30th August 2021
Over at the Foreign Affairs journal is this fascinating, well-argued article:
Intermittent terrorist attacks have blinded us to a deeper trend: the steady increase in the coercive power of the technocratic state. Technology has made organized rebellion virtually impossible in rich states, I argue in @ForeignAffairs https://t.co/9zyhPb6kq4
— Thomas Hegghammer (@Hegghammer) August 24, 2021
From a liberal perspective, there are parts of the piece that are both convincing – and disturbing.
For example, the author Thomas Hegghammer avers that not only is the west better resourced:
‘Western governments have also proved to be less scrupulous about preserving civil rights than many expected in the early years of the war on terrorism. When faced with security threats on their own soil, most Western states bent or broke their own rules and neglected to live up to their self-professed liberal ideals.’
The gist of this seems true – and what is disturbing for the liberal is that it may well have been a ‘price worth paying’.
Hegghammer amplifies this point in respect of privacy laws and the surveillance state:
‘The reason information technology empowers the state over time is that rebellion is a battle for information, and states can exploit new technology on a scale that small groups cannot. The computer allowed states to accumulate more information about their citizens, and the Internet enabled faster sharing of that information across institutions and countries. Gadgets such as the credit card terminal and the smartphone allowed authorities to peer deeper and deeper into people’s lives. I sometimes serve as an expert witness in terrorism trials and get to see what the police have collected on suspects. What I have learned is that once the surveillance state targets someone, that person no longer retains even a sliver of genuine privacy.’
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Hegghammer sets out that surveillance and the disregard for civil liberties are just one element of a general anti-terrorist strategy – alongside techniques, resources, intelligence, and the dynamics of the state-terrorist relationship.
And it is not clear whether it is an essential element.
Had Western governments and their citizens been more mindful (or to critics, precious) about their civil liberties, would it have meant that the other elements of anti-terrorism policy would not have worked so well?
And what would it have practically meant for Western governments to have been more ‘scrupulous about preserving civil rights than many expected in the early years of the war on terrorism’ rather than less?
Most liberals will accept that the state can do all sorts of things for the purpose of anti-terrorism, as long as it has a lawful basis and is subject to democratic and judicial supervision and the principle of proportionality, and it lasts no longer than necessary.
Would such requirements really have hindered the security services in their work?
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To a certain extent Hegghammer’s argument has a flavour of ‘just so’ story – there is less terrorism now than before, and so what happened between then and now must explain why there is less terrorism.
But that said: Hegghammer’s observation that the state now has access to online information and communications data that makes it difficult-to-impossible to use electronic devices, media and payments for the purposes of organised terrorism is compelling.
However: terrorism, like other forms of human cruelty, adapts.
It may well be that we have not ascertained or imagined how the next generation of terrorists will work out how to be cruel.
But in the meantime: we will still have the surveillance state – and no state voluntary surrenders its powers.
Perhaps that was – and will continue to be – the ‘price worth paying’.
The price was a high one, all the same.
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The Duke of Wellington once observed, “All the business of war, and indeed all the business of life, is to endeavour to find out what you don’t know by what you do; that’s what I called ‘guess what was at the other side of the hill’.”
Back then, some 200 odd years ago, the paucity of information available to a battlefield commander defined the fog of war.
Today, that fog may be defined by the sheer weight of information available, courtesy of human and signals intelligence.
If the powers that be have developed intelligent listening systems to sift, categorise and prioritise the information acquired both in real time and to tangible ends, say, the prevention of a terrorist attack or to predict the time it may take a capital city to fall then it is a development they are keeping very closely guarded.
There have been terrorism and assaults long before the Internet, so it should be really easy for attackers to go back to the means of the time pre-1980. On the other hand: I was quite surprised when I learned that in the first half of the 19th century, Prince Metternich in Austria/the German Confederation and Tsar Nicholas I. in Russia established veritable police states without even having the telephone invented. You don’t need digital means to control people.
Surveillance is easy to do now. Video, speech, bank transfers etc etc all in more or less one form. Very easy to sweep up and really no one is the wiser until the 3am knock. Certain blogs reveal the intricate depth of computer and phone and home data system defects and the depths some can go to to get inside. In a sense it has become easy to sweep up dross, that which matters seems to escape.
Are we any safer? It seems not really, shops may detect shoplifters more easily but at the expense of camera watchers and security guards. The justice system is overloaded with petty crims and the traditional punishment/restorative systems don’t work – too expensive and time consuming. A zero sum game and a pointer to deeper problems.
As for real terrorists, we might remember the IRA stopped wasting its time in NI and brought their struggle to London. They soon worked out the where and how of surveillance and mole catching. Nowadays no successful bad hat uses a mobile phone or WhatsApp for other than misdirection. Other means of communication can be found. Encryption is so last century, OK for legit bankers, otherwise a dead giveaway or a false friend. I doubt we really are any safer from competent terrorists and even the amateurs seem to have a fairly free hand.
As for the cost and effectiveness – well, we are not allowed to look.
“Who guards the guards?” is an unsolvable problem for all states and all individuals. The Romans couldn’t crack it, neither can the Chinese and Americans now.
The more technologically and organisationally complex surveillance and misdirection become, the harder and more expensive it is for ANYONE to find out what’s really going on … let alone stop it.
XR, though, show how the modern state and all its powers and technologies can be successfully challenged by non-violent citizens who’re sufficiently committed to their cause(s); intelligent and creative in what they do; and prepared to work on with people they don’t know on the basis of trust.
Some anecdotal input. In the late 1970s a distinguished professor, teaching a small seminar at our Business School, outlined his proposal that all data on person (known as a data subject these days) should lawfully be the property of that person and anyone having any of it should be mandated to disclose it to him annually (eg on his Birthday). One might devise a system, based on this concept, that enabled the data subject to monetise this data explicitly – rather than via ‘free’ services as now. The State, holding data, should have independent (preferably judicial) review of its use of personal data without a data-subject’s knowledge or permission. And it should be really out of bounds (although I am not sure who to do it) for authorities to search, for example, DNA or other databases for racial or other characteristics, without consent.
However, it is pretty clear that people, as a whole, don’t care and governments don’t take confidentiality requirements very seriously. Take the Congestion Charge. This system allows TFL to track your car in using ANPR in detail in Central London. I assume that police and others have ready access to this data. Companies proposing systems to enable charging without disclosing user identity met with profound lack of interest. At this level at least, most people don’t care about who knows what they do.
But someone in the constitutional hierarchy other than the operational government has to care how data is used and who does it. The Information Commissioner is a start – but enough?
One of the lessons of the Stasi is that as its resources and surveillance capabilities grew, so did its paranoia thus ‘justifying’ the investment. So while in the early days it sought to monitor genuine opponents of the GDR it later concerned itself with citizens who grumbled about the government or who just didn’t fit in but were not by any reasonable standard a threat.
Disturbingly, thanks to technology, our surveillance state has the capability to process far more data than the GDR ever did and there are growing signs of mission creep with suggestions that environmental protesters may have been categorised as terrorists for monitoring purposes.
So yes, without effective controls and accountabilities the threat to our way of life and democracy is such that the price is too high.
I’d be interested in comparing with how Germany (post 1989 BRD) has handled surveillance vs liberties. I recall hearing how the public tolerance for surveillance is markedly lower than English-speaking democracies in the West. Perhaps some of your readers can shed more light on this, or direct us to insightful sources.