Security vs. Privacy

Never thought you'd see me pit those two things against each other? That's because, perfect world, those two things complement each other. Real world, there's some conflict.

As individuals, we use security systems, whether anti-virus or shredder, to protect our privacy.

As a government, there's some conflict - Congress creates legislation to protect our privacy and they create legislation providing themselves with loopholes for why those laws doesn't apply to the government (hello, Patriot Act).

Here's a great article on the issue of security vs. privacy. I'm not a regular reader of the Huffington Post, but I am a regular reader of schneier.com/blog. Schneier posted this article this morning, along with this excerpt.

Marc Rotenberg on Security vs. Privacy:

In the modern era, the right of privacy represents a vast array of rights that include clear legal standards, government accountability, judicial oversight, the design of techniques that are minimally intrusive and the respect for the dignity and autonomy of individuals.

The choice that we are being asked to make is not simply whether to reduce our expectation of privacy, but whether to reduce the rule of law, whether to diminish the role of the judiciary, whether to cast a shroud of secrecy over the decisions made by government.

In other words, we are being asked to become something other than the strong America that could promote innovation and safeguard privacy that could protect the country and its Constitutional traditions. We are being asked to become a weak nation that accepts surveillance without accountability that cannot defend both security and freedom.

That is a position we must reject. If we agree to reduce our expectation of privacy, we will erode our Constitutional democracy.

Link to Huffington Post article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marc-rotenberg/privacy-vs-security-pr_b_71806.html?view=print