Privacy and liberty in Holland

Thank you for the excellent

Thank you for the excellent comments.

I would say that in the United States several issues come together.  One is federalism; the government agencies that properly maintain citizen databases are divided among the local, state, and national levels.   This is intensified because certain functions that are national in most other countries are private in the US, most particularly health care.

There also are well-known scandals in US history of the Federal government secretly keeping and/or misusing information.   Most of these pertain to the FBI as led by J. Edgar Hoover, and the IRS under Nixon, but as old as they are they inform public perceptions to a considerable extent. 

Generally, and I think the Patriot Act debate on both sides is the most significant reasonable example, the prevailng polticial opinions fall into two camps, both overly extreme.   One is "The government can't and mustn't be trusted with information", and the other is "We're at war!  And if you aren't doing anything wrong, what have you got to hide?"

In my view, the collection of information is unstoppable, and slowing it down is  A.  Not a complete solution to the problem  B.  In some cases very wasteful and risky.  So I'd like to see the focus be on robust mechanisms to forestall abuse.  It is difficult to have that national debate, because the majority party does not want to raise the possibility that the judiciary system is acting too weakly to protect people against today's abuses, let alone tomorrow's.  But I say they should either defend their policies or change them.

Because we must have that debate.

CAM

It is a common misconception

It is a common misconception that we Dutch are libertarian, as it is a common misconception that we are Germanic in our law enforcement. From the Anglo-Saxon point of view, we are certainly different, but that is more because Dutch and most European law is derived from a combination of old Germanic law, and French post-revolutionary law, where American law is derived from colonial English law, itself derived from Magna Carta.

So we have a registrar's office, in The Netherlands, as do most other continental European countries, and we keep centralized personal records of all residents, in the centralized database of one's town or county of residence. This has been the case for centuries - this is why the bills of lading of the ships that brought European immigrants to the United States from the 16th century onwards have such amazing detail.

Government control of such databases, therefore, is very well established, and European Union data control guidelines, based on privacy legislation, are well adhered to. An example is the Privium cards, the Dutch project that allows border control using an iris scan - while the holder's personal information is contained in a centralized database, entries into which can only be authorized by the Dutch border police, the iris scan itself is only stored on the memory chip in the Privium card, of which there is no copy. It isn't in a centralized database, and so even if a miscreant were to steal the database information, without the holder's actual card and the holder's eye the data would be useless for border crossing. The concepts are simply different, and I am, as a Dutch citizen and American resident, impressed with the way the Europeans think out-of-the-box. You will hopefully agree that the use of databases with deliberately absent information, in the United States, would be anathema.

And yes, if the Dutchman, visiting home, would have checked into a hotel, and have an outstanding fine or a tax debt, he would indeed within 24 hours receive a visit from the police, as all hotels in Europe register every visitor with the police, by law. This doesn't just apply to The Netherlands - I have been pulled out of my car by a Belgian border control officer *at gunpoint* when they discovered an outstanding fine. Unholstering the sidearm and chambering a round was apparently standard practice, and I was blissfully unaware they had even levied a fine, which the Belgians apparently don't have to notify you about if you do not live in Belgium. And if you think that's bad, in France.... ;-)

So I am less concerned about databases in Europe than I am about those in the United States, there is little or no itermingling of government and private databases, and most importantly, there is no such device as a social security number..

Menno E. Aartsen
Washington, D.C.