The Eternal Value of Privacy

Discussion in 'Technical' started by melbo, Feb 26, 2011.


  1. melbo

    melbo Hunter Gatherer Administrator Founding Member

    Reading up on Darknets and came across this article:

    The most common retort against privacy advocates -- by those in favor of ID checks, cameras, databases, data mining and other wholesale surveillance measures -- is this line: "If you aren't doing anything wrong, what do you have to hide?"

    Some clever answers: "If I'm not doing anything wrong, then you have no cause to watch me." "Because the government gets to define what's wrong, and they keep changing the definition." "Because you might do something wrong with my information." My problem with quips like these -- as right as they are -- is that they accept the premise that privacy is about hiding a wrong. It's not. 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."

    Cardinal Richelieu understood the value of surveillance when he famously said, "If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged." Watch someone long enough, and you'll find something to arrest -- or just blackmail -- with. Privacy is important because without it, surveillance information will be abused: to peep, to sell to marketers and to spy on political enemies -- whoever they happen to be at the time.


    Read the rest of the article here:
    The Eternal Value of Privacy

    Darknet
     
  2. Brokor

    Brokor Live Free or Cry Moderator Site Supporter+++ Founding Member

    Yet, if we decide to watch the government it becomes a violation of "national security".

    What a world. Upside-down. We need to take it back.
     
  3. BAT1

    BAT1 Cowboys know no fear

    Their motto, if you start losing, change the rules, if they start speaking the truth, discredit them, if they persist, terminate them to scare the others. It's time for us to change the rules back to what's right, discredit them by speaking the truth, and if they persist...
     
  4. Tikka

    Tikka Monkey+++

     
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