, forced rendition, drug running, and other perversions of justice and ethics.

They did all this under the propaganda line that universal surveillance was essential for the safety of the state [ibid]. To stop “terrorists” from doing horrible things. A terrorist was anyone they felt was a terrorist [17]. Even though one might be hard put to find anyone committing more horror against the citizenry than the Stazi and the government it worked for. Dissent became impossible.

Merely wearing a shirt emblazoned with the word “Peace” was enough for the Stazi to arrest [R] [R] The Stazi are thankfully, long gone. But their hatred of t-shirts lives on. For example C. Dennis was arrested during the annual Midlands Fair in England for wearing a t-shirt upon which was written “"Bollocks to Blair”, an allegedly pro-war Prime Minister [117]. S.F. Downs, chief lawyer for New York State’s Commission on Judicial Conduct, was arrested for wearing a t-shirt upon which was written "Peace on Earth" [116]. J. Catt, an 81 year old military veteran was stopped under section 44 of the British Terrorism Act for wearing an anti-Blair t-shirt while walking in Brighton [265]. There are many more examples (eg. [118, 119]). , torture [114], or even kill the individual wearing the logo. Under the Panopticon they created, dissent against government for its atrocities and genocides, for its theft of the public purse, for endemic lying, for invading other countries under false pretense, for perverting the justice system, for rampent cronyism, was enthusiastically suppressed.

2.5 The right of appeal

A commonality in the foregoing historical examples was that the public had no appeal. Whether in 9^thC England, in 17^th C France, in 20^th C East Germany, and in Nazi Germany had very little knowledge of the extent to which they were watched or of the abuses being perpetrated. Because such information was and is vigorously suppressed, as cited in my article on bibliocaust (article linked here) .

Even though the majority of people knew they were surveilled, they did not know its true extent. Or even if they were on secret watch lists, no-travel list, and so on. Although we now know [262] that much of the information was erroneous, it was never the less assumed by those in power that it was true, that those on these lists were anathema in some way to their continued use of power. And so these lists were used to punish to destroy the lives of innocent people. Often in an effort to meet arrest and conviction quotas. And sometimes simply out of a vengeful pathology on the part of some petty bureaucrat (see for example, [13] and [17]).

Sometimes those in power admitted their excesses in this regard, as indicated by the Richelieu quote above. But usually not.

"If the people knew what we had done, they would chase us down the street and lynch us." — George H.W. Bush, U.S. President, to journalist Sarah McClendon of the White House Press Corp., 1992 [21]
“When the American people come to understand how the Patriot Act has actually been interpreted in secret, they will insist on significant reforms” — B. Wyden, member of U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee, restricted by law from being more specific [52]
“They would be absolutely stunned” — Udall, member of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee refering to what his government was doing, but restricted by law from being saying anything more [53].
“These agencies are saying the targeted killing program is so secret that they can’t even acknowledge that it exists.” — U.S. ACLU which launched law suit against their government regarding secrecy surrounding that country’s presidential assassination program. A program which allegedly targetted U.S. citizens and others [263].
"...the fate of those killed ... was [unknowlingly] sealed by their answers to the 1939 census” — Nazi Adolph Eichmann during war crimes testimony [264]

2.6 Privacy rights become international law

Jumping forward a little in time, we begin to see laws developed to protect individual privacy rights. For example:

the European Convention on Human Rights [108]
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (article 19) [4]
the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights [5]
Resolution 217 A (III) of the United Nations [6]
UN UDHR ammendment [112]

In addition to these international laws, little by little individual countries developed their own protections for privacy rights. For example:

Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (section 2) [109]
United States by the Bill of Rights of 1791 [110];

These laws and agreements sought to guarantee that the right of privacy became a basic human right. Eventually under the amendment to the UN UDHR [112], the right to individual privacy became enshrined as a fundamental human right. A right to which most of the world’s countries became signatories [7].

Yet government violations of this basic human right have become increasingly common. Sadly, this is so for many democratic societies as well as authoritarian ones. As I discussed in my article on the demise of democratic societies [258] (article linked here), almost all signatories to the UN Declaration are and have been for some decades, in violation.

Those in violation, whether by police, military, government, educational institutions, or for-profit corporations, began in the late 20^thC to assure the public that the “nothing to hide” dianoetic is sufficient protection. This slogan began to appear first, at British tube stations, before being adopted by various regimes around the world:

"If you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to fear."
-- Slogan quoted by British government Ministers during election campaign[8]

3.0 Confirmation bias

When one is convinced or acculturated to a particular Weltanschauung, then every action comes to be seen as confirming that viewpoint. Regardless of the reality of a given situation. I would like to suggest two outcomes of confirmation bias:

When phenomena present which counter the basis of the bias, they must be suppressed in order to avoid cognitive dissonance. Example: Virulent hunting down and jailing of whistle-blowers by the very politicians who are shown by their release of documents, to be corrupt.
If this is not possible, and no direct action occurs which confirms the bias, then confirming actions are manufactured. Example: Creationists in the U.S. state of Kansas both manufacturing and redacting data in support the concept that dinosaurs and humans coexisted and harmlessly played together [62].

Under the constraints of confirmation bias, fact, reality, or even common sense are not needed.

“If you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to fear” is a rather clear example of confirmation bias, for the statement implicitly makes a number of claims, which are expanded in the sections indicated below.

Section 4: That a person is innocent until proven guilty (i.e., the courts are supreme).
Section 5: That privacy rights are inimical to the security of the state.
Section 6: That the data gathered on individuals is accurate.
Section 7: That government will protect an individual from abuse due to her being spied upon.

All of these inherit assumptions are utterly false. Let us look briefly at each of these in turn, with the understanding that each one is a form of confirmation bias.

4.0 Guilty until proven innocent

Is the assumption of innocence until proven guilty compatible with the “Nothing to hide” phrase? Consider England. Below I have listed a handful (there are many others) of relevant British laws:

Terrorism Act: Anonymous bureaucrats may ban any group it chooses by labelling said group as “terrorists”.
Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act: Anonymous bureaucrats may monitor, record, use all private communication in any form.
Anti-Social Behaviour Act: Anonymous bureaucrats may issue arbitrary punishments which lack any legal precedent based upon here-say evidence. The punished person or group under the Act has little legal recourse such as habeas corpus. (My colleagues call this the “Burn all witches act”).
Extradition Act: Anonymous bureaucrats can extradite any British citizen to the United States for any reason and without any evidence.
Criminal Justice Act: Police may compel individuals to give DNA samples upon arrest even when no charges are laid and the individual is released.
Civil Contingencies Act: Bureaucrats may deploy the military on UK soil during peacetime without notice or reason.
Civil Contingencies Act: Anonymous bureaucrats may seize all property or assets of anyone without warning and without compensation or return.
Serious Organised Crime and Police Act: Protest of any form (e.g.. marching quietly with a placard stating “I heart tomatoes”) without written permission from government is illegal around Parliament – the very institution that once protected free speech.
Prevention of Terrorism Act: Anonymous bureaucrats can jail anyone via house arrest for any reason without trial and prevent them from communicating with anyone.
Terrorism Act: Anonymous bureaucrats can imprison anyone for any reason without charge or trial for 42 days.
Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act: The executive branch of government (Prime Minister and Privy Council) may alter (almost) any legislation for any reason without consulting or notifying Parliament.
Identity Cards Act: All British citizens must submit to compulsory identification whose details have no limit in what form or where the information is stored, or who will access it. Private corporations but not individual citizens are entitled to access the data without notification.
And so on.

Whilst there are ostensible limits and regulations involving these laws (e.g. [54]), the sad fact is that between mission creep and other powers not listed above, habeas corpus is for all intents and purposes is quickly ignored under these laws should those in power choose to use them. The situation in other democratic countries is even worse, however. In one well known democratic country for example, the head of state has given himself the power order the assassination of anyone including the country’s own citizens without recourse to due process, the courts, the people’s representatives, or international treaties. That is to say, the target is assumed guilty and is killed without any chance to defend herself. Change one can believe in.

Since no leader or bureaucrat in any nation ever makes mistakes, and since there is certainly no history of innocent people being arrested by mistake, then if you have nothing to hide, it certainly follows that these laws which utterly remove the supremacy of the courts and of the rights of habeas corpus are not frightening at all. For if you have nothing to hide, your certainly have nothing to fear. Do you?

“There ought to be limits to freedom” — George Bush II [253]

5.0 Conflating security with privacy

“We can’t be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans." - U.S. President Bill Clinton [281]

5.1 Voyeurism

It is a logical error that increased security is not possible without abrogation of privacy. For protection of personal privacy does not lower security of the individual or the state.

For example: Not wishing to be watched whilst going to the bathroom does not lower the security of the state. Wishing to keep one’s diary of hopes and dreams private does not lower the security of the state. Not wanting have one’s children sexually molested at airports does not lower the security of the state. And the security of the state does most emphatically not depend upon the infantilization of the citizenry, the creation of a surveillance society, the ever expanding powers of secret police, theatre security at transportation hubs, and other similar unethical activities.

The security of the state does not depend upon trampling on the basic right of privacy. Rather the security of the state depends upon upholding individual rights. And upon acting justly on the world stage to address the inequities, injustices, and genocides driven by corporate greed.

