On November 15th, the ROM welcomes Jameel Jaffer for the 11th Annual Eva Holtby Lecture on Contemporary Culture. Last week, The Strand sat down with Jaffer to discuss his upcoming lecture, “Going Dark”. In this lecture, Jaffer discusses the legal, political, and social consequences of allowing democratic governments to withhold information about national security from the public.
Jaffer, a civil liberties and human rights attorney, has spent the last 14 years as Deputy Legal Director at the American Civil Liberties Union working on issues of international human rights and arguing cases of national security. Most notably, he is known for litigating a case under the Freedom of Information Act that issued the release of the “torture memos” concerning the torture of prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay and in CIA black sites under the Bush administration.
“Post 9/11, the government has become increasingly more secretive regarding the terms and effects of policies,” Jaffer stated. “As we [the public] become more known by the government through significant technological developments, such as increased mass surveillance programmes, their actions are actually becoming more covert. I find myself concerned with the implications of the intersections of those two trends.”
Confidentiality is a concern for Jaffer, as he is aware of the access the government has to personal information, and what they are able to do with that kind of power. He explains, “personal information is being sold to surveillance agencies, which for example, allows the government to have access to private information such as your social media activity, your search history, and your cellphone GPS data. At this point, there is very little which they don’t know about you. Tracking absolutely changes everything.”
Jaffer stated that the immediate effect of mass surveillance is the hindrance of public debate and creativity. “We are a population of people who live in constant fear of making mistakes. We are no longer able to make a few slip-ups and then ‘turn over a new leaf’ because there is no such thing as deleting anymore and everything stays with you forever,” he explained. “I’m not saying that we should abandon new technologies or only see them as a threat, but there is certainly a level of danger and vulnerability that comes along with their usage.”
He continued, “Technology and social practices have progressed so quickly that we haven’t even fully absorbed the implications of this pervasive surveillance. The same technology that connects us, also allows governments and corporations to see everything that we do. I strongly believe that these effects run much deeper on a psychological level. Our perspective completely changes when the government observes our every move, but then leaves us in the dark.”
Jaffer encourages students to attend his upcoming ROM lecture, “Going Dark.” He intends to discuss in detail the cases he’s been involved with regarding government secrecy and he hopes to highlight what we should understand from them. “Students need to be aware of these issues because they are the next generation and these legal disputes will shape the world they live in. The government is responsible for designing policies to keep us safe, but you can’t influence a policy that you know nothing about. There is an apparent conflict between national security and human rights, and the cases I will be discussing are among some of the most significant of our time.”
More information on Jameel Jaffer and “Going Dark” can be found under the What’s On section at rom.on.ca
