Introduction
Human beings hold in high esteem their privacy, having their personal sphere of life protected and control over what people know about them. They simply don’t allow their personal life open to everyone at any time. However, everybody else values national security and our expectations of the government to provide protection against cyber wars, censorship, and terrorism is too high. We desire that the government beat the spies of the enemies, hold in custody the terrorist suspects and other criminals by making spies on them. However, sacrificing too much of the privacy for security reasons may be difficult. The government is slowly raiding individual rights with the excuse of national security purposes. They search and compile a large amount of personal information, which in turn have affected the privacy rights of many people. Recent research findings show that the national security agencies have been eavesdropping on people’s telephone conversations as a suspicion of dangerous activities. It means that the government is reluctant in providing protection to the privacy rights of individuals making individual rights less important at the expense of the national security.
Introduction
Despite the fact that the world is now on a digital era, and most of the individual personal information is available in the social media sites, still, the government has no rights of invading on individual privacy and because most of the information collected by the national security is not voluntarily given. Most people see the national security as a threat, robbing them of their privacy but with the threat of terrorist attacks, most people would prefer sacrificing their privacy in the name of keeping safe from terrorism. Most people think that the government’s anti-terrorism techniques have gone too far that it restricts individual’s civil liberties. When a State is involved in a military conflict, the national security can supersede individual rights since receiving protection means giving a return to the benefit, but not to the extent of violation of constituted rights (Thiel, 2016, p. 13). Thus rights fundamental to the dignity of human beings require some respect and it can be achieved if the government itself protects the rights of its citizens. The purpose of this paper is to determine how the national security has become too important that it out ways the individual rights and its relevance in a liberal democratic state like Australia.
When it comes to national security, individual rights become a privilege
Most individuals are not comfortable with the government spying on them but because they have allowed themselves to be carried away with fear that their next-door neighbors could be terrorists, they are willing to sacrifice their privacy rights (Obama, 2010, p. 111). With the increased terrorist activities around the world, the government too has given up the individual rights of its citizens for security reasons; however, the government does not request the sacrifice of rights to be done willfully. The national security violates privacy by putting individuals on the watch list and surveilling them even if they have no records of any criminal act but just because they are suspected of having connections with the terrorists. An example is a case in the US where the Muslim community is complaining to the FBI of placing undercover agents in their mosques to identify terrorists.
The invasion of public space through surveillance technologies
The government records its subjects’ public activities using security cameras under private operations or by the police agencies (Bennett and Wells, 2014, pp. 33). Arguing against security cameras in high-crime spot may be difficult but their integration and proliferation in every place and into larger networks mean a greater part of public space is subject to surveillance. Technologies that recognize faces are capable of tracking individuals, giving information on their daily activities, which in the past was private. The FBI or the police and the private agencies are using automatic license plate, which is recognition scanners always situated at the back or to the sides of the police cars (Bennett and Wells, 2014, pp. 33). These scanners have the likelihood of mushrooming to any locality having security justification. Plate scanners enable the police to tab us informing those who operate malls every time there is a pull in their parking lots. Amazon recently demonstrated how a small “domestic drone”, one that is controlled by a remote could make package deliveries to our doorsteps (Inbar, 2013, p. 203). The police and private corporations as well use these drones: to spy one’s home, peer at the windows, survey the backyard and follow one’s movements down the street (Cavoukian and Ann, 2012, pp. 1-30). Certain organizations such as the Electronic Freedom Foundation have condemned government actions of using domestic drones and are campaigning for policies that enhance privacy protection.
The infringement of privacy rights in the name of national security
With the increased cyber-crime, a better law enforcement and national security are required. Since the national security and policing techniques are intrusive, it means that individual privacy has to be infringed (Solove, 2011, p.123). To combat the cybercrime, the governments have introduced the traffic analysis tools which record the logs telephone numbers in a machine-readable form and sketch the friendship tree that indicates the connection between individuals making calls to each other and automatically match their association with the use of artificial intelligence programming, a sophisticated tool. Intelligence integrated traffic analysis threatens individual rights since the government can tell the websites that one visits, their online shopping list, the e-mail addresses of their e-mail recipients including the e-mail content (Cavoukian and Alvarez, 2012, p.11-30). The implementation of the internet surveillance system requires that each and every internet provider allow monitoring of conversations over the internet for national security reasons. It not only endangers communications between online users but also individuals whose personal information may have developed roots into the internet. The wiretapping system is also used since it possesses special software that enables scanning of millions of emails in seconds (Casey, 2011, p. 221;223). The system is directly connected to the ISPs, the government can easily access all the digital communications of the customers.