Instead millions [22] of (mainly hidden) video cameras have been placed in cities and towns and countryside, watched by anonymous officials, recording everything everyone does. Miniaturized semi-autonomous drones fly over neighbourhoods [23], peek into windows [24], recording everything. The U.S. Congress passed an FAA reauthorization bill [222] concerning drones. The legislation authorized commercial drones to fly throughout the U.S., with expectations of at least 30,000 flying full time by 2020. These drones can carry microphones to record conversations, cameras to record anyone, and other devices [223]. Various people have been building their own video carrying micro-drones (eg. [282]). These could be used to spy on neighbours, stalk former girlfriends, follow employees, secure illicit activities, etc. as there are currently no regulations curtailing them [283].

Government use of these technologies are part of the so-called Total Information Awareness state [25] (named after the original surveillance laws passed by the U.S. Senate) which is currently under rapid development in many countries. Total Information Awareness joins surveillance technologies to consolidate every bit of information on an individual into a profile of every person on the planet. Medical records, library book borrowing, credit card purchases, telephone conversations, gas station fill-ups, travel destinations, networks of friends and family, and much more are logged and recorded.

I have worked with a number of large police forces over the years. They would often proudly give me tours of their facilities and technologies. Included in these tours would be their holding facilities. In every one of these, prisoners were watched and video taped 24 hours a day. They were watched when they went to the bathroom, when they slept, when the tried to exercise, in the showers, in bed, etc. Beyond the obvious exceptions of monitoring suicidal prisoners, no one could ever explain to me how “security” was increased by watching and filming prisoners using a toilet. The rationales however, which various police and government officials gave for this intrusive monitoring, were for the most part concerned with protecting officials from possible lawsuit and/or exposure to negative press. You can fill in the blanks here for yourself.

But did such surveillance protect the prisoners or the public at large. No. Security and privacy are not the same.

5.2 Nothing is only Black or White

Chinese spirituality teaches us that in everything which looks black, there is some white. Everything which looks white, contains something that is black. It is the interplay of and eternal alteration of these states which describes the movement of the universe. This is epitomized in the Yin-Yang symbol, which for millennia has warned that adopting one position and rejecting all others is the way of stagnation and death. All things move forward only by allowing differences to exist in harmony.

“You are either with us or against us” — U.S. President G.W. Bush

“Any [expletive deleted] marcher is with the terrorists” — Police officer at the G20 summit to a woman peacefully and legally marching in protest [289]

“He can either stand with us or with the child pornographers.” — Vic Toews [284], Canadian Minister of Public Safety in response to a question by a member of parliament. [286]

Sadly however those historically who have been antithetical to individual rights and freedoms always attempt to frame complex subjects in terms of black and white. For example it has always been the mark of religious fanatics to attempt exclude any possibility of alternate viewpoints other than their own. One well known result was the Inquisition. Little wonder then when evangelicals and fundamentalists rise to power the reductio ad absurdum of black and white distinction of complex subjects rears its ugly head. Very sad to see history repeat in this way.

Even if one has nothing to hide, there is a very great deal to fear from those who see the world only in black and white hues. In the quotation above, the Candian Minister of Public Safety was speaking of Bill C-51 and C-30. The Bill sought to require ISPs to keep and make available all information on any and all activity by their customers - cell phone, internet searches, banking transactions, personal email, text messages - all of it. It allowed for so-called “fishing expaditions” without court or public oversight. As Canada’s Privacy Commissioner said:

“You will have no idea who has access to where you’ve been and what you’ve been doing, and that should give everyone pause... there is not even a requirement for the commission of a crime to justify access to personal information – real names, home address, unlisted numbers, e-mail addresses, IP addresses and much more – without a warrant.... [adding] ... significant new capabilities for investigators to track and search and seize ... information about individuals.... Canadians have not been given sufficient justification for the new powers,” — J. Stoddart, the federal Privacy Commissioner for Canada [285]

Under the Bill using a false name on the Internet became a crime in Canada. As you may know, abused women and children use false names on social networking sites for abused victimes in order not to be stalked by the abuser. Immigrants talking to family still under the rule of oppressive dictators use false names to as not to endager their loved ones. But the Bill made such anonimity a crime. The Bill further gave private for profit companies a lock on the most private data of Canadians, storing it for as long as the government wanted.

"Apparently if you care about civil liberties in this country you obviously side with child pornographers, murderers... you’re the worst form of scum if you believe the Charter [the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is] an important instrument for the rule of law in this country. I’m horrified by this kind of rhetoric. It demeans us all." — E. May, leader of one of Canada’s opposition parties [288]

A mere two weeks prior to the “or with the child pornographers” statement that police needed C-30’s powers to trap child pornographers, police conducted the biggest sting on these villas in Canadian history. That is to say, laws already on the books were more than sufficient for them to carry out there work. Further, neither the government offered no data or evidence to suggest that their law was in any way necessary.

Additionally that government had a few weeks before scrapped the long-gun registry - a measure every police force in the country had said was very useful in day to day work, and which was supported by the vast majority of Canadians. They both stated [295, 296] that they had scapped the registry because having long-gun owners give the names and adresses of where their weapon was stored to police, was “a privacy violation”.

The Bill put forward by the government was extremely dangerous and in the opinion of many experts, a gross, necessary, but deliberate attack on the privacy of Canadians. In other jurisdictions where similar blanket powers with no oversight have been enacted, mission creep became the default means of operation. For example,the National Security Administration in the U.S. has stated that "over-collection" of domestic email messages and phone calls had become the norm by government [291]. Australian police and several government agencies routinely spied on communications lines without warrant or justification in so-called “fishing expeditions” [304]. In Japan, the same [305]. In Italy government have installed backdoors (secret access points) in many networks [306]. Police in Greece used similar no-oversite powers to routinely tap government members [292]. In the U.K. similar laws (created to “fight terrorists and pornographers” have been used for ascertaining "a family’s eligibility to send their children to a local school" [293]. In the U.S. similar laws have been used to target journalists conducting investigations of alleged government improprieties [294]. And so on.

In Section 5.2 below, and in my article on the end of democracies world wide I discuss the fact that more and more ostensible democracies are allocating police and government agencies more and more power, without any oversite by the public. For example, in the name of “stopping paedophiles” police and various agencies in various jurisdictions have been given unheard of power to spy on individual citizens without warrant, court oversite, or knowledge of the public. They have been allowed to do this, without answering to anyone. But police are human. They misuse their legal powers. For example, police in a large metropolitan area were recently found to have been systemically watching pornography while on the job [308], emailing pornography to other officers [309], and more [310]. This was discovered by accident during the course of investigating another unrelated matter [308]. Police as you may know, have one of the highest incidents of spousal abuse of any profession [311]. Further, sexual harassment of women by male police officers is relatively common, including sexual harassment of women officers [313, 314]. This dispute the fact that many groups had long known and spoken out against such sexism [ibid, 315, 316, 317].

“Contemporary pornography will make use of any relationship of domination and subordination - a power differential between people that can be sexualized and exploited.” — R. Jensen, D. Okrina, Pornography and Sexual Violence [312]

The point here of course is not to criticise police or any other group. But rather to indicate that laws such as C-30 enacted in the UK, the U.S., Italy, Japan, which largely removed public oversight, were dangerous. Because removing public oversight is an open door not merely to mission creep, but to abuse.

“He can either stand with us or with the child pornographers.” — V. Toews [284], Canadian Minister of Public Safety in response to a question by a member of parliament. [286]

“I did not make that statement.” — ibid [287] the day after he was videotaped making the previous statement in the Canadian House of Commons in front of dozens of witnesses.

“All he has to do is read the document” — ibid [306] in response to a question in Parliament, demanding the questioner read the universal surveillance document mentioned above, to see for himself that it was innocuous

“I have not read the documnet” — ibid [307] during an interview one day later, admitting he had not read the universal surveillance document

Section 34 of the Bill allowed police and anonymous government beaurocrats access to any communication equipment, and to any information contained thereon with no restrictions, warrants, oversite, or review [318]. Such access was not required to be within the context of a criminal investigation. In a word the Bill seemed to be a rather virulent attack on the basic freedoms seemingly identical to U.S. House Judiciary Committee approved a bill - H.R. 1981 (the Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act) - requiring Internet service providers to keep a record of their customers’ web activity for 12 months. Which Canada, as a signatory to the U.N. Charter, the ICC, and other agreements I mentioned previously - was bound to uphold.

“Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.” - Clark’s Law

To allegedly fabricate the message that this Bill had anything to do with stopping “child pornographers” or with increasing “security” for the public was an interesting tactic, since it mimiced the words and phrases used in the U.S. to sell HR-1981 to the public. Note that criminals already have in their employ some of the very best computer scientists in the world - and the very best equipment. They are also not stupid. No, the Bill was about opening the door to the universal surveillance Panopticon already in place in England and the United States.

Again - security and privacy are not the same. Implying that someone stands with paedophiles if they want privacy is a shameful misuse of truth and public position. If you have nothing to hide, you may none the less have a great deal to fear from those who allegedly prevaricate or worse, painting complex issues in terms of black and white only. And who have little or no understanding of the science and technologies they seek to control.

Conflating security and privacy also has a chilling effect on free speech, for obvious reasons.

History has shown that the greatest threats to individual rights frequently emanate from within the halls of power rather than from any outside force.

The entire effort, as with the ACTA legislation, was designed to remove public oversight - i.e. to allow those in power a free hand to do as they chose. The next section demonstrates the horrific consequences of what can happen, and has already happened, when public oversight is removed:

6.0 Inaccurate data

"The trust of the innocent is the liar’s most useful tool." — Stephen King

When a person is charged as a result of secret surveillance, she seldom (if ever) has access to the information held by her accusers.

