“Is a surveillance society the shape of things to come?” Leading civil rights and justice expert Tony Bunyan will speak this weekend at a talk organised by the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) on Saturday, 20 June 2009 in the Blue Room of the Law Society of Ireland, Blackhall Place, Dublin 7 from 3.30pm.
Tony’s talk will look at the ideology of the E.U. Future Group report, Freedom, Security and Privacy – the area of European Home Affairs. The E.U. is currently developing a new five year strategy for justice and home affairs and security policy for 2009-2014. The proposals set out by the shadowy ‘Future Group’ include a range of controversial measures including techniques and technologies of surveillance and enhanced cooperation with the United States.
He will examine the proposals of the Future Group and their relation to existing and planned EU policies. Tony’s analysis suggests that European governments and EU policy-makers are pursuing unfettered powers to access and gather masses of personal data on the everyday life of everyone – on the grounds that we can all be safe and secure from perceived “threats”.
Tony Bunyan said:
“The Council of the European Union, the European Commission, national governments, the law enforcement agencies and the multinationals believe that technology, not values and morality, should drive change. They believe they have balanced freedom and security when all with eyes and ears to see and hear know that liberties and freedoms have been made subservient to the demands of security.”
“The national and European states require unfettered powers to access and gather masses of personal data on the everyday life of everyone so that we can all be safe and secure from perceived “threats”. But how are we to be safe from the state itself, from its uses and abuses of the data they hold on us?” he added.
“If we do not have an open and meaningful debate now we never will, because by then it will be too late,” he concluded.