Fight against government tyranny in privacy right

-- By ChengyuTan - 20 Nov 2020

Last month, Taiwan’s Ministry of Justice tried to introduce a new act “Technology Investigation Act,” which will provide the prosecutors and law enforcement agencies with “high-tech tools” to gather evidence, including using GPS, drone and hacking technic. This proposal is opposed by legal scholars, bar associations and several civil rights groups, forcing the Ministry of Justice to withdraw the proposal. However, the government still asserts that it is necessary to let prosecutors and law enforcement agencies have more advance “weapons” to fight against the emerging digital crimes, and the Ministry of Justice will release a new proposal in the future.

The “Technology Investigation Act”

The Ministry of Justice's proposed act will grant the prosecutors and law enforcement agencies the power to: 1) using drones to keep the suspect under surveillance, identifying the suspect's smartphone or smart car to locate his position and even installing a GPS signal sender to trace the suspect's path; and 2) gathering evidence directly from suspect's smartphone or other devices by hacking into or install surveillance programs in them. It is very disputed whether law enforcement agencies can use these new tools to help their investigation, and how to practice is also in a “wild-west.” In fact, law enforcement agencies in Taiwan frequently used part one's tools during the investigations, until the Supreme Court decided that installing a GPS signal sender on the suspect's car to trace his path would commit the Offenses Against Privacy and an officer was found guilty for that. Thus, it is not so that surprised that the government is trying to legitimize those part one tools. However, it is beyond people's imagination that the government is attempting to ignore the people's freedom of privacy of correspondence and empower itself by allowing itself to hack into people's smartphones. So, why the government does that?

Restore its previous ability only?

Tracing back to the last century, people's communications largely depended on the telecom system. The unencrypted vocal signals were transmitted to every part of the world via those government own or government-sponsored pipes. Under this circumstance, intercepting or monitoring communications was always an easy thing for the government. However, because of the development of the internet and instant message software, the vocal signal was replaced by data packets. The communication was split into dozens of data packets and encrypted at the beginning. As a result, even the government is still controlling the pipes and able to collect those data packets, the contents she collected are only some meaningless codes. The government cannot decrypt those packets cost-efficient and in a prompt way. The proposed act will allow law enforcement agencies to gather the unencrypted communication from senders' or decrypted communication from receivers' smartphones promptly and directly, restoring the accessibility of all communication made by people, just as the thing she previously could do. Thus, some supporters bring up an interesting point: “the government is merely trying to restore its ability to detect crimes. And to keep public safety, we should support the government's proposal.” However, disregard the rightfulness of the wiretap, can we simply see it as a replacement for the traditional wiretap and support its proposal? I don't think so.

Beyond the wiretap

The reason why the smartphone can be called as “smartphone” is that we offer all our information as a tribute, so that we can use all its fancy functions. In other words, it may store our activities, relationships, hobbies and even health information. By hacking into people's smartphones, governments can not only collect the unencrypted conversation that law enforcement agencies desire but also be allowed to access our most private, intimate or embarrassing information and detailed record of daily life. Surveillance is undergone quite a metamorphosis. With these pieces of information, our thought can be analyzed, personality can be modeled and behavior can be predicted. That is the field that a traditional wiretap can definitely never reach. So, unsurprisingly, governments will not only try to restore their crime detection ability but also camouflage their intention of extending the power.

What’s next?

The constant experience tells us that every man with power has a tendency to abuse it, until he touches the boundary. And the boundary setting is not a gift but a conquest from a long-time fight with Lords, Kings and, now, governments. We should not narrow the boundary ourselves, just as our ancestors did not give up their freedoms but to fight for that. Unlike the age that our ancestors need to sacrifice their lives for fighting against governments, we can have other civil ways to resist government tyranny. Based on the ending of the “Technology Investigation Act” proposal, I would say one possible approach would be to launch people's awareness, then to increase the political pressure on the government. But I have to say, only part of people are aware of their digital privacy and the most population is still lacking that awareness.

Of course, one of the helpful ways to increase awareness is to teach children about their privacy rights. Just as we teach children about constitutional rights, we should also introduce privacy right in classrooms. Once they understand the importantness of privacy right and know how to protect their right, they will start to protect it exactly as our ancestors did hundreds of years before. But we also need other urgent ways. Following the paths of those legal scholars and groups, all people with privacy right awareness should speak out against governments expending its power, trying to influence others in a way other than school education. Unless the majority of people learn about privacy right and is willing to fight for it, governments will never stop trying to deprive that from us.

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