Schneier: Privacy is a human right
What do you have to hide? When it comes to privacy, that’s not the question, says Bruce Schneier in an excellent comment on Wired.
Privacy is an inherent human right, and a requirement for maintaining
the human condition with dignity and respect.Two proverbs say it best: Quis custodiet custodes ipsos? ("Who watches
the watchers?") and "Absolute power corrupts absolutely."
On the background of a new surveillance scandal going public every week or so, Schneier deals sternly with those who all too readily give up individual freedoms for a false sense of security.
How many of us have paused during conversation in the past four-and-a-half
years, suddenly aware that we might be eavesdropped on? Probably it was a
phone conversation, although maybe it was an e-mail or instant-message exchange
or a conversation in a public place. Maybe the topic was terrorism, or politics,
or Islam. We stop suddenly, momentarily afraid that our words might be taken
out of context, then we laugh at our paranoia and go on. But our demeanor has
changed, and our words are subtly altered.This is the loss of freedom we face when our privacy is taken from us.
This is life in former East Germany, or life in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.
And it’s our future as we allow an ever-intrusive eye into our personal,
private lives.
(His column is one of very few remaining reasons to actually check by there every now and then.)