A good example of this is the Security Orders used in France [26], Canada [27, 30], Britain [28,36], Germany [29], Japan [31], Italy [32], Australia [116], Spain [120], and the United States [33,34,35] (albeit with different names). These infinitely renewable Orders [26, 27, 34] enable the state to detain a person without charge for any amount of time. All without the person ever being made aware of the reasons for detention. These extra-judicial detentions are made on the basis of data which is utterly denied to the prisoner, their families, or their lawyers. The only participation allowed to those arrested under these Orders is as victim.

There are countless examples of the misuse and abuse of these Orders.

Take for example the case of Meher Arar [36]. Mr. Arar, a Canadian working in the computer industry while his wife complete her Ph.D. was arrested under Canada’s version of Security Orders. He was held without trial, and without charge. He, his wife, his family, his lawyer were never allowed to see the data or reasons for his arrest [121]. He was held for a time, then secretly extradited to the torture cells of Syria by Ministerial order. There he was tortured. His wife’s pleas for help from the Canadian government were ignored. Finally, thanks in large part to the horrifyingly difficult work of his wife, Amnesty International, and a few others he was release. But he was a broken man. It was later proved [37, 38, 39, 40, 41], that Mr. Arar was completely innocent.

Yet none of the following agencies, all with what the government termed “key” national security responsibilities, seemed aware of, or willing to help prove, his innocence until the general public became aware of the appalling injustice done to this man: Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), Communications Security Establishment (CSE), Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC), Department of Fisheries and Oceans/Canadian Coast Guard, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT), Department of Justice, Department of National Defence (DND) and the Canadian Forces (CF), Health Canada/Public Health Agency of Canada, Integrated Threat Assessment Centre, Privy Council Office (PCO), Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Canada (PSEPC), Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), Canadian Air Transport Security Authority (CATSA). All those agencies funded in the billions of dollars by the taxpayer, silent (until public outcry stirred them to action), while a citizen was wrongly accused and tortured. Nothing to hide, nothing to fear.

When bureaucratic error, stupidity, vengeance, abuse, or simple uncaring self-involvement are not subject to public scrutiny, common human rights are difficult to maintain. Lack of accountability such as that present under rule of Security Orders (by whatever name) rather than open public oversight, breed a feeling of impunity amongst those in power. Particularly when the rubric of “National Security” is used to hide behind. As well as, perhaps, a callous disregard for others. Very sad.

The tragedy here is that Mr. Arar’s story is but one of many, many others documented by Amnesty International, the United Nations, various NGOs, and other independent bodies for those similarly unjustly accused. Inaccurate data, incompetently obtained data, gives the lie to “nothing to hide, nothing to fear”.

6.1 Bad science

Data gathered on individuals is seldom an accurate representation of reality. This is due to sociological/psychological bias (remember the Stazi), procedural bias, data jitter, limits imposed by both information theory and complexity theory, difficulty of DDB design, system analytic and operations theory limitations, and a host of other technical and practical reasons beyond the scope of this very brief article. So let us just look at a few items which are relevant:

Datamining of information gathered by universal surveillance is a flawed and wildly inaccurate art [42, 43]. While oxymoronically named intelligence agencies tout its science and efficiency, they are simply incorrect. Or purposefully ignoring fact in favour of padding their budgets by equally gullible politicians.

Aggregates of small pieces of information can be combined in a myriad different ways to produce completely different results. If you are familiar with complexity theory you will know that the science of accurate aggregation is very much in its infancy, particularly when applied to unverified and unverifiable data such as that which is collected by spy networks, monitoring telephones, and the like. Resultant profiles built can be highly inaccurate. This can be easily be shown to be guaranteed mathematically, heuristically, and of course, historically. Profiling in this manner is in a word, distortion. Despite what those who make their living doing this work would like the citizens they spy upon to believe.

Such aggregates are also subject to the abuse of interpretation: Suppose (and emphatically hope that this is not the case) that you have cancer. You look at wigs on line because you are loosing your hair; you are in pain and cannot afford medication so you telephone various gun shops as you think about suicide; you phone various airlines seeking cheap flights to Israel where they have some world famous oncologists; and although you were born and raised in England, your parents were not so your surname is not a western sounding one. Conclusion from data mining and spying? You are obviously a terrorist seeking to disguise your looks and use a force to cause harm during a flight to Israel. So you are picked up on a Security Order, without being charged, and languish in jail while your family and friends has no idea what has happened to you. Eventually you are released. But not without scars, not without losing your job, not without a blot on your record, and not without automatically being added to various no-fly lists. Too outlandish? No this scenario is sadly very similar to what has actually happened. Not once or twice, but with unfortunate frequency.

And of course there is no recourse, since no one is allowed to see the reasons for the pick-up. Confirmation bias using the nascent science of data aggregation makes the mantra “Nothing to fear” from privacy invasion, universal surveillance, profiling, secret no-fly lists, and the like... false.

What is the result of all of this for innocent people? Consider these quick examples:

K. el Masri, a German national, was kidnapped by the state, flown to Afghanistan, tortured... and only released when the state realized the data they used to sent Mr. el Masri to be tortured was in error. He was not a terrorist, just an ordinary German [71]. There had been an error in the database. The fact that this completely innocent person had been kidnapped and tortured, suffered psychological damage for years, could not sleep... well, if he had had nothing to hide, he obviously would have nothing to fear.
A 21 year old student posted a few letters to friends. A year later when police found some letters had been stolen, he was arrested and jailed, since his fingerprints had been amongst those on the stolen letters. He was held until, eventually, the real culprit confessed. But his record as a potential criminal, and his DNA on the National DNA Database remained, as did his curtailed freedom to travel. If he had nothing to hide, he clearly had nothing to fear [73].
I have already mentioned the case of Mr. Arar. His long sessions of torture due to Canadian government utter incompetence and lack of compassion for its own citizens has led to a live of agony, where now many years later his nights are filled with nightmares, he has trouble communicating, and lives in fear [72].
People being fired from jobs [74], placed on no-fly lists [75], harassed by police [76], kidnapped and tortured [72, 71, 77], and even being killed [78]. And so on for many, many more examples.

Database records are frequently erroneous, as are the database systems themselves. Faulty design is IMHO the rule, not the exception for such systems pervading military, police, and government records keeping and data acquisition.If you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to fear? What a contemptible lie.

6.2 Error prone technologies

The design and implementation of very large database system is an art, not a science. In most such system, errors are surprisingly common. False positives are common [45]. While there are some interesting mathematical techniques to correct this [46, 47], as well as a host of system analytic and procedural practices [48, 49, 50] to help there is none the less, only so much that can be done. The results are still very much subject to error and drift [49, 50]. And while different manufacturers may tout the reliability and infallibility of their products, the reality is that such systems are very prone to error. Not to mention the error prone data acquisition and data entry processes used before the DDB even gets the data [48].

Everyone is familiar with the sadly frequent occurrence of police going to the wrong address looking for drugs and destroying everything in sight, as well as a few lives, before they realize they have made a mistake. Often because the data in the computer was wrong or with unfortunate frequency, the interpretation of that data was wrong. The tragic case of the alleged murder in cold blood of the utterly innocent Robert Dziekańsk by the RCMP in Canada is perhaps the most famous example of this latter. Although there are many, many others.

Errors (noise) are inherent in all information. Jitter in strings at the quantum level, Wiener and Shannon’s mathematics at the macro level [51]. This is a well known fundamental law of nature. Additionally, noise (error) increases in data collecting and aggregating systems as use of external-to-the-system independent correcting mechanisms, decreases. Or said more prosaically false positives become the norm, rather than the exception.

And so when people are prevented by law from knowing that information about them is being gathered, are prevented from knowing how that information is being used and by whom, and are prevented from correcting errors in the data even if they were allowed access to it (which they are not), then the probability of error mounts. that an innocent person’s life will be destroyed by such incorrect data mounts very quickly. Star chambers are nothing new and still exist in our own time. But mass spying using technologies unheard of by the Borgas make them all the more likely, and all the more error prone. “Nothing to fear” - not so.

Can a democracy survive a small army of anonymous and largely unaccountable government bureaucrats having such significant power and error prone power over citizens? Technology gives power. Power invariably ignores moral and ethical concerns. As well as the intent of of law.

6.3 Rohe’s Theorem

Rohe’s Theorum was first uncovered by John Gall [84]. In simple terms it states that inherent in all systems are ways for the designer of a given system to bypass the system. For example Cisco networking equipment which is used throughout the internet has “backdoors” built into it which allow U.S. government officials to secretly monitoring of internet traffic which passes through the equipment under that country’s so-called “lawful intercept procedures”. The same is true with many other manufacturers of both hardware and software. In most countries networking corporations are legally required to build lawful intercepts into their equipment. Rohe’s Theorum in action.

In general designer access into systems is commonplace. This sometimes is, and sometimes is not, for nefarious purposes. In terms of the later pacemaker manufacturers routinely build wi-fi access into their devices so that they monitor pacemaker performance in vitro without needing to perform surgery.

In the later case however, I am quite sure you understand the implication here, without further elaboration. And also understand the implications of using data against an individual despite legal or procedural protections. Nothing to hide does most assuredly not mean there is nothing to fear.

