ליברטריאנים בישראל

As we know, the Knesset has passed a law to phase in a gradual introduction of a biometric identity database. For two years, joining the database will be voluntary, and afterwards, it will become mandatory. Everything about this project is wrongheaded. It creates a centralized database of personal data for the government to browse through. The Israeli government admitted in writing they’re incapable of keeping the information secure. The contract for building the database has been awarded to Hewlett-Packard without a contest. In short, we are given a trifecta – of oppression, ineptness, and corruption.

Yet, we are told, there is no reason to resist. After all, we have already accepted interference in our private lives. “You are screened and patted down when you enter bus stations. You are mandated by law to carry an identity card everywhere you go,” – the proponents remind us – “And the same things are being now introduced outside Israel too – in the United Kingdom, and in continental Europe, and in America. There is no alternative to this state of affairs – this is modernity. Don’t be such a hopeless romantic. Stop resisting. You can’t win.”

This is not an argument, my fellow freemen. This isn’t even an attempt at an argument. That is an operation of psychological warfare. They want to scare you – to persuade you that it is unimaginable to live a life without the dozens of tiny little chains and invasions of privacy that they had invented. They want you to surrender and give up – because when you give up, they win.

They will forget to tell you that no civilized country maintains a complete biometric tracking database like the one they want to establish. They will forget to tell you that the United States does not mandate a national ID card system, and neither does Canada or Britain. They will forget to tell you that in most of the world, you can get onto a bus without having a person poke through your bags – that life is completely possible without them. They will forget to tell you that the last suicide bombing in Israeli history occurred over 2 years ago. We are paying for security guards and invasive security measures to defend against a ‘threat’ that has already faded into the past.

Though the proponents of databases and monitoring remind us exist alternatives to their panopticon, to their endless array of CCTV cameras, to their idea of protecting us – by tracking every move we make. People have lived before total surveillance. People live without total surveillance now, and they will live after total surveillance is a thing of the past.

But if we want our liberties, our privacy, our dignity to be secure, we must remember one thing: resistance is not futile. Even if we lose one battle, even if they pass one law, every inch of ground they gain in this country must be an inch they pay for – in time, in money, and in lost votes. Every political struggle they expend resources in makes it harder for them to pursue us with more restrictions. Whereas we will never surrender – because we are fighting not even for our freedom, but for our basic dignity as human beings, the right not to be peeked on.

Resistance is never futile.

Even if we stop the biometric database, it will not be enough. It is not sufficient to stop at the status quo – because the biometricians are right, the status quo is already invasive. And if we accept it, or acceptance of it will be used against us to launch another assault against our liberty tomorrow. We must do away with the teudat zehut, with the monitoring of cellphones and of e-mails. We don’t need that. Americans live without it and so can we. It is not inevitable that these things exist. Resistance is never futile.

This is the only way to defeat the biometricians – to refuse to accept anything they’ve already accomplished as a done deal. Let us remind them that everything they accomplished can be threatened and taken away from them, that their apparatus of tracking and peeking and eavesdropping can and will be broken and taken away from them. It is not forever to stay. Resistance is never futile.

~~Boris Karpa