Amnesty issues scathing report on European erosion of privacy and other liberties

Amnesty International has issued a report criticizing most European governments for rapidly eroding the foundations of liberty. The last years, Amnesty writes, have marked an attitude shift in policy that is both dangerous and inappropriate, and erosion of liberty is being rushed in with little forethought or consequence and on the vaguest of justifications.

In a 70-page scathing report named “Dangerously Disproportionate: The ever-expanding national security state in Europe”, Amnesty examines the state of the security policies of fourteen European countries, and draws alarming conclusions. The countries examined are Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia, Spain, and the United Kingdom (UK). All of the 14 countries examined show alarming trends, Amnesty points out:

Upholding the right to life, enabling people to live freely, to move freely, to think freely: these are essential tasks for any government. But they are not tasks that can be achieved by any means. Crucially, they are not tasks that should, or can, be achieved by riding roughshod over the very rights that governments are purporting to uphold. The last years have witnessed a profound shift in paradigm across Europe: a move from the view that it is the role of governments to provide security so that people can enjoy their rights, to the view that governments must restrict people’s rights in order to provide security.

It should be noted that just because a country is not among those listed, it would not necessarily have evaded criticism from Amnesty – an absence from the list is not a reason for lack of criticism, merely an absence of being scrutinized at this point: Sweden is absent from the list, for example, and yet, that country is one of the worse offenders in the mass surveillance game, having been eager to create Data Retention (“retroactive surveillance”) even when it was started to be questioned by the European Court of Justice, the EU equivalent of a Supreme Court. (It was later struck down and declared completely unconstitutional, and Sweden’s government is still in denial over this fact, illustrating Amnesty’s observed trend well.)

Amnesty also criticizes a habit of security-and-surveillance laws that became infamous with the US PATRIOT law – the habit of fast tracking everything past public scrutiny, negating public opinion on these laws. They also point out that laws intended to be temporary strengthenings of security quickly turn into a permanent state of alert.

What Amnesty doesn’t mention is that not even the lawmakers are given enough time to merely read these proposals – much less reflect on them. Yes, you read that right: the people voting on law literally don’t know what they’re voting on, because it’s physically impossible to merely read – even skim – all the bills being voted on.

Powers intended to be exceptional are appearing more and more as permanent features of national law. And parliaments across the region are adopting such measures in fast-track processes, leaving little time for consideration of their impact on people’s human rights, let alone broader reflection on how Europe is sinking ever deeper into a state of heavy and permanent securitization.

Last but not least, Amnesty highlights how the everpresent threat of terrorism is used to justify these erosions of liberty – and how, paradoxically, anything can be called terrorism because there’s no set definition of it, and therefore, mostly anything can be used to justify more surveillance.

Because there is no universally agreed definition of “terrorism” under international law, states and international bodies have created their own. In that process, over the years, definitions of terrorism have become ever more vague and overly broad. This lack of clarity in many counter-terrorism laws has led, in turn, to a lack of certainty regarding what precisely constitutes an act of terrorism. If people can’t tell whether their conduct would amount to a crime, they cannot adjust their behavior to avoid criminality. The consequences can be significant, ranging from the profiling of members of certain groups thought to be more inclined toward “radicalization”, “extremism”, or criminality based on stereotypes – i.e. guilt by association – to the outright misuse by states of laws that define terrorism loosely to deliberately target political opponents, human rights defenders, journalists, environmental activists, artists, and labour leaders. — the Amnesty Report

Good job, Amnesty. Exactly this is what we need from more mainstream organizations that usually just criticize dictatorships in the so-called third world.

For when the Western world, supposed to uphold liberty and due process, fails miserably to do so… what moral justification is there to demand better of others?

Privacy remains your own responsibility.