Another great article on security, liberty, privacy, and control by Bruce Schneier. Hightlights:
If privacy and security really were a zero-sum game, we would have seen mass immigration into the former East Germany and modern-day China. While it’s true that police states like those have less street crime, no one argues that their citizens are fundamentally more secure. …
We’ve been told we have to trade off security and privacy so often… that most of us don’t even question the fundamental dichotomy.
But it’s a false one. …
Since 9/11, approximately three things have potentially improved airline security: reinforcing the cockpit doors, passengers realizing they have to fight back and — possibly — sky marshals. Everything else — all the security measures that affect privacy — is just security theater and a waste of effort. …
The debate isn’t security versus privacy. It’s liberty versus control.
Liberty vs. control. Think about that for a second. The politicians, agencies, corporations, and groups that already control or influence so much of our social, business, and personal lives want us to give up to them more of our privacy so that they can have more control over whom we can talk to and how, where and when we can travel, what information we can access and from which sources.
They will not be able to prevent the next terrorist attack, but they’ll be able to know what we’re all talking about on the phone and how we’re spending our money and who we plan to vote for and what we read and write on the Internet.
I don’t think they’ll come out and round up dissidents as they did during the Palmer Raids, or as happens time and again in totalitarian states, but your affiliations and activities will come to have a greater influence on whether you get certain jobs, or travel more freely, or whether you get loans, or whether you can hold office. It will be subtle exclusion at first, escalating to black-listing, long before it gets to the midnight raid level (although we’re working up to that).
