Umberto Eco’s novel The Name of the Rose is set in an isolated abbey in the mountains, sometime in the Middle Ages. The book was a bestseller in the late 1980s, with its intriguing story of murder in a medieval library.
Its dark, labyrinthine passages watched by hooded monks, the library acted like a fortress guarding forbidden and dangerous knowledge. The monks understood the power of the written word, the silent voice of history.
E-mails began to replace physical letters around 20 years ago. I remember people’s dismay at the thought that, with the disappearance of paper, no records would survive into the future. The ephemeral nature of digital knowledge was thought to be transient. Information stored in a cloud in cyberspace would eventually dissolve and disappear without a trace.
The tables have turned full circle. Today’s fear is that nothing will ever be erased. Every thought jotted down in a hurried e-mail, every website visited, may be indelibly engraved in the global virtual record. A law is even being contemplated in Malta to permit some people to erase their history on search engines, for example to avoid discrimination at the workplace due to past misdemeanours. The idea may be well-intentioned, but hiding personal histories from friends smacks of deceit.
There is nowhere to hide. We are being stalked by our past selves on the internet. Our mobile phones act as tracking devices and we are surrounded by closed-circuit cameras everywhere. Instead of hiding away in the cupboard, those annoying skeletons will prance around merrily on the web for eternity.
Governments tend to favour greater legal powers for surveillance. UK Home Secretary Theresa May’s Investigatory Powers Bill, currently under discussion, seeks to widen the access of security services and police to electronic data. The idea of the State prying into personal lives is raising hackles and the surveillance Bill has been labelled the ‘snooper’s charter’ by critics.
No matter how careful you are, your personal data can be used to misrepresent you
People are concerned about the implications on privacy of mass digital surveillance, supposedly intended for counter-terrorism purposes. Where do you draw the line? Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights affirms that no one is to be subjected to arbitrary interference with privacy, family, home or correspondence. Privacy rights are diminished for public figures, especially those who have willingly accepted their public role, as their behaviour can reveal traits which influence the way they carry out their duties.
This week professor Joe Cannataci, who was appointed the UN Special Rapporteur on Privacy in July, described the proposed UK surveillance Bill as ‘worse than scary’.
Recent UN reports have focused on the right to privacy in digital media, especially the mass collection of personal data, and the interception of digital communications.
No matter how careful you are, your personal data can be used to misrepresent you if it falls into the hands of those with malicious intentions. If it should be private, then it must stay that way. Governments are not elected to be official hackers.
A common response is that if you are innocent then you have nothing to hide. But privacy is important, and a fundamental human right.
Whistleblower Edward Snowden had remarked that this is like not caring about freedom of speech because you have nothing to say, and he had a point there. Privacy and confidentiality do matter.
Part two
Politicians are constantly pointing fingers at one another, but public servants operate within very different parameters.
When there is a problem, government officials generally tend to close ranks. They mutter inanities, disappear behind multiple enquiries and leave questions unanswered, but rarely point fingers directly at their colleagues in public to apportion blame.
This is, however, what happened this week when the Malta Environment and Planning Authority’s CEO blamed the Superintendent for Cultural Heritage for the lighting disaster on the façade of Auberge de Castille in Valletta. This was so unusual that people were immediately speculating, perhaps quite unfairly, that the Superintendent was being scapegoated to make way for someone else.
A confrontational stance between public entities is about to be institutionalised in the Mepa demerger laws, which are soon to be approved by Parliament.
In the new scenario, Mepa can grant permits without the consent of other government authorities. The authorities responsible for transport, cultural heritage, environment, health, resources, or whatever, will then have the option to enter into combat with Mepa at a tribunal to make themselves heard.
If they are concerned about the permit, ignored authorities will have to dedicate precious time and resources to prove their expert opinion to the legal tribunal. This is so cumbersome that it will presumably happen quite rarely, so Mepa’s decisions will largely go unchallenged.
Instead of the law ensuring that consensus is reached before a decision on a development application is taken, the two public entities will lock horns, each attempting to demolish their opponent’s arguments and expertise in public, to wrangle over a building permit.
An authority can hardly be viewed as an authority if its position is defied by another government entity in that manner. Whoever dreamt up this tragedy has done a great disservice to the public sector.
petracdingli@gmail.com