Sarkozy wages war on the French (in secret)

Earlier this year, French President Sarkozy signed a secret decree to create a computer database to track and store details on "anyone active in politics or trade unions and or in a significant role in business, the media, entertainment or social or religious institutions." This includes children over the age of 13 who are "susceptible to breaching the public order." See here (London Times) and here (website of the French Data Protection Authority, in French).

The new database that Sarkozy wants to create will have information on millions of law abiding French people, and is appropriately named "Edvig." Edvig is the Italian form of "Hedwig" which is a combination of "hadu" meaning "contention" and "wig" meaning "war."

All this may sound familiar to those who have been following the Bush administration's attacks on civil liberties on this side of the Atlantic. A few years ago, the US military was creating a database that is eerily similar to Edvig. It, too, had an appropriate name: Total Information Awareness Program ("TIA"). As the ACLU explained in 2003:

Virtual dragnet programs like TIA ... are based on the premise that the best way to protect America against terrorism is for the government to collect as much information as it can about everyone - and these days, that is a LOT of information.

Here's the logo that TIA was using (notice the slogan: "knowledge is power") --


The libertarian Cato Institute described it as follows:

The TIA logo features an edited version of the Great Seal of the United States: The 13-block pyramid (think 13 original colonies) topped by the Eye of God. The original carries the phrase (translated from Latin) "A New Order of the Ages," reflecting a principled view of individual freedom quite alien to that of the Orwellian TIA office. The TIA's version perverts the proud seal that originally symbolized our freedom. The "eye" is no longer God's, but the federal government's, surveying the entire globe in a single glance. TIA's new slogan? "Knowledge is Power." But whose knowledge? And power to do what?

After a public outcry that TIA contravened basic American values, Congress shut down funding. However, as the Washington Times reported last year, not for long. The Department for Homeland Security revived the program in 2007.

Back in 2003, the ACLU pointed out a number of powerful objections to programs like TIA. For example, TIA kills privacy, harbors tremendous potential for abuse, and is based on virtual dragnets instead of individualized suspicion.

I would add another, overarching objection to these types of programs: "mission creep." Once given the power to collect data on any citizen, regardless of suspicion of wrongdoing, the state will never give it up. Rather, the state will provide endless new justifications why "we" are all better off not having control over basic information regarding our purchases and preferences, thereby hastening our slide into the National Surveillance State.

All of this is perhaps defensible if Edvig and TIA are implemented following widespread debate and in a democratic manner. But for decisive "men of action" like Sarkozy, Poindexter (TIA) and Chertoff (Homeland Security), democracy is too messy.