"The road to perdition is always paved with claims of necessity. India’s latest contribution to this is the NATGRID, a nation-wide intelligence network that our Home Minister plans to link to Mr Nandan Nilekani’s Unique Identity (UID) project, a DNA data bank and nearly 21 other database sets, all to be placed in the hands of intelligence agencies. This Big Brother scenario operates on a single, fatally flawed and thoroughly reprehensible presumption: every one of us is a potential ‘terrorist’, a threat to the nation. This is a governance of suspicion, a rule of fear. Forget privacy, and forget that it is a fundamental right. Its invasion is a necessity. "
Gautam Patel when he’s not on facebook, he claims to be a lawyer
The Statute of Liberty
The proposed intel network NATGRID is based on a flawed presumption that every one of us is a potential ‘terrorist’
Gautam Patel
Posted On Thursday, January 06, 2011 at 11:43:52 PM
The heart of democracy is individual liberty. In most democracies, and certainly in the three that claim some form of historical or numerical primacy — the United States, the United Kingdom and India — personal freedoms are increasingly under siege as law enforcement agencies seek ever wider and more Draconian powers against citizens. The justification is only one: terrorism.
In December 2010, the UK police asked for new counter-terrorism stop-and-search powers for use even against people not suspected of criminal involvement. An earlier law was struck down in Europe for violating human rights. It was later repealed by the Home Secretary. Still, the Metropolitan force lobbied for its reintroduction, though in a slightly modified form.
Across the Atlantic, President Obama has (yet another) dilemma on his hands. Faced with new restrictions on the transfer of Guantanamo detainees, the President’s legal advisors are actually considering a recommendation that would allow him, by executive fiat, to bypass those restrictions, essentially giving him a wide set of powers including the power to transfer detainees to other countries or bring them into the United States for trial. This is a direct carry over from post-26/11 America under Bush and Cheney and their introduction of a quite extraordinary counter-terrorism programme. In The Dark Side, a riveting account of ‘how the war on terror turned into a war on American ideals’, Jane Mayer shows how “the Bush Administration’s extralegal counterterrorism programme presented the most dramatic, sustained, and radical challenge to the rule of law in American history.” The English barrister and jurist, Phillipe Sands, says much the same thing in Lawless World, describing how Bush and Blair between them usurped the law and put suspected terrorists in what Sands describes as a “legal black hole”.
The most insidious aspect of any programme like this is that it cloaks itself in the respectability of law. Binayak Sen was convicted recently not only under the Indian Penal Code but also under the Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act, one of a raft of counter-terrorism laws that invert a fundamental canon of any justice system by assuming guilt unless innocence is proved.
Terrorism warps our perceptions of right and wrong and makes us accept the unthinkable. In a February 2008 interview on the Law in Action programme on BBC Radio 4, Justice Antonin Scalia of the US Supreme Court, no stranger to egregious assertions, equated torture in detention with ‘smacking someone in the face’ and maintained that this was okay if it helped you find the hidden bomb about to blow up Los Angeles.
Terrorists pander to totalitarian regimes. The road to perdition is always paved with claims of necessity. India’s latest contribution to this is the NATGRID, a nation-wide intelligence network that our Home Minister plans to link to Mr Nandan Nilekani’s Unique Identity (UID) project, a DNA data bank and nearly 21 other database sets, all to be placed in the hands of intelligence agencies. This Big Brother scenario operates on a single, fatally flawed and thoroughly reprehensible presumption: every one of us is a potential ‘terrorist’, a threat to the nation. This is a governance of suspicion, a rule of fear. Forget privacy, and forget that it is a fundamental right. Its invasion is a necessity.
The error lies in the assumption that individual freedom is the enemy of collective safety. But liberty is not merely personal, though it is primarily that. It describes the state of an entire nation. Our freedoms were not easily gained. “Give me liberty or give me death” is not populist rant. It means this: give me liberty for without it I might as well not live.
More than death or destruction, acts of terrorism feed a fear of uncertainty. We assuage that fear by surrendering incrementally our freedom. This is a war only terrorists can win. They do not need the physicality of bombs when they can so easily maim our minds.
