The Guardian’s leader column reiterates some truths about surveillance that are worth repeating and repeating so they are not drowned out by the volume of the UK’s ubiquitous surveillance tendencies.

Speed cameras and lie-detection tests are not analogous. Speed cameras can reliably detect speed and their implementation has lowered the casualty rates for reckless driving. Lie detectors are not reliable and their proposed application is not to the general population, but to people who may be in the most vulnerable positions.

The view that everyone could be a liar, the paranoid mode of government, is one component of the equation, the other is the simplistic performance measure. The latter often insidiously leads to the former by the simple but brutal logic that, when you judge a ministry on its ability to cut costs then it will accept the collateral damage of discouraged, legitimate, claimants. The logic that every tactic successfully (measured in $$) catching the liars is legitimate is the same logic that accepts executing people who can’t afford good quality legal defense because at least we’ll get the real killlers too.

Does anyone really believe that appearing on a government lie detection database is not a discouragement to use the service? Perhaps the poor and vulnerable should not be the only people eligible for inclusion on government ‘honesty’ databases? We could include all the people convicted of fraud, deception, libel, adultery and plagiarism (who have probably gone through rather more rigorous investigtions with rights of appeal). That way we could all read their mendacity ratings just by swiping their indentity cards.

The most sage advice the next generations may receive will be to ’stay invisible’.

[From the Guardian via Blogzilla]

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