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Theme 2021 : Trust, Mistrust and Surveillance

Like an uncontrollable and unrestrained catalyst for any and all risk of compromising our fundamental freedoms, the pandemic seems to have intensified the deteriorating relationship between States and citizens. The difficulty in managing the health crisis has clearly accelerated and normalised existing control mechanisms of surveillance and governance in the form of statistics and algorithms of all kinds. While this assessment applies to States and their people, it also includes certain horizontal observation practices among citizens themselves. However, the old multilateral mechanisms of democracy are essential for the rule of law and require vigorous surveillance at all times.

While trust and mistrust enable us to challenge our relationships to information, knowledge, authority, coercion, and the collective, how can we ensure that critical thinking is used in a nuanced way? What level of trust should we have toward the State? How wary should we be about possible civil liberties violations? How can we continue to trust facts, scientific knowledge and legal rights as a basis for what binds us together as a society? Without denying the reality of the situation, how can we continue to promote civil liberties and rights at a time when we see policies based on autocratic reflexes and inspired by a conservative, fearful mindset on the horizon? How can we understand and mitigate the recourse to expressions of exclusion, judgement and condemnation among citizens? Do States and citizens share the same taste for distrust and external causation to the detriment of nuance, proportionality and trust?