IP Democracy: Why Privacy Matters Even for the Innocent

In the wake of the NSA calling records scandal, the issue of privacy and why it matters to folks is getting a lot of ink. Security expert Bruce Schneier has this essay in Wired News that makes an eloquent case for why even innocent individuals should worry about having their activities monitored or uncovered.

Those who would violate the privacy of others say “If you’re not doing anything wrong, what do you have to hide?” This argument is used not only by the government but also by employers and litigants and enemies and anybody who wants to get their hands on our private information for their own purposes.

Schneier answers this question by noting that information on even the most innocent individual can be twisted to fit some cooked-up argument of wrong-doing.

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. Privacy protects us from abuses by those in power, even if we’re doing nothing wrong at the time of surveillance.

When someone has access to our private thoughts, activities and feelings, we are simply no longer safe.

For if we are observed in all matters, we are constantly under threat of correction, judgment, criticism, even plagiarism of our own uniqueness. We become children, fettered under watchful eyes, constantly fearful that — either now or in the uncertain future — patterns we leave behind will be brought back to implicate us, by whatever authority has now become focused upon our once-private and innocent acts. We lose our individuality, because everything we do is observable and recordable.

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on May 19, 2006 8:23 AM to IP Democracy