At least 26 people who had nothing to hide were tortured by the CIA. New column on Privacy News. Twenty-six innocent people have been tortured by the CIA. These were people who had literally nothing to hide, but they had something to fear anyway. Civil liberties are either applied to everybody without exception, or will be reliable for nobody. This shows in a very brutal way that it doesn’t matter if you think you’re white as snow and have nothing to hide whatsoever. The saying “nothing to hide, nothing to fear” is false, dishonest, and misleading. It’s always, always, always somebody else who determines if you have something to hide or not. And they’re never using the same criteria as you are. Here, 26 people who believed in “nothing to hide, nothing to fear” were rewarded with torture. A ten-year-long torture, even. Does that mean that if you don’t safeguard your privacy, you risk torture? No, of course it doesn’t. But what it does mean, is that if you buy into the rhethoric of “rights should not be upheld for people who have something to hide”, you’re buying into the idea of civil liberties being unnecessary – under the illusion they would still somehow apply to you when the time comes, thinking you haven’t done anything wrong. Of course, there are no such guarantees, and if history is a guide, they won’t. Civil liberties are either upheld for the people who deserve it the least, or for nobody at all. There is no gray area on that. https://privateinternetaccess/blog/2014/12/at-least-26-people-who-had-nothing-to-hide-tortured-by-cia/
Posted on: Sun, 14 Dec 2014 10:35:22 +0000