Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, Pennsylvania Assembly:
The most common retort against privacy advocates -- by those in
favor of ID checks, cameras, databases, data mining and other wholesale
surveillance measures -- is this line: "If you aren't doing anything
wrong, what do you have to hide?"
Some clever answers: "If I'm not doing anything wrong, then you have
no cause to watch me." "Because the government gets to define what's
wrong, and they keep changing the definition." "Because you might do
something wrong with my information." My problem with quips like these
-- as right as they are -- is that they accept the premise that privacy
is about hiding a wrong. It's not. Privacy is an inherent human right,
and a requirement for maintaining the human condition with dignity and
respect.
Two proverbs say it best:Quis custodiet custodes ipsos? ("Who watches the watchers?") and "Absolute power corrupts absolutely."
Cardinal Richelieu understood the value of surveillance when he
famously said, "If one would give me six lines written by the hand of
the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him
hanged." Watch someone long enough, and you'll find something to arrest
-- or just blackmail -- with. Privacy is important because without it,
surveillance information will be abused: to peep, to sell to marketers
and to spy on political enemies -- whoever they happen to be at the
time.
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.
A future in which privacy would face constant assault was so alien
to the framers of the Constitution that it never occurred to them to
call out privacy as an explicit right. Privacy was inherent to the
nobility of their being and their cause. Of course being
watched in your own home was unreasonable. Watching at all was an act
so unseemly as to be inconceivable among gentlemen in their day. You
watched convicted criminals, not free citizens. You ruled your own
home. It's intrinsic to the concept of liberty. 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.
How many of us have paused during conversation in the past
four-and-a-half years, suddenly aware that we might be eavesdropped on?
Probably it was a phone conversation, although maybe it was an e-mail
or instant-message exchange or a conversation in a public place. Maybe
the topic was terrorism, or politics, or Islam. We stop suddenly,
momentarily afraid that our words might be taken out of context, then
we laugh at our paranoia and go on. But our demeanor has changed, and
our words are subtly altered. 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.
Some broad surveillance, in limited circumstances, might be warranted
as a temporary measure. But we need to be careful that it remain
temporary, and that we do not design surveillance into our electronic
infrastructure. Thomas Jefferson once said: "Eternal vigilance is the
price of liberty." Historically, liberties have always been a casualty
of war, but a temporary casualty. This war -- a war without a clear
enemy or end condition -- has the potential to turn into a permanent
state of society. We need to design our security accordingly.
The most common retort against privacy advocates -- by those in
favor of ID checks, cameras, databases, data mining and other wholesale
surveillance measures -- is this line: 
