Taking a break from our recent wall-to-wall coverage of everything Obama, I’d like to talk about security and liberty for a moment. In a recent op-ed in Wired Magazine, Bruce Schneier, a well-known security researcher, wrote about the oft-claimed balance between security and privacy. He rightly points out (as he has for years) what many on the left have been saying for most of the Bush Presidency: security and privacy are not mutually exclusive. We don’t have to give up our rights to privacy to be safe. In fact, we increase our safety while increasing the safeguards that protect our privacy.

Schneier’s piece came out of recent comments from Michael McConnell,
the Director of National Intelligence. Mr. McConnell suggested that the
US should monitor all internet traffic for security reasons,
saying that “Privacy no longer can mean anonymity. Instead, it should
mean that government and businesses properly
safeguard people’s private communications and financial information.”
So if he is to be believed, our security necessitates completely
changing the definition of privacy to something that most people
wouldn’t even recognize as privacy.

I believe the right to privacy (protected by the 9th amendment
to the Constitution and upheld by numerous court cases) is essential
not only in allowing people to feel safe in their own communities, but
also in protecting free speech. If the we must trust the government to
safeguard our private communications as Mr. McConnell suggests, how can
we know someone in the government won’t use that information to
persecute us or intimidate us into silence. Just the knowledge that
such action by our government is possible would have a chilling effect
on the kinds of speech that are necessary for a healthy democracy.

As
Schneier points out, the debate is about liberty and control. In truth,
we have enjoyed relative safety and security throughout the history of
our country and that hasn’t changed despite many claims to the contrary
since the attacks of 9/11. Many of the latest information security
technologies (the very ones that protect the Internet) are as secure or
even more secure when used anonymously. That is, they provide better
security when they also protect privacy. So this debate really does
boil down to liberty vs. control. There are those on both sides of the
aisle in the government that want to have more control over society and
use the guise of national security to advance their ideals. These are
in contrast to the people that believe that liberty and an open society
are the more important and that protecting privacy is worth as much or
more than protecting security. For, what is the point of protecting
America if people no longer exercise their freedom of speech?

It’s
time to start fighting back against this administration’s attempts to
remove our civil liberties. It’s time to start using logic and reason
instead of fear. The best way to fight terrorism isn’t banning liquids
from air planes, it’s standing up and refusing to be scared of
everything. We fight terrorism everyday be speaking our minds and
enjoying our lives. Terrorism only triumphs when we allow fear to rule
our lives and decide our actions.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 29th, 2008 at 2:30 pm and is filed under Politics, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.