6.4 Junk Science

"There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live - did live, from habit that became instinct - in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized." — G. Orwell [84]

A primary difficulty with the “if you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to fear” mantra is the burgeoning use of junk science to “prove” guilt. Lie detectors and profiling are two examples of junk science which is used to discredit or incarcerate innocent people. There are many others such as microscopic comparison of carpet fibres [104], bullet matching [107], bit mark analysis [106], digital fingerprint analysis [105], and so on - all of which have been shown to be wide open to error and have a dirth of scientifically valid research at their core [ibid]. All of these and other scientifically questionable tests have been used before the courts to help convict innocent people, giving lie to the mantra “if you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear”. I will discuss, albeit very briefly, just two of these: lie detectors and criminal profiling:

6.4.1 Lie detectors

The U.S. Board on Behavioural, Cognitive, and Sensory Sciences (BBCSS) Committee on National Statistics (CNSTAT) has had some choice words for the use of lie detectors:

“Almost a century of research in scientific psychology and physiology provides little basis for the expectation that a polygraph test could have extremely high accuracy. The physiological responses measured by the polygraph are not uniquely related to deception. ... Moreover, most polygraph testing procedures allow for uncontrolled variation in test administration (e.g., creation of the emotional climate, selecting questions) that can be expected to result in variations in accuracy and that limit the level of accuracy that can be consistently achieved. ... The theoretical rationale for the polygraph is quite weak, ... Research on the polygraph has not progressed over time in the manner of a typical scientific field. It has not accumulated knowledge or strengthened its scientific underpinnings in any significant manner. ... The inherent ambiguity of the physiological measures used in the polygraph suggest that further investments in improving polygraph technique and interpretation will bring only modest improvements in accuracy.” [85]

The critique goes on, stating that not only are the scientific underpinnings virtually nil, but that overestimation, bias, lack of statistical validation, and so much more make polygraph testing inaccurate.

Further, a detailed study by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences [86] found polygraphs to be “dangerously unreliable”. The Academy recommended that government immediately cease their use, and that conventional lie-detector tests incorrectly label very large numbers of people taking the tests, as liars [ibid]. A well known paper [87] in the Journal of Forensic Psychology concluded in a study of the most common type of lie detector (CQT) that the machine and its use were “based on an implausible set of assumptions that makes it biased against innocent individuals and easy for guilty persons to defeat”. And finally, the Society for Psychophysiological Research no not believe that lie detectors are either based on sound theory, that its is based upon valid or replicable psychometrics, or that any lie machine evidence should be used in court [88].

Using lie detectors, utterly innocent people are convicted based entirely on junk science. The implication for “if you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to fear” of using this tool of junk science, are obvious. Many governments around the world know this to be the case. Yet in the U.S. it is widely used, as well as in countries under U.S. influence such as Canada, Israel, Japan, etc. [89]. The reason has much to do with deterrence for employees. If an employee is told that he will regularly be submitted to polygraph examination, his belief that they work may be a sufficient deterrent to prevent him slipping into the petty cash box. They are also a tool of intimidation used by police. If an arrested person is threatened with a polygraph, she may confess to something just to prevent her having to submit to embarrassing or probing questions about something else. That is to say, as an interrogation technique to encourage admissions from those who do not know that the machines are the product of junk science, and inaccurate.

And so we have the spectacle of U.S. companies churning out different types of lie detectors and presenting them as accurate to naive governments and police forces. There is for example, a category of lie detector which “analyses” changes in vocal tone. These devices alert airport security to “uncontrollable tremors in the voice that give away liars or those with something to hide” [90]. As a person who has survived multiple strokes, and consequent health related difficulties... my voice contains many tremors. My hands shake. I am aphasic. And so this machine targets people like me every time, causing embarrassment, delay, ill treatment, abuse from under-trained officials, and worse. And since like many disabled people I cannot respond quickly or easily when queried by “security” personnel, the situation can rapidly deteriorate. Shaking hands obviously mean that one is an illicit drug user, and an inability to speak means one is clearly hiding something. If you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear? Not when junk science is involved.

Another form of lie detector is the sweat detector. The sweat glands in human skin are connected to pores through millions of microscopic ducts. These ducts are helical. When filled with sweat the ducts conduct current. Since they are helical, the current is broadcast in a manner to that used with GPS helical antennae. At these high frequencies when protons jump quickly, at mere hundredths of femtoseconds, via hydrogen bonds in the surface cells on each duct. By beaming 100 gHz waves at someone, the amount of conductivity from these microantannae can be rapidly accessed [91]. So while a traditional lie detector which measures galvanic skin response (GSR) must be used directly on the skin, these newer devices operate from a distance detecting without the subject known she is being scanned.

Another type: The U.S. Future Attribute Screening Technologies (FAST) system could, it was allegedly claimed, monitor pulse rate, breathing, skin temperature, minute changes in facial expressions, and other meaningless items from a distance and determine if the scanned victim person was about to commit a crime [92]. This “Pre-Crime” scanner as it was known made use of laser pulses and the like to detect homoeostatic changes in people. Needless to say, the independent scientific work needed to study such devices remains to be done.

Then there are the Preliminary Credibility Assessment Screening System (PCASS), hand held portable “lie detectors”, costing $7,500 USD each. PCASS operators receive a few days training in how to use the device then are set loose as “experts” capable of determining if a frightened prisoner is lying when asked a question. Yet despite the fact that like traditional polygraphs they allegedly have no validity whatsoever [92, 93] as even U.S. Pentagon studies allegedly show [94], they are currently in widespread use.

What of “smell-detectors”? These are based upon the idea that body odour is a good indicator of when a person is lying [94]. As you may be aware, the notorious Stazi, the torturous anthropophagous East German Police, did exactly the same thing. If you visit the horrific Stazi museum in Berlin, above the torture chambers you will find sample air-tight bottles containing squares of fabric the Stazi would rub on various body parts of their victims to trap body odour, then neatly labelled and stored. The idea is that odour is recognizable at a distance, and lingers long after a person has left the scene of interest. Of course there is no science here, but it sounds good to the naive politician or police officer.

Finally, we have the egregious use of DNA forensics - a type of time-lagged lie detector. Silly but popular U.S. television shows are notable for convincing the general public that this is “science” in action. No. DNA evidence can be fabricated [95]. DNA evidence can be rather simply falsified using techniques and equipment available to any biosciences undergraduate through simple genome amplification [96]. Other techniques involving a centrifuge also work well at fabricating DNA evidence, without access to the DNA of an accused person [97]. It is even possible to slice various snippets together to fabricate a match [ibid]. Additionally when DNA testing is analysed in using questionable lab conditions and low skilled staff (more often the case than one would hope), innocent people can easily be convicted because “DNA evidence is irrefutable”. For example, the DNA division of the Houston Police Department has recently testified in several cases before the court which later proved incorrectly analysed [105].

“Nothing to hide” does not mean “nothing to fear” from the “evidence” which results from junk science or the incorrect use of science.

6.4.2 Profile inference

Stylometry is the study of linguistic style. Its mundane application lies in the detection of art, music, or textual forgeries or in the attribution of authorship to a disputed piece of work. Stylometry has come into its own through the combination of statistical techniques, artificial intelligence, and raw computing power. For example chaotic set analysis, expert system techniques, and genetic algorithms are commonly used to steganographically brand a scanned document or work (much as everything on my little site here is steganographically branded), then rapidly compare this to works in a database by the disputed author(s).

Stylometry, like lie detector tests, DNA samples, and others mention above, is unfortunately taken by the public, politicians, and the courts to be irrefutable. And so people have been convicted of crimes based primarily on police stylometric evidence [98]. However there is solid scientific evidence (notably [99]) that obfuscation and imitation attacks cannot be detected. That is to say, it is not unduly difficult to foil forensic stylometric techniques.

I mention stylometry, which actually has some scientific validity, because it is an example of a valid technique which has been invalidly applied to the burgeoning junk science of criminal profiling. Criminal profiling is little more than simple stereotyping. Hence a man with dark skin pigments in more likely to be pulled over while driving in most U.S. states for a “random” check than is a man with light skin pigments [103]. No one who has dark skin believes the “nothing to hide, nothing to fear” mantra as he drives his car through, say, Beverley Hills. But a more insidious type of profiling is that used by every major police force which employs criminal “profilers”. These people are said to be able to spot patterns in criminal activity and predict where and when a perpetrator will next strike. And even the type of clothing he will be wearing [100]. Television shows tout its efficacy and accuracy; airport security mavins use it to detect “suspicious” behaviour; but like so much of what is used to justify the faux mantra of “nothing to hide... ”, it has no real scientific validity.

The University of Liverpool studied hundred of crimes [ 101] in order to test F.B.I. assumptions that criminals fall into particular profile type categories. As well as the further assumption that homologies - a link between character type and criminal activity - are valid. As you might expect their study showed that different people are perfectly capable of presenting identical behaviours for different reasons - this type of profiling does not work [102]. Furthermore, like the Oracle of Delphi, profilers are adept at presenting descriptions which are so vague, ambiguous, and internally inconsistent that they seem to support whichever interpretation a police officer is biased toward [ibid]. Or put another way, if an astrologer, psychic, or criminal profiler makes a lot of predictions, those that were wrong will be forgotten, but the occasional ones that were by accident, correct ... will make the astrologer, psychic, or criminal profiler rather famous. Also for the most where criminal profiles are developed from interviews, there are no standardized protocol - I.e. the results are opinion without basis in fact or science. So-called Behavioural Evidence Analysis used by police is filled with confirmation bias, communal reinforcement, artificial homologies, and a plethora of fundamental postulates with no evidentiary or scientific foundation [103, 104].

I do not say of course, that it may not one day be useful if scientific methods are applied. But at the moment, the use is at best pseudo-science. Yet its use, particularly in the United States, is growing. Growing too, are the numbers of those incorrectly detained and made to suffer needlessly - one need look no further than the profiling of travellers by airport “security” agents to see the results of this.

The junk science of profiling means that even if you have nothing to hide, you have a great deal to fear.

