|2016

WORLD REPORT 2016
HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH
cluding mass surveillance, beyond the formidable array of tools that they already
deploy.
In the US, CIA Director John Brennan used the Paris attacks to decry recent technical
and legal restrictions on intelligence agencies’ ability to engage in the
mass collection of phone metadata, even though those restrictions are modest
given the scope of mass surveillance revealed in 2013 by former National Security
Agency contractor Edward Snowden. Moreover, two independent oversight
bodies with access to classified information concluded that such metadata had
not been essential to foiling a single terrorist plot, despite the enormous invasion
of privacy involved in scooping up these often-intimate details of modern
life.
FBI Director James Comey also used the Paris attacks to revive efforts to require
Internet companies to include “back doors” to the strongest forms of encryption
they use. Companies have strived to build more secure systems following public
dismay at Snowden’s revelations. But there is no back door that only the good
guys can exploit. Criminals would inevitably have a field day, endangering critical
infrastructure and the sensitive communications of ordinary users. And the
terrorists will inevitably find their own encryption methods even if not from the
mass market.
Some European officials, too, appear tempted to increase mass surveillance.
France adopted a new intelligence law that bolstered mass surveillance powers.
The United Kingdom is in the process of doing the same. Yet the perpetrators in a
number of attacks in Europe have included people who were known to police but
not pursued due to lack of police resources.
French President François Hollande seemed to recognize this problem by promising
to add 8,500 more law enforcement officers to pursue leads, rather than simply
accumulating more mass data without the means to follow up. Still, after the
Paris attacks France also embraced potentially indiscriminate policing techniques,
with its president declaring a state of emergency that allows security
forces to conduct warrantless searches and arrests. The lack of court oversight
makes profiling all the more likely—in this case of young Muslim men. Police
stops based on such profiling have long plagued the very populations that
should be cultivated to help counter violence.
Civil Society Empowered by Social Media
While Europe and the US worry about the nexus of refugees and terrorism, political
and economic pressures have led authoritarian governments to fret about the
combination of civil society and social media.
A vigorous civil society helps to ensure that governments serve their people. Isolated
individuals find it difficult to speak loudly enough to be heard. Joining together
in civic groups amplifies their voices and leverages their ability to
influence governments. Civil society—the nongovernmental groups and associations
that enable people to band together on matters of mutual concern—is an
essential part of any democracy worth its name. Independent and vigorous civic
groups help to guarantee that governments build schools, ensure access to
health care, protect the environment, and take countless other steps to pursue
their vision of the common good.
Yet some officials see popular input not as a guide to policy, but as a threat.
When leaders are primarily interested in advancing themselves, their families, or
their cronies, the last thing they want is an empowered public, able to link together
and combine resources to investigate, publicize, protest, and rectify government
corruption, malfeasance, or incompetence.
In a different era, autocrats might have dispensed with any pretense of democratic
rule, but these days at least a facade of democracy is often a prerequisite
for legitimacy. Yet just as authoritarian rulers have learned to manipulate elections
to ensure their political longevity, so they are now working between elections
to prevent an empowered public from impeding their authoritarian aims.
By closing the political space in which civic groups operate, autocrats are trying
to suck the oxygen from organized efforts to challenge or even criticize their selfserving
reign.
In recent years, social media have made this competition between state and society
more free-wheeling and volatile. Until recently, civil society had to work
through traditional media to make its voice heard widely. The finite number of
traditional media outlets in any country made censorship easier.
Today, the rise of social media, especially when readily available on mobile devices,
means that people can bypass traditional media and speak to large num-
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