They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty or safety.

-- Benjamin Franklin

JaBbA's Hut

White Hat Liberal Geek Dad

Friday, June 16. 2006

If you aren't doing anything wrong...

Bruce Schneier has published an article succinctly stating the case for why privacy rights are so important:

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.

JaBbA says check it out.

Posted by JaBbA in Privacy & Identity at 13:08 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

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