6.5 Identity Theft

Accessing personal and personally identifying material on another person is not particularly difficult. But it is even easier to obfuscate one’s true identity and pretend to be another. The sociological literature and indeed the press have been filled with examples of the difficulties identity theft has caused completely innocent people. I will not belabour the point here, but instead propose a small thought experiment:

Suppose first that you are at your laptop sending emails. Unknown to you someone next door is running packet sniffer. She uses it to grab your email address, your name, and a few other details about your life. For fun she then uses the information to sign you up as a member of a number of Islamic extremist organizations. And a white supremicist group of neo-Nazis. Not satisfied, she also signs you up a number of other questionable organization by simply adding your name and email to their online mailing lists. And perhaps to a few child pornography sites as well. In other words, organizations that are very closely watched by police and government. As well as by a number of vigilante groups.

Now to the thought experiment. It is a simple one: You are completely innocent of any wrong doing. You have nothing to hide. Do you still have nothing to fear?

7.0 Mission creep

7.1 By government

Spying by those in power upon the citizenry has been made legal by those ordering the spying. But spying by the citizenry upon those is power is prosecuted with the most virulent viciousness. One need look no further than the attacks upon whistle-blowers. In some countries the most senior level of politicians have called for assassination of whistle-blowers who expose corruption, war crimes, and other horrors by the state [243]. Whistle-blowers have been vilified, accused of rape [244], sodomy, being anti-patriotic, being traitors, and worse. Only to much later be proven innocent of all such claims against them.

There has sadly, always been inequality in law. In how it is applied, against whom, and how it is selective by class. Generally speaking, those in power, anonymous bureaucrats, heads of mercantile enterprises, have always been protected by lack of transparency and accountability; whilst those upon whom they spy have traditionally had ver few protections.

When Chancellor Gordon (soon to become the Prime Minister of Britain) initiated plans to monitor all electronic communication [55] he really did mean all. Everything was included - from simple sales purchases through a cash register, banking transactions, ticket purchases, stock trading, telephone calls, surveillance cameras, internet use... everything. His plans called for all of this to be automatically channelled into police/military/government computers for anonymous bureaucrats to view.

Yet even this was not enough - Gordon’s plans also called for universal biometric scanning (i.e. DNA, fingerprint, retina, etc. scans gathered automatically and surreptitiously as people moved about their business). And that all of this vast spy system be connected to other similar spy systems in other countries, particularly the U.S. [59].

But wait, there’s more: his Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (known as RIPA) [58] allowed police to force anyone to give up their private encryption keys on demand. That is to say, it became a crime to attempt to keep anything private from government or its agents, but government or its agents can legally keep anything they like private from you. (Update: New laws now mean that no private individual has the right to private encryption anywhere in Europe, although all EU countries maintain the right for government to encrypt anything they wish.)

RIPA Section 53 allowed criminal penalties for non-disclosure of encryption keys, but Section 55 fails to issue any criminal penalty for any misuse or abuse of the decrypted data by government. Translation: Those in power in the UK could use this judgement and RIPA to imprison anyone for failing to reveal their their private information, whereas should those in power misuse (for example loose) the data... no penalties were to be applied to them. Equality before the law? No.

Is this an open door for potential police and government abuse? Absolutely. Because governments change. Police management changes. What may have begun under benign and well intentioned rule can change - future rulers or managers may not be benign. But these and similar laws do not account for that. They allow the data can be reused for what may become, under a questionable regime, very dangerous purposes. One need look no further than the McCarthy Era in the United States to discover how a small change in regime can have disastrous consequences for use of formerly protected private data. “If you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear” under one regime can have completely different meaning under another, and private data gathered in these gigantic government and corporate databases can quickly turn toxic to the individuals involved.

Further, systems believed by politicians to be secure often are not. There have been a host reports in academic and trade journals about security breaches, loss of massive amounts of data on private individuals from medical records through to banking transactions [72, 73]. What is secure today may not be tomorrow. Those in power seldom understand what this means. I will give an example: In Britain the government has ordered ISPs to allow parents to easily block pornography, gambling, and such coming through the internet to their homes [71]. Since this is an expensive process, several large ISPs have outsourced the technologies involved to private for-profit companies. One of the largest of these [74] has been hiring students with but a single day’s training to determine which websites or feeds are pornographic [ibid]. In other words, the government in order to prevent pornography from reaching British homes where it can be viewed by students, indirectly hires students to view pornography in order to determine if it is art or truly pornographic.

But even worse, it has set the stage for a handful of ill-trained and inexperienced youth to determine the future censorship rules for an entire country.

When CCTV cameras were introduced throughout Britain and North America such introduction was surrounded by press releases that CCTV was necessary to “combat terrorism”. It did not take long for every figure in authority to begin to see other uses. Local councils in small British villages made use of the country’s surveillance legislation. What type of use? Why to investigate the heinous crime of under-age smoking and breaches of zoning regulation. Or CCTV cameras (designed to “combat terrorism” remember) were used to follow parents for weeks, filming their every move to ensure that they lived within the school boundaries which their three year old child attended [78, 79].

Note this type of use soon became the rule rather than exception with Britain’s surveillance technologies. Mission creep like this is extremely common (see my article on bibliocaust [257] (linked here) and engineering the end of democracy [258] (linked here) for additional examples). Systems are introduced with great fanfare as necessary a particular use, but rapidly move to another altogether less benign application. The use of military drones by police, flying small hidden CCTV in largely autonomous drones twenty-four hours a day above neighborhoods [245], is by one of many such examples.

Another form of mission creep is using these invasive government technologies to commit crimes. For example, CCTV and similar technologies can be hijacked (hacked) and used by organized crime for a number of obvious ends [81]. Gearbox, CCTV Video Sniffin’, Spy Kiting, and other technologies [83] are readily available to hackers for hijacking the the output of government CCTV networks. Other kits are similarly available to hijack more subtle spy technologies as well [82].

Laws enacted and sold to the public as necessary for their protection, can easily be (and often are) misapplied not only by those in power, but also by criminals - mission creep applies to both ends of the surveillance power hierarchy.

The RIPA laws I mentioned were introduced to “combat terrorism”. Here is an example of how they are used to protect those in power:

An animal rights activist in Britain attempted to take police to court for allegedly beating her during and after arrest at a protest rally she attended [57]. The police and government demanded to see her private correspondence with her lawyers while the case was being pursued. When her lawyers (quite rightly) refused, the government used the RIPA laws - which were sold to the public under the guise of fighting “terrorism” - to threaten them and their client with long jail terms if they did not turn over the both the keys and the encrypted correspondence.

The courts supported the police and government, saying that no one could deny police an encryption key because of fears the data it unlocked may incriminate them [60].

Note further, that RIPA laws and other copycat laws in the U.S., Canada, Germany, Italy, Australia, Japan, etc. all fail to discuss return of private data, its protection, to whom the data is given, potential hurt to persons involved, or the fact that encryption is used by whistle-blowers and those simply dissenting from orthodoxy without any malignant intent.

They can be, and are being, used to protect those at the top of society from everyone else.

Consider now Senate bill 742 in the U.S. state of Oregon, worded in part as follows:

"A person commits the crime of terrorism if the person knowingly plans, participates in or carries out any act that is intended, by at least one of its participants, to disrupt: (a) The free and orderly assembly of the inhabitants of the State of Oregon; (b) Commerce or the transportation systems of the State of Oregon; or (c) The educational or governmental institutions of the State of Oregon or its inhabitants." [266]

Thus blocking traffic, writing a bad cheque, attending a protest march, downloading certain types of information, and the like acts would be classed as “terrorism”, mandating life imprisonment for the offenders. Police would have been able to gather information on political, social, religious, and many other activities of any individual without recourse to warrants or the courts, since anyone coming under their parole would be automatically considered a “terrorist” until proven innocent. The Bill was defeated by a mere three votes [267]. At time of writing, similar bills were being introduced in many other states of the U.S. (eg. [268]).

Earlier I mentioned the arrest of J. Catt for wearing a t-shirt decrying Tony Blair’s actions during the invasion of Iraq. The police arresting Mr. Catt stated the reason for stopping him as “terrorism” under section 44 of the Terrorism Act, because he was "carrying plackard [sic] and T-shirt with anti-Blair info" [269]. An anti-Blair slogan was, from the standpoint of the police - terrorism. Hence a law designed to address terrorism was instead being used against citizens performing legal acts - execrable but sadly common, mission creep.

There are many other examples of mission creep in government whereby legislation intended to curtail villany is itself used for villany. The use in Canada of anti-terrorism laws to curtail protest and induce mass arrests of peaceful marchers at the G20 conference is a good example [270, 271, 272, 273]. That is to say, to stifle freedom of expression, freedom of movement and the right to protest. And of course, to send the signal out to a fearful populous that dissent will not be tolerated.

