Conference News: Madrid Global Privacy Conference & Declaration

I’ve just gotten back from a privacy conference in Madrid titled “Global Privacy Standards for a Global World” which was organized by The Public Voice. One highlight of the conference was the presentation of a Civil Society Declaration calling for the development of international privacy standards — and perhaps most controversially — a moratorium on “the development or implementation of new systems of mass surveillance, including facial recognition, whole body imaging, biometric identifiers, and embedded RFID tags, subject to a full and transparent evaluation by independent authorities and democratic debate." Numerous organizations and individuals have signed the statement (already dubbed “The Madrid Declaration”) and you can, too, by sending an e-mail to privacyATDatos-personalesDOTorg.

Another highlight was an emphatic speech by Stavros Lambrinidis, Vice President of the EU Parliament, declaring that the growing scope of surveillance within the western world is incompatible with democratic society and urging everyone not to simply allow the expanding creep of the level of surveillance to continue unchecked. There is a danger that the ultimate surveillance society will not emerge under a totalitarian regime, he claimed, but rather with citizens’ unreflected “consent.” You can have a look at what else was discussed by calling up the conference agenda here.

One special guest not listed on the program was a representative of Un barrio feliz – a grass-roots movement which has sprung up in opposition to plans to install a system of video surveillance cameras in Madrid’s Lavapiés district. You can view the movement’s blog in Spanish here. One major complaint was that the police have not been forthcoming concerning the plan and the underlying reasons for it. We heard that the local police have cited different grounds for installing camera systems in other neighborhoods (in one case – pick-pocketing, in another – prostitution), and that cameras were needed in Lavapiés because unsavory characters inhabited or frequented the area. The speaker from Un barrio feliz, however, reported that crime statistics indicate that criminal incidents have been decreasing in Lavapiés, making the police’s explanation all the more baffling. Lambrinidis picked up on these examples in his speech to question whether many of the methods of surveillance that have been proposed or implemented could be deemed necessary, proportional, and appropriate in a legal sense.