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  • Terrorism is very scary, especially when it happens close to home

  • and not in some faraway place.

  • Nobody likes to be afraid, and we were eager to make the fear go away.

  • So we demanded more security.

  • In the last decade, it’s become increasingly normal

  • for civil liberties to be eroded and for government agencies to spy on citizens,

  • to collect and store their personal information.

  • Regardless of whether youre a fan of right- or left-wing policies,

  • this affects every one of us.

  • So we have to take a look at the data and ask ourselves honestly,

  • Has all of this actually made us safer?”

  • In the aftermath of 9/11, the US government concluded

  • that the law had not kept pace with technology.

  • It created the Terrorist Surveillance Program

  • initially to intercept communications linked to al-Qaeda.

  • Officials were confident that if the program had been in place before 9/11,

  • the hijackers could have been stopped.

  • But soon the new powers were also used to prove guilt by association.

  • The FBI used immigration records to identify

  • Arab and Muslim foreign nationals in the US.

  • On this basis, 80,000 individuals were required to register,

  • another 8,000 were called in for FBI interviews,

  • and more that 5,000 locked up in preventive detention.

  • Not one terrorist was found in what’s been called

  • the most aggressive national campaign of ethnic profiling

  • since World War II.

  • How commonplace it’s since become for government agencies

  • to collect and store the personal data of citizens

  • was made plain by the leak of the Snowden documents in 2013.

  • They showed how the NSA can demand information

  • about users from firms like Microsoft or Google

  • in addition to their daily collection of data from civilian internet traffic

  • such as email content and contact lists.

  • So, instead of focusing on criminals,

  • governments are increasingly turning their attention to everyone.

  • But if you are looking for a needle in a haystack,

  • adding more hay to the stack isn’t going to make it any easier to find the needle.

  • On the contrary, every recent success announced by the NSA

  • has come from classic target surveillance.

  • Despite high hopes, the NSA surveillance program

  • has not stopped any major terror attack.

  • For instance, one of the Boston Marathon bombers was already a target of the FBI.

  • So what we need is not even more random data,

  • but better ways to understand and use the information we have.

  • Spy agenices are also pushing to cripple encryption.

  • In early 2016, the FBI asked Apple to produce a backdoor program

  • to disable the encryption of a terrorist’s iPhone.

  • Apple publicly declined, not only because this tool could be used to permanently

  • weaken the privacy of law-abiding citizens worldwide,

  • but fearing to open the floodgates for governments requesting access

  • to a technology used by billions of people,

  • a fear shared by security experts and cryptographers.

  • A few weeks later, the FBI revealed that they had hacked the phone themselves,

  • basically admitting that they lied to the public about the need for a backdoor,

  • which questions how trustworthy spy agencies are

  • in the debate about privacy and security,

  • especially considering that the NSA, for example, already has the capability

  • to turn on your iPhone microphone or activate your laptop camera

  • without you noticing.

  • Concerns about this are often met with the argument,

  • If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.”

  • But this reasoning only creates a climate of oppression.

  • Wanting to keep certain parts of your life private

  • doesn’t mean youre doing anything wrong.

  • Right now, we live in a democracy.

  • But imagine the damage the wrong person could do with all our data

  • and such easy access to our devices.

  • Anti-terrorism laws allow the authorities to investigate and punish

  • non-terrorism-related crimes more aggressively.

  • If you give law enforcement powerful tools, they will use them.

  • That’s why democratic oversight is so important:

  • even if those tools and laws aren’t used against you today,

  • they might be tomorrow.

  • For example, following the November 2015 Paris attacks,

  • France expanded its already extensive anti-terrorism laws

  • by giving law enforcement greater powers to conduct house raids

  • and place people under house arrest.

  • Within weeks, evidence emerged that these powers were being used

  • for unintended purposes, such as quashing climate change protests.

  • The governments of Spain, Hungary, and Poland

  • have introduced more restrictive laws on the freedom of assembly and speech.

  • Freedom of expression and the press in Turkey

  • has been seriously undermined in the last few years,

  • with people sentenced to prison for criticizing the government.

  • None of this is effectively helping us fight terrorism.

  • The motivation behind this might be good, even noble,

  • but if we let our elected governments limit our personal freedom,

  • the terrorists are winning.

  • What’s worse, if were not careful,

  • we might slowly move towards a surveillance state.

  • The data is pretty clear: the erosion of rights, along with mass surveillance,

  • hasn’t led to significant successes so far,

  • but it has changed the nature of our society.

  • Terrorism is a complicated problem

  • without simple solutions.

  • No security apparatus can prevent a few guys

  • from building a bomb in their basement.

  • We should keep the principle of proportionality in mind.

  • Creating master keys to enter millions of phones

  • is not the same as searching a single house.

  • In most countries, the law already permits a wide range of actions,

  • including targeted surveillance.

  • To take full advantage of this existing potential,

  • we need better international cooperation

  • and more effective security and foreign policies,

  • better application of our present laws instead of new and stricter ones

  • that undermine our freedom.

  • Let us not, out of fear, destroy what we are most proud of:

  • democracy and our fundamental rights and liberties.

  • This video was made possible by your support on Patreon.com

  • and the European Liberties Platform, .

  • Subtitles by the Amara.org community

Terrorism is very scary, especially when it happens close to home

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