On 08/22/2013 10:11 AM, Atom Powers wrote:
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.
+1 I love that description. This is simple enough that most people can
understand it.
ski
--
"When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it
connected to the entire universe" John Muir
Chris "Ski" Kacoroski, Director of LOPSA, [email protected],
206-501-9803 or ski98033 on most IM services
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