The privacy concerns laid out in 1984 are coming true.... Greenwald: Why Privacy Matters Glenn Greenwald: There is a very common sentiment that arises in this (privacy) debate, even among people who are uncomfortable with mass surveillance, which says that there is no real harm that comes from this large-scale invasion because only people who are engaged in bad acts have a reason to want to hide and to care about their privacy. The people who are actually saying that are engaged in a very extreme act of self-deprecation. What theyre really saying is, I have agreed to make myself such a harmless and unthreatening and uninteresting person that I actually dont fear having the government know what it is that Im doing. This mindset has found what I think is its purest expression in a 2009 interview with the longtime CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt, who, when asked about all the different ways his company is causing invasions of privacy for hundreds of millions of people around the world, said this: He said, If youre doing something that you dont want other people to know, maybe you shouldnt be doing it in the first place. Over the last 16 months, as Ive debated this issue around the world, every single time somebody has said to me, I dont really worry about invasions of privacy because I dont have anything to hide. I always say the same thing to them. I get out a pen, I write down my email address. I say, Heres my email address. What I want you to do when you get home is email me the passwords to all of your email accounts, not just the nice, respectable work one in your name, but all of them, because I want to be able to just troll through what it is youre doing online, read what I want to read and publish whatever I find interesting. After all, if youre not a bad person, if youre doing nothing wrong, you should have nothing to hide. ted/talks/glenn_greenwald_why_privacy_matters/transcript?language=en
Posted on: Fri, 17 Oct 2014 09:44:44 +0000
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