The examples provided illustrate that privacy is not always considered important when weighed against other interests, or sometimes not even considered at all.
270 Lag (2002:297) om biobanker i hälso- och sjukvården m.m.
271 Dagens Nyheter, PKU-registret har friat mordmisstänkta, 2003-11-27.
272 Lag 2005:1 om ändring i lagen 2002:297 om biobanker i hälso- och sjukvården m.m.
273 Lagrådets yttrande, 2005-01-07.
274 Axberger, 2009. p. 480.
275 Socialutskottets betänkande, 2004/05:SOU14.
95 sh law.
This conclusion is supported by a recent report by an official committee surveying the need for increased privacy protection in Sweden.
The Committee's survey and analysis has shown that the legislature does not put sufficient emphasis on the privacy aspects when new legislation is drafted. Even generally speaking privacy protection is valued relatively low in the legislation. A contributing factor to this may be that the constitution has no legal provision for the right of citizens to protection of personal integrity that balances the other rights and freedoms that citizens are ensured.276
In the case of specific deficiencies, the committee found that one of the most striking was the fact that a government commission scrutinizing the security services and personal integrity in 2002 was highly critical of the the security police’s use of coercive procedural measures (such as the use of wiretaps), yet their critical report still has not led to any new arrangements for transparency and control. Neither had any new laws concerning police databases been enacted despite statements by the government as early as 1990 that an overview of this area was needed with regards to the protection of personal integrity. The committee found that this passiveness from the side of the legislator was all the more remarkable when considering that during that time there have been comprehensive and vigorous legal reforms aimed to give police access to even more privacy-sensitive information.277
When privacy is considered, there are signs suggesting that the balance arguments made in prior legislation gets recycled in new legislative proposals without a critical consideration on whether those arguments are still valid, or appropriate in the first place. An example of this is the legislator preparing the law on secret audio surveillance citing privacy arguments from the preparatory works of the law on phone tapping.278 The reason for this could be that balancing privacy is difficult, especially so in a legislative context like the Swedish one which is highly pragmatic and suspicious of inalienable rights.279 Axberger suggests that the concept of personal integrity as represented in the Swedish legislation is not usable as a legal tool and that the difficulty in defining and demarcating the concept of privacy has been a major argument against a general protection for privacy in Swedi 280
Whatever the reason it is clear that currently, privacy does not carry the weight in Sweden to survive when balanced against security or public and political interests.
276 SOU 2008:3, p. 255. (My translation).
277 SOU 2008:3, p. 193.
278 Supra note 21.
279 Axberger, 2009. p. 468.
280 Ibid.
96 an
weighed against other interests’ privacy co
As Paris puts it; “[human security] actors have in effect pursued a political strategy The potential effect of human security
Into this cauldron of privacy it is now time to add human security. It is perhaps too soon to say whether the concept will have a major impact on actual public policy, at least in Sweden.281 I will however make the argument that it probably will come to affect policy, if nothing else as a symptom or part of a general trend of securitization. Human security does offer a powerful conceptual advantage for interest groups in that it can frame a wide variety of issues in a – sometimes well deserved – security context. In an environment containing an overpowering security apparatus, or where state security is prioritized above the welfare of citizens, human security offers a way to include the individual human perspective into the national security framework.
One problem however, is that human security contains some contradictions. A list of security threats will within itself contain a natural hierarchy in that economical security matters little if you don’t have physical security. For this reason the freedom from fear approach to human security seems more coherent than the freedom from want concept. Like Krause points out, labeling everything a security threat makes the concept loose its utility for policy-makers and
alysts.282
If you look past these contractions and consider the possibility of human security gaining traction within a national legislative context such as Sweden, what impact would it have? The focus of human security studies has traditionally taken place within the framework of international security studies. What effect could human security have when applied within a national framework? The examples provided suggest that when privacy is
ncerns has a tendency to be put aside.
