TheAgitator.com
“Privacy and Security Are a Zero-Sum Game”
Tuesday, January 29th, 2008That’s the crap your federal government is peddling.
Bruce Schneier calls bullshit, and explains the false dichotomy:
Security and privacy are not opposite ends of a seesaw; you don’t have to accept less of one to get more of the other. Think of a door lock, a burglar alarm and a tall fence. Think of guns, anti-counterfeiting measures on currency and that dumb liquid ban at airports. Security affects privacy only when it’s based on identity, and there are limitations to that sort of approach.
Since 9/11, two — or maybe three — things have potentially improved airline security: reinforcing the cockpit doors, passengers realizing they have to fight back and — possibly — sky marshals. Everything else — all the security measures that affect privacy — is just security theater and a waste of effort.
By the same token, many of the anti-privacy “security” measures we’re seeing — national ID cards, warrantless eavesdropping, massive data mining and so on — do little to improve, and in some cases harm, security. And government claims of their success are either wrong, or against fake threats.
The debate isn’t security versus privacy. It’s liberty versus control.
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If you set up the false dichotomy, of course people will choose security over privacy — especially if you scare them first. But it’s still a false dichotomy. There is no security without privacy. And liberty requires both security and privacy. The famous quote attributed to Benjamin Franklin reads: “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” It’s also true that those who would give up privacy for security are likely to end up with neither.
“It’s liberty versus control. ” This is an important statement, a truism not merely of the topic at hand but of practically ALL political topics — universal healthcare, immigration, war, terrorism are not primarily issues in their own right, but means by which politicians attempt to expand their control of the population.
The truth of his commentary has been proven conclusively in the Britain where even before the ID card rollout security loopholes and data protection issues have been uncovered on a weekly basis. Even the morons who at one point favoured ID cards because ‘if you’ve nothing to hide you’ve nothing to fear’ are starting to see sense.
‘the Britain’? I’m not sure where that is. Somewhere near the UK perhaps.
Part of me wishes we were back in a crime wave, just so police had real shit to do again.
I think Mr. Schneier makes the great point of looking to active security measures as opposed to invasive ones. In the wake of 911 we should have seen a political movement to invest tons of money into more intelligence agents or quick-strike military forces or new programs working with other countries to find and destroy terrorists, instead, we got the god-awful and useless Patriot Act.
I know to libertarians, new expensive government programs aren’t great either, but if we were gonna get whipped up into a frenzy about something, it should not have involved compromising our civil liberties. It’s rather telling that these Security/Intelligence experts were so quick to attack our fundamental freedoms using 911, rather obviously, as a pretext.
Interesting comment about China being more of a police state than the US.
Interesting comment about China being less of a police state than the US.
There is however a neat continuum running from privacy to convenience. We see it every day on the web, in our grocery mega stores, in our banking etc. etc. You want the convenience of institutionalized memory about your book preferences, your food purchases, your monthly bills, you give up privacy.
The problem of course is that once you give away your privacy to kroegers, you have also given it to anyone with a warrant. Sign a HIPAA form with your doctor, doctor/patient priviledge no longer exists for your interactions with that doctor.
If you have deposited information re your reading preferences with Amazon, you have given same to any political unit capable of issuing a warrant.
CK,
Actually HIPAA releases only release information that existed as of the date the release is signed, so future information is not even authorized to be shared with the specific individual.
Also it’s important to remember that saying privilege does not exist, is very different from saying anyone can go an get your info. Doctors are still ethically and sometimes legally bound by confidentiality which is different from privilege.
[...] (and Cato more generally) here, as would be expected. The Man has not yet mentioned it, but he did highlight this on the false dichotomy between our liberties and security, pointing out how useless most of [...]