Book Review: Simon Chesterman, One Nation Under Surveillance. A New Social Contract to Defend Freedom Without Sacrificing Liberty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011, 320 pp., £20.00 hbk)
| Date | 01 September 2011 |
| Published date | 01 September 2011 |
| DOI | 10.1177/03058298110400011216 |
| Author | Anita Lavorgna |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Book Reviews 213
Moreover, the text helps to highlight the evolution of policies within regimes that later
became genocidal. This volume should be read by anyone exploring the intersection of
nationalism and collective violence.
Guy Lancaster
Guy Lancaster is the Editor of the online Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture.
Simon Chesterman, One Nation Under Surveillance. A New Social Contract to Defend Freedom
Without Sacrificing Liberty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011, 320 pp., £20.00 hbk).
Legal and political debates over the proper balance between liberty and control on the
one hand, and between privacy and security on the other, are long-standing, and these
dichotomies have usually been interpreted as zero-sum games. In this thought-provoking
book, Chesterman aims to shift the focus of these debates from the issue of whether sen-
sitive information should be gathered by governments to how it ought to be used.
The equilibrium that liberal democracies established during the 20th century was
based on a distinction between the foreign and the domestic: with governments allowing
intelligence activities to target foreigners, but imposing various types of legal and politi-
cal constraints on spying on their own citizens. According to Chesterman, however, this
distinction is increasingly eroding due to changes in the threats faced by the global com-
munity, as well as in technology and culture. These changes have led to a transformation
in the balance between ‘trust and fear’ (p. 39), and consequently to the extent that power
and discretion have been given to intelligence services. The expansion in the collection
and the analysis of sensitive information in a globalised world is inevitable and it should
be addressed, he argues, by reframing the dynamic relationships between citizens and
policymakers through the mechanism of a new social contract.
Chesterman’s major contribution to the debate concerns the trade-off between privacy
and security: he proposes ‘a framework to defend freedom without sacrificing liberty’
(p. 13). To support his argument that the debate should focus on the use of information,
he also provides an insightful discussion of accountability structures, which he considers
essential for improving ‘not just the legitimacy but also the quality of intelligence’
(p. 240); in particular, he stresses the importance of an accountability regime to prevent
and combat the misuse of data.
On this new social contract between governors and the governed where access to
information is exchanged for the security and conveniences of modern life, Chesterman
claims that, even if the precise terms of this contract reflect differences in various societ-
ies, the view that intelligence should be public, legal and consequence-sensitive should
be broadly acceptable in liberal democracies. Unluckily, as the book itself shows, this is
not always the case – for instance, the counter-terrorism work of the intelligence services
and in particular the engagement of private contractors have raised several concerns
about their capacity to collect and analyse information due to their lack of accountability.
Only time will tell whether Chesterman’s beliefs on culture and an active citizenry can
improve the framework within which intelligence operates are justified.
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