GoFuckYourself.com - Adult Webmaster Forum - Bruce Schneier responds to Eric Schmidt

from CRYPTO-GRAM, December 15, 2009:

Quote:

This, from 2006, is my response:

Privacy protects us from abuses by those in power, even if we're
doing nothing wrong at the time of surveillance.

We do nothing wrong when we make love or go to the bathroom. We
are not deliberately hiding anything when we seek out private
places for reflection or conversation. We keep private journals,
sing in the privacy of the shower, and write letters to secret
lovers and then burn them. Privacy is a basic human need.

[...]

For if we are observed in all matters, we are constantly under
threat of correction, judgment, criticism, even plagiarism of our
own uniqueness. We become children, fettered under watchful eyes,
constantly fearful that -- either now or in the uncertain future
-- patterns we leave behind will be brought back to implicate us,
by whatever authority has now become focused upon our once-private
and innocent acts. We lose our individuality, because everything
we do is observable and recordable.

[...]

This is the loss of freedom we face when our privacy is taken from
us. This is life in former East Germany, or life in Saddam
Hussein's Iraq. And it's our future as we allow an ever-intrusive
eye into our personal, private lives.

Too many wrongly characterize the debate as "security versus
privacy." The real choice is liberty versus control. Tyranny,
whether it arises under threat of foreign physical attack or under
constant domestic authoritative scrutiny, is still tyranny.
Liberty requires security without intrusion, security plus
privacy. Widespread police surveillance is the very definition of
a police state. And that's why we should champion privacy even
when we have nothing to hide.