Cherish your right to privacy

DEAR Eva Bradley,

I'm an occasional reader of your column, as I think it represents a fair sample of what your generation - one younger to mine - believes.

Often I enjoy the column and am amused by what you write, but, this time (March 9), you've got me downright worried.

You seem to think our security and personal privacy are irreconcilable opposites.

More than that is your clear preference for security.

There are many who probably agree with your choice. As I choose differently, I have a few facts to share and a few questions.

After the 9-11 terrorist attack in the US, instead of strengthening the democratic process, the Bush administration used fear-mongering to justify serious weakening of democratic rights and human rights to permit illegal detentions, kidnapping, and torture.

It is out of that fear that warrantless surveillance emerged. Has any evidence been produced that any of that made the US and the world safer? Actually, the opposite is true.

Isil has emerged out of the debris of the strategic failures of the Iraq War.

Now their black flag is being waved as part of the new fear-mongering to justify the illegal eavesdropping our GCSB is doing on New Zealanders who travel through the South Pacific.

The metadata - the name given to all those little bits put together - can be harvested to provide information about anyone, where they go, whom they meet, what they do.

It's no conspiracy theory to see this information as ripe for abuse. Anyone can be caught up in the net of a fishing expedition.

Fear is also being used to propose the Customs service be allowed to collect and store biometric information, retinal scans etc on ordinary citizens, and to demand the password to the content of computers.

It's being proposed that Customs should clone them - this means that customs agents, untrained in intelligence-gathering, can hoover up your private information, personal data, bank details. All with no charges filed, no probable cause, no judicial oversight.

See the proposal and offer a response here: www.customs.govt.nz/news/updates/Pages/customsandexciseactreviewdiscussionpaper04032015.aspx

I'd like to believe that Customs could be trusted to keep that data safe from any possible breach. However, the experience we've had with ACC data makes me a sceptic.

Where's the security in the total surveillance? Those CCTV cameras didn't stop the London bombings.

Your column, Ms Bradley, cites the terrorism in Paris, Toronto and Sydney as proof of our need for security - meaning surveillance. If anything, those incidents demonstrate the failure of surveillance to prevent the lone assailant. The folks in Sydney went further, testifying to being let down by what they claim is inadequate policing.

After the fact of these isolated instances, police agencies stated repeatedly that the lone gunman was nearly impossible to prevent. Yet out of that impossibility comes the demand for increased surveillance. Failure and fear become the drivers here.

Where's the accountability? Information is power - and, as Lord Acton put it, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

History has repeatedly confirmed the lesson, especially in matters of security.

Even good men do bad things - Lincoln suspended habeas corpus in the Civil War; Roosevelt arbitrarily and wrongly incarcerated 100,000 loyal US citizens of Japanese descent after Pearl Harbour.

We need, as adults, to accept that there's no security to prevent the isolated act of terrorism. Thankfully, such acts are rare. You're far less likely to be a terrorist's victim than to be in a road accident, and that's a risk we all accept.

Our ultimate security resides in our taking action to preserve the safeguards of our democratic institutions, designed to protect the individual's right to private enjoyment as against the overwhelming power of government.

That's what has distinguished us from authoritarian regimes of left and right. It's what our soldiers fought and died for.

It's the worthy inheritance we must preserve, defend, and protect, for the benefit of our children and for their children and the generations to come.

-Jay Kuten is an American-trained forensic psychiatrist who emigrated to New Zealand for the fly fishing. He spent 40 years comforting the afflicted and intends to spend the rest afflicting the comfortable.