Newspaper editorials: State's hunger for surveillance undermining society
Postimees and Eesti Päevaleht along with Delfi sharply criticize the state's breach of banking secrecy in their editorials, placing it alongside the recent license plate recognition camera scandal and the super-database law — all of which significantly infringe upon individuals' rights and freedoms.
Postimees
Financial analyst Peeter Koppel, in a social media post, compares the state to a toxic romantic partner. Such a partner needs to know a citizen's whereabouts and bank account balance. It constantly lectures the citizen on how to sit and walk properly. When the citizen tries to speak up about their rights, the state turns passive-aggressive (recall, for example, the finance minister's claim that prices go up because people complain about them). And in the end, officials respond with word salad and psychological manipulation, making the citizen feel irrational and delusional," reads the Postimees editorial.
"Tracking people's movements with speed cameras, the super-database bill and now the breach of banking secrecy. Connect the dots, and you see where the line is taking us," the paper concludes.
Eesti Päevaleht and Delfi
"Government agencies must not be allowed to illegally access our bank statements through the enforcement register," states Eesti Päevaleht in its editorial. "Such state-level snooping undermines the general sense of security in our society."
Legalizing the current de facto situation quickly is certainly not the solution, the paper adds.
The editorial also notes that this incident brings to mind a series of similar initiatives that, taken together, make the state resemble a jealous girlfriend — one who takes your picture, wants to know where you are, who you're with, how much money you have and what you spend it on.
"Nor is the solution simply to legalize the current de facto situation — as Interior Minister Igor Taro (Eesti 200) recently attempted to do with the license plate recognition camera issue," the editorial concludes.
On Tuesday, the Office of the Chancellor of Justice, Ülle Madise, announced that an inspection had found government agencies were accessing bank account data through the enforcement register without a legal basis — without the account holder ever being made aware.
Over the past year, state agencies have made tens of thousands of such requests to banks.
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Editor: Marcus Turovski
