“French civil liberties and the ’spirit of sacrifice’ - With a state of emergency in place and surveillance increasing, how much will the French accept in the name of security ?”
▻http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2015/11/french-civil-liberties-spirit-sacrifice-151130074036371.html #terrorisme #sécurité #état_d'urgence #autoritarisme
"The experience of repressive regimes such as [Nicolae] Ceausescu’s Romania is that increasing surveillance decreases the level of #trust that people have for their #government and makes them less cooperative and less supportive of the government" Paul Bernal, a law professor at Britain’s University of East Anglia and the author of Internet Privacy Rights: Rights to Protect Autonomy, explains.
“Emergency’ powers need to be maintained only for emergencies: the longer these kinds of powers are kept after an obvious emergency, the easier it is for trust to be damaged”. He adds that powers introduced for one reason could be used for others - a “prime danger usually known as ’function creep’ or ’mission creep’”.
"Right now, in Paris, some of the powers brought in to combat terrorism seem to be being used to control protesters and others at the climate change conference, for example. Powers might be used to stifle dissent, to clamp down on people like environmental campaigners, students and so forth. It needs a huge amount of care to avoid this problem - in practice it seems to happen all the time"