How a Country Becomes a Dictatorship

The internet, Myspace, and especially, Facebook have made it possible for people all over the world to connect. It is amazing the personal information that people on Facebook reveal, with seeming unconcern about privacy.

There seems to be a polarity between people in this country over surveillance and privacy rights. Those who believe that we all would be safer if there were no restrictions on surveillance will state, "If you've done nothing wrong, you've got nothing to worry about."

However, invasions of our personal space and comfort, open the door to abuses of power--such as those in Nazi Germany and Sudamm Hussein's Iraq.

Bruce Schneier is the CTO of Counterpane Internet Security and the author of Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly About Security in an Uncertain World, gives some clever answers to the "if you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to worry about."

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."

The 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.

Two proverbs say it best: Quis custodiet custodes ipsos? ("Who watches the watchers?") and "Absolute power corrupts absolutely."

Cardinal Richelieu understood the value of surveillance when he famously said, "If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged." Watch someone long enough, and you'll find something to arrest -- or just blackmail -- with. Privacy is important because without it, surveillance information will be abused: to peep, to sell to marketers and to spy on political enemies -- whoever they happen to be at the time.

Privacy protects us from abuses by those in power, even if we're doing nothing wrong at the time of surveillance.

Sources:

Brian Schneier, The Eternal Value of Privacy, Commentary, Wired