Ministry of Love – already a reality?

By David Cronin

Date: 12/05/05

Winston Smith, the protagonist of George Orwell's novel 1984, remarked that "you had to live in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard".

A recent report endorsed by an international alliance of civil liberties groups describes the once futuristic vision sketched out by Orwell as quaint. The technological capacity of modern surveillance systems, it says, is far superior to that of his prophecy of a Ministry of Love.

Since the 11 September 2001 attacks, the idea that keeping close tabs on society is essential to deter terrorism has been uppermost in policymakers' minds. The US administration of President George W. Bush has secured Congressional backing for giving law-enforcement agencies the powers to examine everything from medical to library records. It has also succeeded in convincing governments and institutions in the EU that the right to privacy must be sacrificed to the interests of security.

Despite transatlantic differences on key issues like the Iraq war, EU-US co-operation in justice and home affairs has yielded significant results in some areas and laid the groundwork for agreement in others. A quick glance at developments lends credence to suspicions that the dialogue has strengthened an embryonic scheme of mass surveillance:

• An EU-US mutual assistance agreement allows the exchange of bank account details for reasons that are not restricted to the fight against terrorism;
• that agreement allows joint EU-US investigation teams to be set up, with the authorities on one side empowered to demand the interception of telephone calls or email messages on the other;
• a draft accord between Europol, the European police office, and the US is to give the American authorities access to files held by the Hague-based body, including 'sensitive' data on the race, religious beliefs and sexual orientation of individuals, and;
• the EU's justice ministers last year approved a blueprint for handing over airline passenger details from flights leaving Europe for the US, despite MEPs' decision to challenge the plan's legality (under data protection rules) in the European Court of Justice.

A new battle between the EU's institutions is brewing over efforts to require that telecommunications companies retain details of all phone calls made and faxes and email messages sent. This measure was requested by the Bush administration in October 2001, when it wrote to the then Belgian presidency of the EU asking that it take a range of measures to support the war on terrorism. In 2002, the EU's data protection directive was altered to allow member states to pass national laws on mandatory data retention. A proposal for an EU-wide scheme on data retention has since been drawn up by several governments but is being resisted by the civil liberties committee of the European Parliament.

Work is also under way at EU level on devising the world's largest database of biometric indicators such as fingerprints and facial scans.

The central unit of this Visa Information System (VIS) is estimated to cost €153 million. EU governments will have to bear the additional costs of the domestic systems linked up to it, as well as the equipment needed by authorities that have access to it - such as consulates and border post officials. The establishing of the VIS follows an EU decision that all passports, visas and residence permits must contain biometric data. From the end of 2007, all EU citizens will be required to visit enrolment centres to have their fingerprints and a digitalised scan of their faces taken to get a new passport or to have an old one renewed.

Liberal MEP Sarah Ludford said that the system presents opportunities for the fight against crime but warns that it might erode basic rights. "Use of biometrics invades privacy and intrudes on the anonymity of citizens in a particularly acute way," she said. "Tight safeguards are needed against leakage, unauthorised access and generalised surveillance. Clear arrangements are needed for corrections," she added.

One of the pioneers of biometric technology, George Tomko, has acknowledged that it confers a high risk that its application can lead to cases of mistaken identity. US government tests have suggested that the chance of somebody being misidentified from a photograph taken three years earlier is about 15%. The International Campaign Against Mass Surveillance has pointed out that 15% out of a billion would mean 15 million people falling victim to mistaken identity.

Peter Hustinx, the EU's data protection supervisor, has called on policymakers not to be overzealous in promoting surveillance. Addressing a conference in Krakow, Poland (25-26 April), he made a case for banning the processing of personal data designed solely to reveal the racial or ethnic origin, political views, sexual orientation or trade union membership of individuals. "The processing of these data may only be carried out if absolutely necessary for the legitimate, well-defined and specific purpose of a particular law enforcement activity," he said.

Claude Moniquet of European Strategic Intelligence Services does not consider the proposed measure of surveillance as disproportionate to the threat of terrorism.

He argues that there should be greater Parliamentary scrutiny the measures. He said: "Nobody knows exactly but there are something like 15-20 million Muslims in Europe.

"Ninety-five or 97% of them are decent normal people and present no risk. But a few of them do and we must be able to trace their travels and know where they go.

"We are confronted by an enemy that tries to hit so-called soft targets - trains, metros, restaurants. All of society is being targeted by the terrorists."

Analysis feature on the increasing use of modern surveillance systems by European governments in the wake of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks, heavily criticised by civil liberties groups.