Australia's liberal democracy and the importance of individual rights
Australia is among the few countries in the world that can be said to have liberal democracy due to its commitment to the rule of law (Stoker, 2016, p. 44-49). The fact that it has a Liberal Party means that it fights for individual rights and limited government intervention. The liberals mandate the existence of the individual rights despite the government activities and are free from alienation hence the government must not invade them. They have the belief that the government has the duty of extending rights to the groups previously excluded and that equality is absolutely a moral good. The rule of law is often challenged in times of war or when there is a threat to the national security and the basic rights are always suspended to give space for indefinite detention. Since losing a country in the name of strict adherence to the law would mean that the law is also lost (Stoker, 2016, p. 44-49). However, giving up the people’s liberties to achieve temporary safety is considered a violation of fundamental rights. When there is a condition of Universalist human rights values respecting human rights, the policy that the government articulates may be one that calls for respect of human rights at home demanding for the protection of same rights abroad. The belief, though based on a minimum collection of universal human rights may force the government of a state to frame its national security policy based on the belief and avoid acts of aggression that may infringe the individual rights of its citizens at home or overseas. International aggression tends to threaten individual rights in the state targeted.
The erosion of individual rights in Australia
It’s the role of the government to ensure that the fight for security does not undermine individual fundamental rights (Butler and Rodrick, 2015, p. 25;26). However, individual rights are no longer considered important since those laws that were arguably considered a violation of individual rights are now considered as a norm by the western democratic governments including Australia. These laws have provided a free room for searches without a warrant, detention arbitrarily and departures from the fair trial are what happens in Australia today (Bath, 2012, p. 5). An accused could be tied and charged without the knowledge of the evidence presented against them or without a lawyer to advocate for them. There are even attempts to justify torture in the suspects suspected to be terrorists in the name of national security. I believe that culture could be a better way of dealing with terrorism that using legislation (Taylor et al., 2014, p. 223). The Australian culture, the tolerant and liberal society that Australia is, has the capacity of controlling terrorism better than any other anti-terrorism legislative acts. By maintaining civil rights and upholding human rights and protecting individual rights, Australia can fight terrorism without compromising its national identity (Thuraisingham, 2002, p. 44). The legislation does not mandate the right to silence and failure to give certain information, giving false/misleading data is punishable.
The impact of security measures in Australia
Since the September bombing in 2011, the world has changed drastically including Australia (Colaresi, 2014, 3-4 ). Even though it is a liberal country, It has security cameras in most of its cities, observing the movements of its citizens from every corner, the police have access to warrants such tap individual phone calls, they carry out home and body search, managers monitor how their employees use the computers and the companies that major in sales and marketing are capable of creating individual spending habits through the customer credit cards, the government have access to personal information that is given unknowingly without a second thought. The government is also encouraging the people to spy on their neighbors for any signs of terrorism; all these are done under claims of the national security. The legislation acts used in Australia impacts all the Australian citizens even if they are not involved in the plans for terrorist attacks (Colaresi, 2014, 3-4). The legislation allows any citizen from Australia whether a lawyer, journalist, religious leaders, doctors, community health workers and even relatives to be whisked off for clarifications without notifying their friends or families with the allegations that they have some personal information associated to terrorism. Such people could disappear from the public site for a number of days. Detaining people and whisking them under unknown allegations under the cover of security is a form of torture and torture is prohibited by the international law since it is an extreme violation of the human rights (Bygrave, 2014, p. 5-6). Undermining these key legal rights sweeps away the civil liberties that make Australia a democratic country.
Control orders and further erosion of individual rights
The introduction of the control orders or the house arrest, where the control order means that court has control over individuals’ activities, the people they converse with and where they go further worsens the situation in Australia (Colaresi, 2014, 3-4 ). The control order prohibits a person from being in an association with certain people, from leaving Australia or being at specific places, access or use of certain technological tools including the internet and being in possession of certain articles, including working. The order also requires a person to remain at their premises, put on trackers, allow the security personnel to take copies of their photos and report to the security at certain intervals (Colaresi, 2014, 3-4 ). These orders seriously inroad the fundamental human rights including the right to liberty. They sanction individuals for the anticipation that they may participate in dangerous activities. Australia being a liberal democracy, individual rights and freedom should be its central objective in maintaining its national identity (Stoker, 2016, p. 44-49). However, this is not the case; it has failed to safeguard the individual rights at the expense of the national security. However, I feel that Australia has the capacity to achieve national security without necessarily violating the individual rights. If the government is to protect the liberal democracy then it has to ensure that the fundamental human rights are also protected. The government needs to limit its power and safeguard the individual liberties.
Preserving individual rights while ensuring national security
Instead of collecting personal information of security reasons, the government should focus on the actual threats. It should put in place incentives that will contribute in improving the general security, designing the security into systems and programs enabling the Australians to achieve the security they thirst for and at the same time preserve their civil liberties. Giving up individual rights may not necessarily provide a better national security since national security does not advocate for violating individual rights. It is high time nations withdraw from the false meme of national security and the individual privacy and focus on the implementation of the laws that fight for national security while protecting the fundamental individual rights.
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