The surveillance state is a creation of our own making
American statesman and inventor, Benjamin Franklin, is credited with the most cited quote on the trade-off between liberty and security when, in 1755, he wrote, ‘‘Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.’’
Franklin’s critique is harsh. I do not share this disdain for my fellow citizens but it is clear that we have long passed the high-water mark for liberty. Today’s comfortable Western citizen does not value liberty nor privacy. What we crave is security and our demand is being satisfied by an expanding surveillance state that few are inclined to question.
The expansion of state power is relatively recent and is a response to the perceived threat of Islamic terror, narcotics and the undefined evil known as ‘‘money laundering’’. In 2009 Simon Power brought the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Bill into Parliament. There were 68 submissions. So far as I could tell, none of them opposed the bill in principle.
This marauding legislation is a blight on the commercial landscape. It achieves nothing other than a layer of administrative cost. A high-school student could devise sufficient documentation to get around the most stringent requirements and no self-respecting jihadist or drug merchant is going to have any trouble skirting its restrictions.
The regime is more effective at limiting tax evasion but the rationale for this invasive legislation was described by Power at the time as ‘‘…vital to our fight against domestic and international organised and financial crime and terrorism’’.
This proved to be nonsense. The police themselves estimate the value of money laundering is $1.35 billion.
We have allowed the state vast powers to combat the drug trade yet the state has failed. Drugs won the war on drugs. We have traded liberty and not got the promised security.
The ability of our anti-money laundering laws to prevent terrorism is non-existent. As the police themselves admit, ‘‘Relatively small amounts of funds may be involved in terrorism financing, which terrorists and/or sympathisers may simply divert from legitimate income…’’
Yet we persisted.
In 2013, John Key introduced two bills, one allowing the Government Communications Security Bureau to spy on New Zealanders and another that mandated our telecommunications providers only use infrastructure that would allow the authorities to obtain access to our data. There was some outrage but it didn’t last.
The state is collecting a vast amount of data on its citizens under the pretext of preventing terrorism, while admitting that these efforts are ineffective. The catastrophic intelligence failure that preceded the terror attack in Christchurch highlights this perfectly.
What 2020 taught us is that central government can refocus its attention in an afternoon. On March 23 the prime minister announced she was shutting the country down within 48 hours. It subsequently emerged she lacked the legal authority to do this but it made no difference.
Our preference for safety over liberty was clear when the pandemic hit. Citizens all over the West willingly accepted draconian restrictions in return for an almost unmeasurable reduction in personal risk. Regimes that succeeded in delivering safety were rewarded. Those that didn’t were ejected.
In most countries the lockdowns were a failure. Many traded liberty for security and got neither. We want to feel safe. So we surrender increasing amounts of data, privacy and executive authority to those in power. Thanks to the general incompetence of governments we rarely get what we paid for.
Worse, we have failed to appreciate that the biggest threat isn’t from a terrorist, tax evader or even a contagion. It is from a malevolent actor holding onto or abusing power.
It is a safe bet the only thing preventing the current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave from extending his stay is he knows he’d fail but what this demonstrates is that we should not trust our liberty to the good-will of those we elect to office.
What Benjamin Franklin missed was that there isn’t a trade-off between liberty and security. It is our liberty that helps guarantee our security. We should not discard it so cheaply.
We are swapping some freedom of expression in anticipation that we will be safer.
Damien Grant is a regular columnist for Stuff, and a business owner based in Auckland. He writes from a libertarian perspective and is a member of the Taxpayers’ Union but not of any political party.