Wehrwolfen
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By Daren Jonescu
07/03/2013
One of the standard claims of those who would defend "well-intentioned" police-state practices such as the NSA's universal secret monitoring of telephone and e-mail data is that the enhancement of "security" provided by these programs warrants the sacrifice of "some privacy."
That argument is being worked to a frazzle of late, as the Obama administration and others seek to justify the ever-growing litany of revelations about the levels of surveillance to which the U.S. federal government is subjecting everyone. This framing of the issue as "privacy vs. security" is a canard which loads the dice in tyranny's favor.
"It's important to recognize that you can't have 100 percent security and also then have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience. We're going to have to make some choices as a society."
So says Barack Obama to the American people, defending the NSA's gathering of communications metadata.
But following this line of non-reasoning, how are Americans to make the relevant "choices"? -- pretending for a moment that they were given any "choice" in the matter of a top-secret bureaucratic invasion of their lives that they would never have learned about without an Edward Snowden. Obama, using the typical vernacular of this issue, presents 100 percent security and 100 percent privacy as desirable but contradictory goals. Does this mean that choosing 50 percent security entails giving up 50 percent privacy? If you desired 100 percent security, would you have to relinquish 100 percent of your privacy? (This appears to be the Obama administration's preferred option.) And how does "inconvenience" figure into this scale of measurement?
More generally, however, why are we reduced to discussing political philosophy like children arguing about school night curfews with their parents?
[Excerpt]
Read more:
Articles: The 'Privacy vs. Security' Canard
They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. -- Benjamin Franklin
07/03/2013
One of the standard claims of those who would defend "well-intentioned" police-state practices such as the NSA's universal secret monitoring of telephone and e-mail data is that the enhancement of "security" provided by these programs warrants the sacrifice of "some privacy."
That argument is being worked to a frazzle of late, as the Obama administration and others seek to justify the ever-growing litany of revelations about the levels of surveillance to which the U.S. federal government is subjecting everyone. This framing of the issue as "privacy vs. security" is a canard which loads the dice in tyranny's favor.
"It's important to recognize that you can't have 100 percent security and also then have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience. We're going to have to make some choices as a society."
So says Barack Obama to the American people, defending the NSA's gathering of communications metadata.
But following this line of non-reasoning, how are Americans to make the relevant "choices"? -- pretending for a moment that they were given any "choice" in the matter of a top-secret bureaucratic invasion of their lives that they would never have learned about without an Edward Snowden. Obama, using the typical vernacular of this issue, presents 100 percent security and 100 percent privacy as desirable but contradictory goals. Does this mean that choosing 50 percent security entails giving up 50 percent privacy? If you desired 100 percent security, would you have to relinquish 100 percent of your privacy? (This appears to be the Obama administration's preferred option.) And how does "inconvenience" figure into this scale of measurement?
More generally, however, why are we reduced to discussing political philosophy like children arguing about school night curfews with their parents?
[Excerpt]
Read more:
Articles: The 'Privacy vs. Security' Canard
They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. -- Benjamin Franklin