Niedzviecki asks why nobody seems to care, and it’s partly that these systems have been implemented in an incremental, technocratic manner, outside ordinary democratic processes, and therefore off the radar of the public and even elected representatives. But as he indicates, there is also widespread apathy about, if not outright acceptance of, increased surveillance in Western countries, none of which have seriously debated the full implications. With the recent speed of change, we are still too busy playing with these toys. We haven’t figured out whether any of them actually makes us safer, nor at what point their potential benefits outweigh the harm they wreak on our democratic way of life.Citizens are the proverbial frog swimming in water the state is slowly bringing to a boil. We thought we learned something with the case of Maher Arar. Sadly, it will take a lot of John Smiths being detained, rendered, denied jobs or mobility across the border, or linked to crimes they did not commit before a critical mass of citizens wakes up to the fact that we are living in a society where the freedoms we once took for granted are subject to new regimes of permission, and where any of us — Muslim or not — could be swept off the street based on a flawed “risk assessment.”
