Battleangel

It would seem that Sweden is going the way of the United States by employing a military spy agency to surveil the general public. At least we should be glad we were informed about it beforehand. But at the same time it is deeply troubling to see basically the same discredited and disgraced methods end being approved through parliamentary channels. At least in the US, very few knew about the abuse. Here we are willingly voting away our privacy, rights and freedoms. One could say that those are indeed also securities. So from that perspective, we are not trading freedom for security, but merely trading one form of security for another and less civil one. It’s quite amazing how easily people sell out to fear-mongering, eager to discard legal protection that we have enjoyed for centuries and that has held through the worst of times.

Not to mention how this proposal, which aims to place the task of surveillance on the Swedish National Defence Radio Establishment / Försvarets Radioanstalt, is at the same time a blatant attempt to justify the existence of long-since obsolete military institutions. Institutions that incidentally have never been working for the interests of the general public, but rather as an extension of US imperial power, passing on interesting tidbits to its sordid masters in corresponding US institutions. The continued militarization of civil society is most disconcerting.

Not only is it deeply offensive, but the proposed measure is also frighteningly outdated. It may be the first time in our history that we have the technical ability to surveil an entire nation but common sense tells us that this draconian goal will never solve the problem. If we for a moment accept the assertion that there even is a problem to solve. Malicious minds will obviously find new ways to bond and so the only people caught in this digital net will be ordinary citizens. In fact, the oldest trick in the book, namely speaking to someone vis-à-vis, would easily avoid this type of surveillance. And then we are on a slippery slope where tidbits of private conversations open up a world of possibilities. It’s similar to when the police enters your home on an unrelated charge but in the process find that you have been, for instance, moonshining. In real life situations few of us care that this is happening because we know that unless we grossly trespass on the wrong side of the law we have nothing to fear. The likelihood that the police would obtain a search warrant is infinitesimally small and as such we don’t have to worry about having our homes searched in the middle of the night.

Now, a lot of people would parrot some version of the old “only a criminal would have reason to fear a police state” dogma, claiming that the intrusion into their privacy is acceptable. Given the perceived advances in security and their firm belief in the system, that is justice, few would object. It makes sense since most people after all trust the state. If a majority didn’t trust the state we’d have a revolution or some such after all. I would argue that this unconditional trust is misplaced but that is another matter. The dogma however is simply wrong for two major reasons. One being that the psychology of living in a “police state” situation is in itself damaging. The other being that once you’ve moved thus far on the slippery slope you are also bound to have loosened a few other legal or moral checks and balances. It is simply inconceivable that we could change just one part of society while keeping all other aspects static. In theory as well as in this practical example, the measure in question is part of broad program of securitization. The results of which must be considered as a whole. It is also a fact that as methods get blunter, the resulting patterns get broader. Mark my words, it will only be a matter of time before they start looking for “Holocaust deniers”, “antisocial behavior” or whatever.

But we obviously already know that the so called “war on terror” is a sham and as such this is even more troubling. There is simply is no problem to fix. Aside from an obsolete agency. We can only hope that this concoction, should it pass, is merely the work of bureaucrats trying to salvage their own field as well as a few stray believers in the “war on terror”. The alternative, that this is and always was intended for dissidents and preserving the state’s authority, is simply too frightening to consider.

Noam Chomsky is to be awarded an honorary degree by the faculty of languages, Uppsala University, Sweden on May 26, 2007.

Professor Noam Chomsky took his doctorate in 1955, with a dissertation on formal grammar that laid the foundation for his groundbreaking work in linguistics. Since then he has been at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as Professor since 1961, and has fundamentally transformed the methods and theory of the subject of linguistics. By opposing explanations of language based on behaviorist psychology and emphasizing instead the innateness of the basic components of grammar as unique to the human species, his rejuvenation of linguistics constituted a paradigm shift. Chomsky’s work with formal grammar also established the research field of mathematical linguistics, which became the foundation of a major component in modern computational science. Few scholars have dominated their research fields the way Chomsky has, and as a leftist-oriented critic of U.S. foreign policy he has also attained a considerable reputation outside academic circles, standing out as one of the most outreaching and truly creative humanists in history.