In America, they are called "no fly lists" – a list of people that government and the airlines consider to be security threats. But how is such a list compiled, and how does someone like Senator Edward Kennedy end up on a “no fly list”?
“We know of cases where people have been detained because their name is identical with someone who is on a watch list. Or the government has combined information from a variety of sources and created a negative profile,” according to Professor John Kleinig from Charles Sturt University’s Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics (CAPPE).
Professor John Kleinig, along with CAPPE’s Professor Seumas Miller, recently received a prestigious American National Science Foundation (NSF) grant worth US$243 000 for their project Security and Privacy: Global Standards for Ethical Identity Management in Contemporary Liberal Democratic States.
“The idea of the project is to look at the way increasingly advanced surveillance technologies impact on privacy and autonomy within liberal democracies,” said Professor Kleinig.
“The European Union has had serious disagreements with the US about the gathering of information. So what you have are liberal democracies which share certain values but understand them in somewhat different ways. The purpose of this project is to develop some standards for the gathering and use of digital information that could be used on an international basis.”
Other people to find themselves on a USA “no fly list” include members of the Green Party and Greenpeace, Ralph Nader and Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez.
“If your name is John Smith, you will probably be fine, but hypothetically if it’s Mohammed Rashid, there is a greater chance that you will fall foul of some kind of government intervention,” said Professor Kleinig.
“Data gathering organisations such as ChoicePoint and LexisNexis sell information about you to the government. Unfortunately some of the information they get from the web for example is not accurate. But it can still be gathered up and become part of the profile about you.”
Professor Kleinig says a loss of privacy and autonomy affects our quality of life. “It goes back to the central importance of the individual and even the individual-in-community within liberal democracies.
“Liberal democracies have been built around the idea that people should be free to map their own path in life. When we become aware that others are intruding on that decision-making process, we find ourselves severely constrained. It affects how we see ourselves and the freedom we have to control our presentation of ourselves to others.”
And worse, a lack of respect for privacy and autonomy can turn a liberal democracy in totalitarian directions. “When a government starts doing these things, it becomes less of a liberal democracy. When they start to abuse it they become increasingly totalitarian.”
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