The tsunami disaster in the Indian Ocean is in a way a very telling example of how human security could affect public policy. The disaster highlighted two things, the way it caught politicians off guard, and the public and media outcry that followed their initial passivity. It is unlikely that the Swedish public at large had studied human security and used that as a rationale for their frustration with the government. Rather, the popular outcry that was the result of the government’s failure to evacuate and care for Swedish citizens halfway around the world, is in my opinion a symptom of a growing notion that the state has a far-reaching responsibility to protect its citizens from threats and crisis even outside the state. In Sweden this outcry led to a rushed legislative response where privacy concerns apparently was so unimportant that they were not even considered. My argument is that human security – once mainstreamed into civil society and promoted by interest groups and international organizations – may have the same, albeit slower potential of creating new security interests to balance and conquer over privacy.
281 In Canada, Norway and Japan human security has affected foreign policy, see Krause, 2007.
282 Krause, 2007, p. 5.
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of ‘appropriating’ the term ‘security’, which conveys urgency, demands public attention, and commands governmental resources.”283
So is human security so different a concept from national security? Of course in some ways it is, it adds aspects to the security concept that traditionally has not been considered relevant in discussions on security. But looking at the impact on national security we can see that new security threats have shifted the notion of what constitutes national security. Terrorism and organized crime are now considered more potent threats to the stability of many states than invasions from neighboring countries. The desire to prevent both requires proactive policing, concentrating on preventing the crime, protecting citizens from threats. You could argue that national security in some states is meeting human security half-way by changing the focus of the security sector without ever consciously adopting the human security concept.
Security is, as Buzan puts it a way to lift an issue above and beyond politics.
Unfortunately the modest examples given in this paper illustrates that the right to privacy is not above politics, but rather treated as simply one interest among others, or simply as a theoretical exercise standing in the way of desired reforms. If the balancing of privacy will continue to be made as it has been done in the past it is clear that when faced with new interests labeled as security concerns, privacy will suffer.
This further illustrates the contradictory interests that are built in to the human security concept. When security interests beneficial to the individual collide with human right interests, human security offers no guidance as to how to balance the two. Indeed it may inadvertently become the finger on the scales, shifting the balance towards security at the cost of the right to privacy.
283 Paris 2001, p. 95.
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References
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Asp, Petter, Går det att se en internationell trend? – om preventionismen i den moderna straffrätten, Svensk Juristtidning, 2007, p. 70-82.
Axberger, Hans Gunnar, Integritetsskydd i perspektiv, Svensk Juristtidning, 2009.
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Beckman, Ludvig, Godtagbart i ett demokratiskt samhälle? De hemliga tvångsmedlen och rätten till personlig integritet, Svensk Juristtidning, 2006, p. 1-13.
Buzan, Barry; Wæver, Ole; de Wilde, Jaap, Security – a New Framework for Analysis, Lynne Rainer, Boulder, 1997.
Dodds, Felix and Pippard, Tim (ed.), Human & Environmental Security – An Agenda for Change, Earthscan, London, 2005.
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Helmius, Ingrid, Polisens rättsliga befogenheter vid spaning, Iustus, Uppsala, 2000.
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Dagens Nyheter, PKU-registret har friat mordmisstänkta, 2003-11-27, available at:
http://www.dn.se/nyheter/sverige/pku-registret-har-friat-mordmisstankt-1.224150, accessed 2009-06-22.
Official documents
Proposition 1995/96:85 Hemlig kameraövervakning.
Proposition 2005/06:178 Hemlig rumsavlyssning.
SOU 1998:54, Hur offensiv IT-användning kan skapa tillväxt för mindre företag.
SOU 2008:3, Skyddet för den personliga integriteten - Bedömningar och förslag.
Socialutskottets betänkande, 2004/05:SOU14 – Användning av PKU-biobanken för identifiering av avlidna med anledning av naturkatastrofen i Sydostasien.
Lagrådets yttrande, Nytt ändamål för PKU-biobanken, 2005-01-07, available at
http://www.lagradet.se/yttranden/Nytt%20andamal%20for%20PKU-biobanken.pdf
Legislation
Lag 1960:729 Lag om upphovsrätt till litterära och konstnärliga verk.
1974:152 Regeringsformen.
Lag (2002:297) om biobanker i hälso- och sjukvården m.m.
Lag 2005:1 om ändring i lagen 2002:297 om biobanker i hälso- och sjukvården m.m.
Lag 2007:978 om hemlig rumsavlyssning.
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101 Peter Wahlgren