Sleepycatz

War on Privacy

This week one of the nation’s top intelligence officials made a startling announcement:

Privacy no longer can mean anonymity, says Donald Kerr, the principal deputy director of national intelligence. Instead, it should mean that government and businesses properly safeguard people’s private communications and financial information.

Safeguard from whom? should be the question that is asked of Mr. Kern. I doubt very much that al Qaeda or Syria cares where our day to day travels take us , but my boss might, your insurance company might, political opponents might. What Mr. Kern is insisting upon is a surveillance state - one in which government collected information is seamlessly shared with business collected data. For instance: you go to an ATM at 8:00 Am, Stop and buy a coffee at 8:30 Am using a discount card, punch into work at 9:00 AM - respond your e-mail & make calls, drive home via a tollbridge at 5:00 Pm, stop off for a drink at 5:30, then go home and read your personal e-mail, visit and adult website, maybe read some blogs; the government would now know exactly where you were during the day, and what you were doing. Perhaps you visited a blog which was critical of government policies; you might now find yourself undergoing additional IRS auditing - after all it’s happened before, or find yourself bared from flying. What Mr. Kerr is suggesting is even a bit more nefarious: a two way street in which businesses have access to to personal data for their own purposes. Perhaps your employer is devout and decides to fire you because you consume pornography — there is currently no law which protects employees for actions unrelated to their work. Perhaps your health insurance company decides you are consuming too much alcohol and decides to raise your premium or drop you. All of these things are more than possible, they are probable outcomes of Mr. Kerr’s policy. Information, it has been said, is power, and once made available those with the information will make the most use of it as possible.

Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, James Monroe, and James Madison all published their works under pseudonyms — anonymously. And they all did so at a time in which the future of their country was far less certain then it is today. Mr. Kerr, and the administration, keep arguing that we are in greater peril today then we have ever been before. But there is little to no evidence of this. If our country is in peril, it is from the incompetence and hubris of its leaders, not from any outside force. But these same leaders cry for more power to help assuage the fear their own policies have created. Should Mr. Kerr and his administration get their way, we and future Americans will quickly learn to fear our own government and its powers. To quote a popular film, “People should not fear the government; Government should fear the people.”

This entry was posted by steve on Sunday, November 11th, 2007 at 3:36 pm and is filed under Injustices, Politics. 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.