The Eternal Value of Privacy

As many of you know, it has recently come to light that the NSA has been spending its precious resources monitoring international phone calls and keeping track of the calling habits of millions of American citizens.

In a case of "kill the messenger", the political right have tried to focus the debate on the people responsible for leaking this information to the press, calling them traitors or worse. They then drag out the tired argument designed to appeal to ignorant people:

"If you are not doing anything wrong, what do you have to hide?"

(For instance, the talking heads at Fox News have been spouting this nonsense a lot in recent days.)

Bruce Schneier has written an article that destroys this heinous argument over at Wired magazine called The Eternal Value of Privacy. Please read it!

The ideas in this article used to be self evident to most Americans (and I hope still are) but the government is doing its best to change that (not to mention the surging state of anti-intellectualism in America) by using Newspeak to claim that plainly illegal activities are in fact perfectly legal.

Remember, George Orwell said IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH and just in case you don't have your copy of 1984's Cliff Notes around that phrase actually means IGNORANCE (of the public) IS STRENGTH (for the government).

Also, in the same way that TSA has gone past its mandate of keeping our airplanes safe and become an extension of the DEA, the phone records being collected by the NSA are already being used against private citizens of America who have nothing to do with terrorism.

The people in power in America are increasingly finding that the ideas in our Constitution and, in particular, the Bill of Rights are inconvenient in allowing them to stay in power. Fundamental tenants of the American system including separation of powers, our right to privacy, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, due process (5th amendment), etc. are under relentess assault by the present administration, all in the name of this ambiguous, amorphous "War on Terror" (WAR IS PEACE, anyone?).

We Americans must stand up for our rights, if we wish to preserve them.

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Update: The current administration appears to like the right's kill-the-messenger strategy.

Update 2: Speaking of separation of powers, who needs them? The assault continues…

Update 3: Another excellent article from Wired... this time discussing the myth that we have to give up privacy to increase security. Why not pick both?