7.2 By corporate entities

Corporate spying began to get the edge on competitors. It has long since morphed into the building of de facto panopticons with the full collusion of government. Mission creep run wild. Som quick examples:

Verizon - a large ISP in the United States - allegedly changed its privacy policy (allegedly without user input) to allow it to allegedly pass its user’s private web browsing history, cell phone [S] [S] Consdier India’s Department of Telecommunications. It uses real-time tracking to locate any cell phone user in the country to with a few metres [302]. India’s government knows where every cell phone is by owner name and real-time location, 24 hours a day. Of course, virtually every other country in the industrialized world [303] does the same, invariably farming the task out to non-government, for-profit corporations. location, app usage, and geolocation information to private for-profit corporations of its choice [63].
Australian stores and shopping malls monitor customer’s mobile phones tracking how often they visit, which stores they frequent, how long they stay, using and distributing this information in any way they see fit [64].
Large U.S. [65] and British [66] computer repair shops have allegedly been found to have been installing spy software on computers brought to them for repair. The software allegedly sent encrypted keystroke information (passwords, bank account numbers, etc.) back to the repair shops when the user browsed websites. In a similar manner boarder officials in the German state of Bavaria allegedly have been found installing spying software [67] which allegedly monitors internet use, grabs screen shots (e.g. passwords), etc. on allegedly everyone’s personal laptop. German law enforcement secretly and routinely installs the R2D2 surveillance Trojan to intercept Internet phone calls and monitoring traffic internet traffic [83].
Westfield Group has allegedly begun using a series of license plate scanners in their various parking lots [70]. Target Stores has allegedly installed similar ANPR cameras in all of their parking lots [69]. Many, many municipalities around the western world also scan every license plate number correlating where a person went, when they went, how long they stayed, etc. with other information readily available for a price [68].
Large search engine corporations have been gathering computer addresses (IP), passwords, and similar information and attaching this to geolocation information [69], then coupling this to large databases containing banking, search history, shopping preferences, etc. Every activity is saved, scanned, aggregated and allegedly passed on to advertisers, marketing agencies, and government [122].
Grocery stores [70] have allegedly been using retinal image scanners to detect where, when, and how long a person looks at a given product on their shelves, coupling this information to facial recognition software to identify repeat customers, then allegedly surveilling this information to large corporations such as breakfast cereal companies.

And so on ad nauseam.

The constraints upon these corporate privacy invasions by government are at best tame, and at worst (the norm) non-existent. The basic human right to privacy here is not being taken away merely in the face of some imaginary “communist” threat, but for base reasons of profit at the expense of privacy. There is indeed, a considerable amount to fear, even if one has nothing to hide, when largely unregulated for-profit entities can and do extract private information on people largely without their permission, and without their knowledge. More on this below, in the section on “Profiling”.

8.0 Restricting access

There are as of this writing, laws in most countries which radically restrict an individual’s rights in accessing and using information. Above these country laws, are international “agreements”. Two in particular stand out - the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) which has signed by several major nations; and the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP).

ACTA had been negotiated in secret between several powerful corporations and government representatives. The secrecy had been so extreme that a leaked memorandum stipulated that the creators of the agreement would make the final treaty public only after all secret negotiations have concluded [123]. The TPP took this secrecy even further - all TPP negotiations and documents had been agreed to be kept secret from the public until a full four years after they had been ratified [124]. The United States had blocked all attempts [125] by various parties [126] to release these and related documents. Even so a few documents had been leaked to the public [127].

The details were available from a number of sources. Suffice it to say that damages against individuals for alleged transgression of the rules was ludicrously high - beyond the power of most individuals to answer. The committees applying the rules were to be unaccountable to anyone - their rulings took precedence over the laws of individual countries. Additionally there were no fair use provisions - civil laws and practice were abandoned for say, educators and medical staff, in favour of criminalizing alleged divergence from ACTA or TPP rule sets.

I would like to give an analogy concerning these class of international agreements. It may seem a little extreme but sadly is I feel, a rather accurate representation of what had been leaked (and agreed to) at time of writing:

Imagine a large city office tower, filled with thousands of office workers. Down at the bottom of the tower, in tiny letters, someone has scrawled some graffiti in crayon. It says: “Moustached men are funny looking”.

One day, several years after the graffiti was drawn Hercule Poirot, the famous Belgian detective happens by. He sees the graffiti, and takes offence. He twirls his wonderful curled and waxed moustache once, twice, then marches straight off to the police station. There he accuses the owners of the office tower for allowing the offending literary work to be seen by the public. This he says, is an open and shut case of collusion with bigotry against people with moustaches.

The police, acting under the rules of the two international agreement mentioned, need no further evidence (for the agreements do not require proof of guilt, or investigation). They at once order that the office tower be destroyed. It soon is. And the offending graffiti is gone forever. M. Poirot is satisfied. When the owners of the office tower complain they soon find out that under the rules there is no recourse, regardless of the accuracy or inaccuracy of the complaint, and regardless of their complicity or non-complicity with the graffiti artist.

Now suppose that instead of a highly moral person such as M. Poirot making the original complaint, it has simply been someone with a grudge against the owners of the building. Exactly the same result would have ensued.

ACTA, TPP, and similar copycat negotiated-in-secret constraints deal with information, not office buildings. The implications for every form of intellectual endeavour from the dissemination of generic drugs to scientific research are obvious. For where the innocent can be accused and tried by extra-national groups without proof, the nothing to hide, nothing to fear mantra is arguably false.

9.0 Profiling

“If you have nothing to hide, why are you wearing pants?”

A system which collects and aggregates information on individuals from every available source is termed a total information awareness technology, or more correctly, a “presence” system. Cross-referencing information from presence systems in order to construct files about their inner motivations has been possible both legally and technically for many years. Presence technologies are part of the “total hearability, total seeability” initiative of several governments.

The same criticisms I discussed in Section 6 concerning data accuracy apply to presence systems. But because the amount of data is so much greater than previously alluded to, and the complexity (i.e. mathematically chaotic constraints on accuracy) are similarly greater, the probability of false positives and inaccurate data is very high indeed.

Yet in presence technologies [T] [T] One small example: The five signatories to the UK–USA Security Agreement, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the U.S., operate the AUSCANNZUKUS or Five Eyes system, also known as ECHELON. You may wish to explore this system and its implications, for yourself., essentially everything is dropped into the system. Some quick examples of items used in many government presence systems and in the databases of the for-profit corporations they employ to construct these systems:

Cell phone records are used for geolocation and contact (friends, colleagues) identification [213].
All library books borrowed in the U.S. are tracked by individual and group, by the U.S. FBI [214].
Social networks yield friends, photographs, and so on [215].
Education history (see below)
Religious beliefs [216].
Sexual predilections [221].
Banking history [220].
Life preferences and artistic preferences 251], skill sets [250].
Credit card history [249].
Employment history [216].
Driving history [219].
Income and bank statements [218].
Search history (libraries and internet and cell phone) [252].
Medical history [221].
Driving history [274] (see below).
Genealogy, DNA, and fingerprint [217] (where allowed by law - most countries).
Writing style can be used with increasing curacy to uniquely identify and track individuals [319]
Movement in space (eg. gigapixel technology in low orbit satellites can scan a 10-km-square from an altitude of 7.5 kilometres with a resolution better than 50 centimetres per pixel [246]; type KH-11 satellites allowed for 10 cm resolution [247], and type KH-7 -1966 for a 5 cm resolution [248]; new models are better yet at low orbit tracking of individuals). Other technologies from stratospheric blimps, integrated sensor arrays, etc. are also used.

The end result of the aggregation is termed “profiling”. It is remarkably thorough.

In an increasingly large number of countries, laws have been writen or altered to allow government, corporations, police, universities, NGOs, and others to create ever more detailed and potentially invasive profiles. Profile use is in the main secretive, and almost never subject to scrutiny by the person producing the data.

One small example of this latter point: In my article concerning medical issues [139] (linked here), even the vital-to-health profiles of day to day activity produced by a pacemaker within one’s own body is copywriten and patented by pacemaker manufacturers - the individual in question has no rights to or over her own profile [140, 141], which in the main can be sold to anyone for any use [142]. Large scale profiling (bank statements, travel arrangements, sexual preference, etc.) is similarly not available to the individuals who produced that data [147].

Profiles are used in many ways. Here are a few examples:

9.1 Education

Consider first cash-strapped post-secondary institutions (particularly those private for profit ones). Many farm out their networks to private corporations. These corporations are usually located in other countries. Lakehead University for example farmed out all of their internet (email, web, IRC, etc.) to a large multi-billion dollar corporation in another country [130]. They have thereby provided an opportunity of government and corporate datamining of private here-to-fore confidential information without permission of the individuals whose data is being mined, since said corporation is governed by laws which not only allow this, but demand the resultant profiles be turned over to government.

Massive surveillance has begun in earnest for educational institutions in other ways too [139]. In one day for example, 140,000 students were required to give saliva and hair samples, fingerprints, and dental records to government authorities. On another day, 190,000 additional students did the same in different states [132]. All samples were digitalized and stored in data bases operated in conjunction with the U.S. presence systems [ibid]. The rational given by authority for obtaining these samples was to provide what was termed necessary security for the children (“think of the children!”) [ibid]. Additionally a general policy of tracking and recording private personal information such as name, race, income, and religion for all U.S. post-secondary students was created by the National centre for Education Statistics at the Department of Education [133].

The U.S.’s FBI has issued guidelines for post-secondary institutions [4,8] derived from that country’s military Defence Personnel Security Research Centre (PERSEREC) [ibid]. The contents of these guidelines included statements to the effect that it was undesirable for students to work late on campus, travel abroad, show any interest in their colleague’s work, engage in independent research, have friends outside the United States, or make extra money without the prior consent of the authorities [134,136]. Faculty and administration were encouraged to report infractions to the FBI, as part of the CAUSE (College and University Security Effort) initiative in academia [137]. Under CAUSE FBI Special Agents would regularly meet with heads of all post-secondary institutions to share the information - i.e. to build profiles.

