Intelligence deputy to America: Rethink privacy
From the AP via CNN: Intelligence deputy to America: Rethink privacy
Wow…talk about frightening. From the article: Donald Kerr, the principal deputy director of national intelligence says, “Our job now is to engage in a productive debate, which focuses on privacy as a component of appropriate levels of security and public safety…I think all of us have to really take stock of what we already are willing to give up, in terms of anonymity, but [also] what safeguards we want in place to be sure that giving that doesn’t empty our bank account or do something equally bad elsewhere.”
Kurt Opsahl, a senior staff lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an advocacy group that defends online free speech, privacy and intellectual property rights, rebuts, “Anonymity has been important since the Federalist Papers were written under pseudonyms…the government has tremendous power: the police power, the ability to arrest, to detain, to take away rights. Tying together that someone has spoken out on an issue with their identity is a far more dangerous thing if it is the government that is trying to tie it together.”
I’m with Mr. Opsahl - just because you have nothing to hide doesn’t mean you want your government to know all about you. I’m imagining the same arguments about, “We need security, so we have to mildly limit some civil rights” have been made time and time again, by the world’s greatest dictators and worst police states.
There’s a d*mned good reason to have the Constitution - it’s to protect the weak from the abuse of the strong. Congress should pass no law giving the powerful the ability to abuse the weak.
I don’t care if the government knows how I feel on this issue (indeed, I have forwarded a link to this posting to Senator Arlen Specter of the Judiciary Committee…I do care if the government places this information into an electronic dossier to keep an eye on me for “subversive thoughts,” or even if it simply records and parses the information as I send it from my office computer across the Internet to my server without cause or warrant. And that, kids, is the direction Mr. Kerr seems to want to take us.