On Thu, Aug 22, 2013 at 6:46 AM, Harvey Rothenberg <[email protected]>wrote:
> You do not know how often that I hear this same comment, " When talking > to colleagues about the threat to our privacy, > the general view is , ' I'm not doing anything illegal, so I don't have > anything to worry about.' This view is wrong. " - I agree with you, but > how do you educate the commenter as to why this is wrong ? > When I had this discussion with my grandfather it came down to this: Everybody does little things that can be considered illegal, from driving over the posted limit to fibbing on tax forms to possessing common drugs like marijuana. If the authority knows everything about you then it is a very short step for the politician in power, or somebody acting in their interest, to use that information to "legitimately" silence his/her critics and opponents. I'm not so worried about the FBI reading my email. I /am/ worried about a local government official deciding to use email metadata to silence or chill debate. Which is, basically, what seems to have happened to Groklaw. There is also the very real possibility that somebody will say "we have all this data/all these anti-terrorism officers why aren't we catching more bad guys" which will invariably mean that more "bad" guys are apprehended. We have already been seeing some of this in the re-classification of crimes and the apprehension of students, authors, and scientists for things that, some few years ago, would have been lauded. -- Perfection is just a word I use occasionally with mustard. --Atom Powers--
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