As a cautionary tale, look no farther than Britain. Before 9/11, in response to fears of IRA terrorism, Britain wired itself up with so many surveillance cameras that it now resembles the set of the movie “The Truman Show.” Instead of being perceived as an Orwellian intrusion, the cameras have proved extremely popular. Yet, though they were initially justified as a way of combating terrorism, the cameras have come to be used for very different purposes: 700 cameras now record the license plate of every car that enters central London during peak hours to confirm that drivers have paid a traffic-abatement tax. The British public, with its instinctive trust of government, has proved indifferent to the mission creep. More concerned about feeling safe than being safe, it is unmoved by the government’s own studies, which suggest that the proliferation of surveillance cameras has had “no effect on violent crime” or terrorism.
Contrast this placid acceptance with the American resistance to a proposal, after 9/11, to bring a “British style” surveillance system to the nation’s capital. The police wanted to link cameras on the Washington Mall with others mounted on police helicopters, in public schools and in the city subway. Eventually they hoped to accept video feeds from private businesses that would allow remote monitoring of the entire city. Despite the support of community leaders, the surveillance plan was stopped by a vocal bipartisan coalition of liberals and conservatives suspicious of government power in all forms. The same bipartisan coalition in America has also blocked other post-9/11 security initiatives. Congress, for instance, said no to a national identification card and imposed sunset provisions on sections of the USA Patriot Act. Criticism from privacy advocates also led the Bush administration to scale back a system for prescreening air passengers.
European attitudes toward privacy vary widely, but Western Europeans tend in general to be less suspicious of centralized government authority than Americans are. When the United States announced the US-VISIT program, which will require all foreigners visiting America to be fingerprinted, photographed and placed in a biometric database, there was no official protest from France and Germany: both countries are already planning to fingerprint visa applicants. Brazil, by contrast, retaliated by fingerprinting U.S. visitors.
Europe’s greater deference to government authority led countries like Germany and Britain to adopt surveillance measures after 9/11 that in some ways went further than the USA Patriot Act. In 2002, for example, Germany adopted a law that authorized the government to create a central database with personal information about foreigners, including fingerprints and religious background. The law also made it legal for German national ID cards to include biometric data, such as fingerprints. And it explicitly endorsed data mining on a broad scale, requiring government agencies to turn over personal data to the federal police.
In Britain, which is even less suspicious of government surveillance than Germany because of its different experience with fascism and communism, the increase in surveillance powers has been even more dramatic. Antiterrorism laws passed in 2000 and 2001 allow constables to arrest without a warrant anyone they suspect of being a terrorist. They can hold suspects for 48 hours without allowing access to a lawyer. They can also fingerprint, photograph and search suspects for distinctive body marks without their consent. And any noncitizen the government designates as a suspected international terrorist can be indefinitely detained without trial.
The prospects for privacy and civil liberties in Europe are not entirely bleak. Because Europeans tolerate greater government regulation of the private sector, national and European laws restrict the ability of private companies to engage in data mining and surveillance more than in America. But when it comes to government surveillance, the general European attitude seems to be: nothing to hide, nothing to fear. As a result, Europe is importing powerful surveillance technology from America without the antigovernment suspicion that protects against its worst abuses.