9.2 Search Engines

Prime enablers of presence systems are corporations which run search engines. Shadowing of users while they surf the net, or provide access to passwords or e-commerce transactions, the recording of instant messages, viewing what web pages a users has viewed, and chat conversations conducted using popular instant messaging servers [148]. In most western countries search engines must by law share this information with government authorities on demand. In most cases, no warrant is needed [149, 150, 151, 152]. Sometimes search data is not well protected. For example 19 million search requests made by more than 658,000 AOL subscribers over a three month period were “accidentally” recently released and widely copied [159]. There have been other incidents [ibid, 160]. Hence not only do private corporations and governments have access to this data, but sometimes it is open for viewing by anyone. Of course hackers also sometimes access this information [161], and sometimes whistle-blowers release it [162] as in the case of a U.S. official’s search for online pornography over several months [ibid].

Unfortunately few users bother to read the fine details of the usage policy, under the foolish impression that the services they use (which cost billions of dollars to develop, implement, and maintain), are somehow given to them free of charge out of the goodness of some corporate CEO’s heart. But buried deep in usage policies, EULAs, privacy policies, and legalese are clauses whereby the user abrogates all rights to their personal data. Initially laws in several countries protected their citizens from this, but given the international scope of search engine use, this has become largely unenforceable. For example European Directive 95/46/EC required that a user’s consent must regarding disclosure of email content must be informed, specific, and unambiguous as pursuant to Article 7(a) of Dir. 95/46/EC. This has since been superseded several international trade agreements which cede these rights [150].

Similarly some years ago thirty-one separate privacy and civil liberties organizations requested that one of the large U.S. search engine multinationals alter their policies to better protect the rights of citizens [153]. The company ignored the overtures, setting a precedent with other search engine, social networking, and email providers have since followed, OCED guidelines on the protection of privacy in transborder flows notwithstanding [154]. And so most of these corporations retain user [155]. The multibillionaire CEO of one such corporation recently admitted that his company’s services were “really just bait” to lure users into giving the company access to their private information [156]. The morality of such companies is not always pure: “.... whatever the company was saying publicly — and to Congress — about user privacy, it was indeed tracking not just user search trails, but also their identities” [158].

“Google collects personal information when you register for a Google service or otherwise voluntarily provide such information. We may combine personal information collected from you with information from other Google services or third parties...” — exert from Google policy [163]

Search engine corporations have confirmed (eg. [164] that they provide government, its advertisers, and others with lists of search terms by user IP (computer address). Since in most countries ISPs are now required to keep logs [165,166,167] and IP addresses cross-referenced by client name, it is a trivial matter to couple search terms by person. That is to say, search profiles collated by person name and address. The U.S. FBI for example, has used exactly this information to arrest a person individual accused of hacking a company from which he had been dismissed [168]. In reading through the court documents, particularly the judge’s statement [ibid], it appears that he was found guilty in large part because he looked up information (about hacking) on a particular search engine [169].

Some search engines offers a “service” to systems administrators and individuals running their own websites called analytics. . Heavily marketed by search engine companies, the scripts (programs) which provide analytics have been placed on billions of web pages worldwide. These scripts automatically provide search engine providers with information about their site traffic, and more importantly, about their visitor’s movements across the Internet. The important point here, is that these users have never agreed to a search engine corporation’s privacy policy, yet they are tracked without their knowledge by private for-profit corporations as they use the net. This information thanks to various laws are made available to other for-profit corporations and government. Profiles can easily be built up on this manner, either by IP (not necessarily specific) or more interestingly, but IP-to-address ISP software.

Some search engine corporations have their own satellites capable of greater than 0.41 metre accuracy flying in 423 mile orbit [171] photographing every 16-inch piece of the planet and its inhabitants continuously [174]. As well as geolocation vehicles to precisely pinpoint a user’s home [172] the cars in her driveway [173], when they leave for work [ibid, 174], and so on. All without oversight by a person’s home country, and without her permission. As I said, profiles can be very complete. Should an individual rather than powerful corporation do these things, the individual would soon be in legal difficulty. As an example of this, an Austrian tourist and his teenage some took several photographs during their first vacation to London. The police swooped down, seized their cameras, and destroyed every picture of buildings found thereon [175]. Needless to say, photographs of the same buildings were taken by several U.S. corporate search engine navigation tools and readily available to anyone in the world [46]. The corporations were never charged.

Further, dozens of websites cull the “most interesting” photos taken by search engine street view trucks, and place them in galleries. “Most interesting” invariably means photographs of young women. Some women’s rights groups (notably [177] have alleged that this is large scale voyeurism under control of for-profit corporations. If you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to fear.

9.3 Advertisers

One well known U.S. based profiler [49] allegedly maintained roughly 17,000,000,000 records on several hundred million people [178]. Information held allegedly ranged from social security numbers through DNA samples, banking information, credit card information, and the like. It allegedly sold most of this information to whomever was interested, with no government oversight of any kind [179]. After a leak from whistle-blowers [ibid] the company allegedly admitted that data for 160,000 people had been compromised to hackers [180] allegedly resulting in a very large number of cases of identity theft.

A competitor [181] of this corporation specialized in selling contact information by demographic to telemarketing and mass mailers. It allegedly held profile data on many millions of people, including such personal information as drug test history, criminal history, education, and the like [ibid, 182]. All allegedly available at a premium price. It allegedly sold its data and profiles to whomever could pay for it, no questions asked [ibid].

Yet a third corporation, this time based in Bermuda but allegedly wholly owned by a small group of U.S. citizens was allegedly awarded a $10 billion USD contract to construct a system of surveillance to track all visitors to the U.S. [183]. This system included extensive fingerprinting, photographing, iris and other biometric technologies, as well as facial recognition scanning. The company later allegedly developed tracking of credit histories, court appearances, jury duty, and similar information which it allegedly coupled to its other data to augment its profiles [ibid].

A well known U.S. based software giant filed a patent recently for tracking anyone based upon voice via feature extraction, spectral analysis, and Markov modelling [184]. Since it already had built an extensive internet profiling business, this added feature had rather obvious uses for identification when individual voices were scanned by CCTV in retail stores, malls, transportation hubs, etc.

A large U.S. based online book retailer routinely collects credit card, address, reading material, and similar information from its more than 70,000,000 repeat customers [185]. It allegedly couples this information to public records and profiles from the corporations indicated above, through a technology patented by the corporation several years ago [186]. This very complete profile on information on millions of individuals by name, was allegedly freely sold to anyone with the money to pay for it:

"As we continue to develop our business, we might sell or buy stores, subsidiaries, or business units. In such transactions, customer information generally is one of the transferred business assets." [187]

There are approximately 20 U.S. private for-profit corporations which do the same [188].

Computer lip-reading systems are far better (80% improvement) than the ability of humans to read lips [210]. Moreover the technology involved is relatively straightforward. At time of writing there were roughly two billion spy cameras and CCTV systems in North America [211]. Many are easily capable of facial recognition and remote switch tracking (similar to cellphone automated switching of the signal between towers) of individuals as they change location. Adding lip reading to these – first at airports and government buildings then everywhere, is technically relatively straightforward. I would invite you to ponder the implications. Nothing to hide no longer means nothing to fear.

9.4 Data prediction

Confirmation bias which I discussed in section three above, strongly influences prediction of behaviour, phenotype, and activity. The science on interpreting tracking data is in its nascences, and double-blind studies of its accuracy are almost non-existent. Never the less, gathering data on everyone is a growing and pervasive industry.

A click stream is a method of tracking users of communications technology. For examples:

eBay allegedly amassed a 6.5 petabyte click streamwarehouse running on Greenplum [189], along with its older 2.5 petabyte Teradata system [190]. This represented 17 trillion database rows, with 150 billion new rows being added per day.
Facebook allegedly held 3.5 petabytes in a Hadoop system [191].
MySpace allegedly held Greenplum and Aster Data nCluster systems housing several terabytes of user click stream data [192].

But is a picayune fraction of the data maintained by corporations on everyone. For example most governments allegedly compel deep packet inspection (automated monitoring of activity) to track activity - some done by ISPs, but in most cases by devices mandated to be installed at nodal points in networks [278]. But private for-profit corporations allegedly do this too [279].

With such a vast array of data being gathered, the opportunity to datamine and profile away virtually all privacy from individual’s control is breathtaking. Particularly when this data is exchanged and traded with other private-for-profit corporations in other countries. Or as is more commonly done, distributed on servers in many countries, with different laws (or no laws) controlling the data’s use or distribution [195]. Health records, insurance records, legal records, banking records, and the like with little oversight.

This data includes photographs. Images of individuals on vacation [193]; images of friends, relations, and colleagues [194]; embarrassing images taken by former lovers [197] which cannot be retrieved or removed [198, 199, 200]; school photographs [202]; CCTV photos of shoppers; retail store facial recognition camera photos [ibid] (most large chain stores have automatic face recognition CCTV); iris scan biometric recognition [203] (many companies have iris scanners at eye level which scan and record individual biometric data as they enter and leave their buildings); and so on. Traded, augmented, and sold to the highest bidder and shared with government on demand [204, 202, 199, 188]. Another large source of data are so-called “smart meters” connecting hydro suppliers to people’s homes. These devices have the ability to monitor and read device identification data such as (depending upon meter type) the type and make of television in the home, etc. [205, 206].

Driving history is maintained as well as part of profiling. For example, CCTV and police cars in many juristictions are equipped with licesnse plate scanners - Automatic Licence Plate Recognition (ALPR) [273, 274]. For roughly $25,000 per police car, these devices scan thousands of plates per hour, adding GPS positioning information, time of day, etc. to the scan. The data is then uploaded to large databases and kept in perptuity. The data is freely exchanged with other juristictions, including those in other countries [274]. The data provides detailed information on every driver’s daily movements, as part of the profiling system. It should be noted that ALPR in most countries is under sole control of the police - there are seldom laws constraining its current or future use. Or misuse.

