Edward Snowden Promotes Global Treaty To Curtail Surveillance

An anonymous reader writes: In a video appearance, Edward Snowden said domestic digital spying on ordinary citizens is an international threat that will only be slowed with measures like a proposed international treaty declaring privacy a basic human right. "This is not a problem exclusive to the United States.... This is a global problem that affects all of us. What's happening here happens in France, it happens in the U.K., it happens in every country, every place, to every person," he said.

Comments

Can't put the genie back into the bottle

[Visarga]

The problem is not that US or EU don't want to respect human rights, but that now the technology for total surveillance exists, and it can't be made to disappear any more. Even if US and EU stopped surveilling, other actors would still do it.

Some, like FB, would do it for practical and economical reasons, just because there are server logs and they need to optimize advertising and user engagement. Other, like various totalitarian regimes, would still do it because they see it as a counterbalance for the increased social activism powered by the increase in connectivity that has permeated all societies. People got new powers in the last two decades, and the state got new powers too. They are afraid of these more connected and organized masses.

Even if countries didn't do it, corporations and various shady groups would still do it. All it takes is to put a monitor on the pipe or a video camera on the highway to record everything that passes through there. And when one party does it, all parties need to do it to keep up and not come at a disadvantage in security.

What we need to do is it to regulate how this information is being used to restrain our rights. We need to learn to be more tolerant - we all have our secrets and they shouldn't be weaponized against us, at least not in the public moral court. So we need to adjust our social standards to allow for more diversity, because now we all live in a panopticon and there's no turning back to the privacy and anonymity times of our parents.

Maybe something good will also come out of this. With more data and analysis power, we could guide our policies and avoid some excesses that usually went unnoticed in the dark ages of information. And now we need to accept the reality of our panopticon society and build a better way of living in it.