The Digital Era 3

6State Surveillance: How Much is Too Much?

The collection of information is as old as the notion of the state. Fouché’s police set up real intelligence services in Napoleonic-era France that were modern and well organized¹. This form of police surveillance has been maintained throughout modern history; it developed considerably during the first half of the 20th century. During the Second World War, the countries occupied by Germany suffered greatly from it; but, after the excesses of the Third Reich and the Cold War that followed, peace had eased this insistent surveillance of the people during the last decades of the 20th century. The terrorism that has struck the West and many other regions of the world over the last 20 years has, unfortunately, triggered a security reflex within Western democracies: observing the people’s anxiety, our governments are implementing technical and human measures that allow them to monitor their territory, visitors and the whole population. Technology facilitates the collection and conservation of a very large amount of information on each and every one of us; the cheaper this Big Data is, the longer the traces recorded on us are kept. It then becomes difficult to live serenely because, at least formally, the monitoring of every individual person creates an environment of strict surveillance that reminds us of visionary dystopias of the 20th century².

Privacy is therefore restricted within our society, whose quietness is consequently not only ...