Once profiles are amassed, predictive techniques can be applied allowing those who have purchased the data to make inferences. For example:

Studying purchasing and cell phone geolocation records, it is possible to predict that the Smith family will be away in early January on their biannual vacation. A perfect time to break in and steal that new $30,000 hand carved ivory and jade Mah-jong set they just purchased.
Or one could datamine ALPR and shopping data to infer that person A has been having an illicit affair with person B outside of marriage.
Or one could infer that similar purchases at a similar time by disparate persons of material related to political bribery may indicate an advocacy group’s efforts to gather material for a legal battle against cronyism in government.
And so on.

I am simplifying things here of course with a little hyperbole to get the point across, so suffice it to say that as data sets grow statistical inference techniques and decision analysis techniques to be applied with greater confidence regarding future behaviour. Whether or not the data is accurate is moot - it is acted upon regardless. This is explored briefly below in the next subsection:

9.5 Protection of data

Six quick examples by way of illustration of the lack of data protection for individuals:

The Canadian banking conglomerate CIBC “lost” (as their press release said [207]) files containing the confidential information of a large number of their mutual funds clients. Information on the “lost” file included social security numbers, bank account numbers, client signatures, home and work addresses, spousal relationships, credit history, and much more. But CIBC allegedly did not voluntarily disclose the loss. It took an investigation and order from the Privacy Commissioner for Canada to force the revelation [208]. This followed a similar “loss” by the CIBC a few years earlier. At that time the CIBC allegedly sent private, confidential, personal customer information to small company in Virginia which had nothing to do with banking. Despite the company’s frequent calls to CIBC attempting to alert them to the problem, allegedly nothing was done to correct the situation for several years [209].
Airport passengers in many countries are routinely scanned by millimetre wave scanners [U] [U] As a quick aside here, rather than using covalent bonds, DNA bindings use hydrogen bonds. Sources in the THz range which are sufficient to cause thermal perturbations or local resonance can therefore result in unzipping and disruption of these bonds - ie. DNA damage. Some of the newer types of portable scanners used by government and police are in this range, as are some of the newer stationary scanners. There is considerable evidence that these scanners have not received independent, objective scientific testing [256]. Certainly no longitudinal tests have been done. [212]. This technology which show nipples, type of underwear (thong vs boxer for example), size of penis and whether or not it is circumcised [213], whether passengers have had vasectomies, penile implants, mastectomies, or have a catheter inserted [214, 215]. Over 250 pages of technical data on the machines detail how every scanner can record, store, and transmit detailed images of all passengers [232, 233]. Several times airport personal have been caught [226, 227, 228] sending pictures to friends, passing them around to co-workers, and printing them out - all despite assurances [104, 105] from those promoting the machines that not only could this never happen, but that the images lacked any identifying detail [229]. Here is a quotation you may find interesting: “Had my first experience with the backscatter x-ray at Moscow DME airport last week. ...The people looking at the x-ray (all women in their late 20s) are behind a closed desk and cannot easily see the people as they pass through. But passers-by can see what is going on if they linger. I stood there and watched the results for a few minutes - and all I can say is OH MY WORD. The images leave absolutely nothing to the imagination - and I do mean nothing. After a few minutes of watching this we were abused by the security and ordered to move on” [231]. A short time later several women filed complaints with the U.S. government stating that they were targetted at various airports by that country’s TSA. Allegedly, “cute” females were required to go through backscatter scans - no males were required to do so [290]. And in some cases, were made to go through several times [ibid]. It was alleged that the images were then forewarded to male TSA agents [ibid].
Private, personal health records on every patient is routinely sent from doctors offices and hospitals in parts of Canada to the United States by a private for-profit corporation [230]. This corporation is located in the United States, where Canadian privacy laws do not apply. Under the provisions on the US Patriot Act, Section 215, points 2 and 3: the government or its agents (which can be corporations) are allowed to obtain personal data, including medical records and to prohibit doctors and insurance companies from disclosing to their patients that their medical records have been seized by the government. This applies to any records held in the United States. Records such as the personal private medical information of Canadians whose government allowed private for-profit U.S. corporations to store these records in the United States.
In an expansion of Britain’s Computer Misuse Act it became legal for police to hack into any computer - corporate, private, individual, government - without the owner’s knowledge for any reason “related to an investigation” [236]. As in the United States (and to some extent Canada under the Clearnet initiative), police may do this without warrant [237] or any form of judicial (i.e. the public) oversight [238]. Additionally a Brussels ruling now allows all EU police to warrantlessly surveil (by whatever means they choose) private property (i.e. hidden cameras secretly placed inside anyone’s home). The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act codifies the details for Britain.
In Canada any and all communication which uses the internet (which is defined so broadly as to include radio, telephony, etc.) is deemed “not private” thanks to a ruling by Justice L. Leitch, an Ontario Superior Court Judge [238]. According to Professor J. Stribopoulos of the Osgoode Law School this ruling removed all confidentiality from Internet communications in Canada [ibid]. A moment’s consideration will show that in practice this was an open door to profiling in Canada similar to that already extant in Britain and the United States. Further, Canada’s Personal Information Protection Electronics Documents Act required ISPs (which include telephony providers) to yield logged and/or archived records to anyone with "lawful authority" without warrant (ie. normal judicial or public oversight).
It is important to realize that large government databases are invariably maintained by for-profit third party private corporations. This data has been frequently leaked, hacked, and misused [295, 296]. The belief that the vast profiling operations by government maintains high data security, is a myth perpetrated by at best naive, and at worst prevaricating officials. There are a number of examples too, of government [297], police [298], and others in positions of trust [299] accessing profile data to for their own personal use, such as spying on spouses, friends, political rivals, etc. The relatively rare disclosure of such wrongdoings comes from whistleblowers, since for the most part such abrogation of the public trust is done in secret since the laws these people create (such as the egregious example with the Minister of Public Safety above) create walls of secrecy with little or no public oversight or accountability.
There are countless other examples.

Government and corporate assurance that private, personal information, conversations, medical records, etc. is safe from prying eyes is perhaps, questionable. In most western countries privacy commissioners or their equivalents have not legal power - they can report, but not act with the force of law. As is the assumption of data accuracy. As with the junk science of lie detector proliferation discussed above, so too is there junk science involved in profiling. There have been a number of studies (eg. [238, 239] concerning inaccuracy in no-fly lists) which show that misuse and misunderstanding of data collection/aggregation methodologies has led quite a few innocent people having their lives ruined [240, 241, 242]. Sadly, nothing to hide does not mean nothing to fear.

“Noting with alarm the dramatic expansion of secret and unaccountable surveillance [we call for] meaningful Privacy Impact Assessments that require compliance.” The declaration also called for a moratorium on mass surveillance to allow for public debate. — exerpt from the Madrid Privacy Declaration [275], signed by privacy experts around the world. The declaration has to date, been ignored by every government except Sweden [276].

10.0 Conclusion

“ A culture that cannot distinguish between reality and illusion dies” — Chis Hedges [277]

Suppose you are apprehended rooting through people’s trash searching for financial information. But when taken to court, you state that you would never, ever, use the information against individuals. You are just curious, and your actions are certainly not malevolent. And besides, if someone does not like what you are doing they can "opt-out" by keeping their trash in their house and never throwing it out. If the trash troller is a corporation or government agency, then they no charges are laid - they are instead let off with a pat on the back, a hearty congratulation for your vigilance, and a large amount of even more money from the taxpayer to continue their fine work.

The bottom line is that the mantra of those in power “If you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear”, is simply incorrect. It is a phrase as meaningless as “Change you can believe in”, “My country right or wrong”, “We are at war in order to bring peace and democracy”, or “They hate us for our freedoms”, and other popular propaganda slogans of the past. At a casual glance such slogans appear sensible, but on reflection are easily seen to have have no foundation in fact or in reality. They have always been merely adjuncts to Straussian fabrication, as outlined in my article on Leo Strauss [254] (linked here).

Ask yourself who in society has the most to fear if information on their activities in made readily available. Is it the average citizen, or the rulers? Is it the local plumber, or the CEO of an oil company? Is it a teacher, or a senior politician? Is it an old age pensioner, or a military strategist? Ask yourself too, if any of the previous attempts in history to create surveillance societies have been of benefit to the average person.

Finally, a quick quotation from Naomi Wolfe:

“When closed societies gather information on ordinary people’s lives - when people know that their book-buying and library records are open, their sexual behaviour and financial decisions are no longer private, their conversations are bugged, their class lectures are taped, their protests are photographed by police, their medical records are exposed, and that all this information can be used against them - their will to challenge the regime in power falters.” [76]

It has been shown time and time again throughout history that attempts at secret universal spying, the construction of a Panopticon, is the mark not only of a devolving democracy, but utterly incomparable with individual rights and freedoms. No free state in history has ever survived the construction of a Panopticon in any form other than dictatorship. Any attempted removal of the basic right of anonymity and privacy has a long history of showing that indeed, there is a great deal to fear even if one has nothing to hide.

“First they came for the Communists. I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist so had nothing to fear;

And then they came for the trade unionists. I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist so had nothing to fear;
And then they came for the Jews. I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew so had nothing to fear;
And then even though I had nothing to hide, they came for me;

Now there is no one left to speak for me, and even though I have nothing to hide, I am very, very afraid.”

-- Austrian mayor, paraphrasing and adding to Martin Niemöller’s original words [115]

[319 References]