The Statue of Liberty in New York’s harbour is of Libertas, the Roman goddess of freedom. In one hand she has the torch we know so well, representing enlightenment and progress. In the other is a tabula ansata, a tablet evoking the law. More than an ideal, the Statue of Liberty represents an essential state of human existence. So does the statute of liberty. We can afford to lose neither.
Liked/hated this column? Write to Gautam Patel at bmfeedback@indiatimes.com
The Statute of Liberty
The proposed intel network NATGRID is based on a flawed presumption that every one of us is a potential ‘terrorist’
Gautam Patel
Posted On Thursday, January 06, 2011 at 11:43:52 PM
The heart of democracy is individual liberty. In most democracies, and certainly in the three that claim some form of historical or numerical primacy — the United States, the United Kingdom and India — personal freedoms are increasingly under siege as law enforcement agencies seek ever wider and more Draconian powers against citizens. The justification is only one: terrorism.
In December 2010, the UK police asked for new counter-terrorism stop-and-search powers for use even against people not suspected of criminal involvement. An earlier law was struck down in Europe for violating human rights. It was later repealed by the Home Secretary. Still, the Metropolitan force lobbied for its reintroduction, though in a slightly modified form.
Across the Atlantic, President Obama has (yet another) dilemma on his hands. Faced with new restrictions on the transfer of Guantanamo detainees, the President’s legal advisors are actually considering a recommendation that would allow him, by executive fiat, to bypass those restrictions, essentially giving him a wide set of powers including the power to transfer detainees to other countries or bring them into the United States for trial. This is a direct carry over from post-26/11 America under Bush and Cheney and their introduction of a quite extraordinary counter-terrorism programme. In The Dark Side, a riveting account of ‘how the war on terror turned into a war on American ideals’, Jane Mayer shows how “the Bush Administration’s extralegal counterterrorism programme presented the most dramatic, sustained, and radical challenge to the rule of law in American history.” The English barrister and jurist, Phillipe Sands, says much the same thing in Lawless World, describing how Bush and Blair between them usurped the law and put suspected terrorists in what Sands describes as a “legal black hole”.
The most insidious aspect of any programme like this is that it cloaks itself in the respectability of law. Binayak Sen was convicted recently not only under the Indian Penal Code but also under the Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act, one of a raft of counter-terrorism laws that invert a fundamental canon of any justice system by assuming guilt unless innocence is proved.
Terrorism warps our perceptions of right and wrong and makes us accept the unthinkable. In a February 2008 interview on the Law in Action programme on BBC Radio 4, Justice Antonin Scalia of the US Supreme Court, no stranger to egregious assertions, equated torture in detention with ‘smacking someone in the face’ and maintained that this was okay if it helped you find the hidden bomb about to blow up Los Angeles.
Terrorists pander to totalitarian regimes. The road to perdition is always paved with claims of necessity. India’s latest contribution to this is the NATGRID, a nation-wide intelligence network that our Home Minister plans to link to Mr Nandan Nilekani’s Unique Identity (UID) project, a DNA data bank and nearly 21 other database sets, all to be placed in the hands of intelligence agencies. This Big Brother scenario operates on a single, fatally flawed and thoroughly reprehensible presumption: every one of us is a potential ‘terrorist’, a threat to the nation. This is a governance of suspicion, a rule of fear. Forget privacy, and forget that it is a fundamental right. Its invasion is a necessity.
The error lies in the assumption that individual freedom is the enemy of collective safety. But liberty is not merely personal, though it is primarily that. It describes the state of an entire nation. Our freedoms were not easily gained. “Give me liberty or give me death” is not populist rant. It means this: give me liberty for without it I might as well not live.
More than death or destruction, acts of terrorism feed a fear of uncertainty. We assuage that fear by surrendering incrementally our freedom. This is a war only terrorists can win. They do not need the physicality of bombs when they can so easily maim our minds.
The Statue of Liberty in New York’s harbour is of Libertas, the Roman goddess of freedom. In one hand she has the torch we know so well, representing enlightenment and progress. In the other is a tabula ansata, a tablet evoking the law. More than an ideal, the Statue of Liberty represents an essential state of human existence. So does the statute of liberty. We can afford to lose neither.
Liked/hated this column? Write to Gautam Patel at bmfeedback@indiatimes.com
