Not many people like the idea of state surveillance. But first we need to recognise that surveillance can have good and bad aspects – it can be used to help, for example tracking the movements of a criminal using CCTV footage. And it can be abused by overreach, more on that later.
It’s in the nature of governments, of all authority – be it benevolent or otherwise – to want more data, more information, more surveillance, more power. We’ve been fortunate in Australia, our governments have generally acted in our interests – or not violently against them. Europe on the other hand has experienced dictators and state violence that used surveillance and privacy intrusion, hence the strong European stance on privacy. And this probably explains why we are lagging on digital privacy and why we aren’t generally concerned by the government taking our liberty.
BUT, what about the future? We don’t know who will be in control in the future, we might not have a benevolent government in 10, 50, 100 years time. We always need to have the option of protecting our secrets from the government. So as security professionals, and just as rational members of society, we need to be aware of the balance between security and liberty and think about it. We need to consider what may seem suitable in the current situation, may not be in the future. And like a tax stream, once a government has power it rarely relinquishes it.
Recent Acts and Bills
Below is a list of Acts and Bills which give the government power to collect and use your data against you. I’ll add more detail to these in the near future.
