I stumbled upon Snowden’s remote interview from back in
October. While it was conducted about 2 months ago, of course the topic of
privacy online is very relevant. I think his attitude to privacy is quite
interesting. Many people will say “I have nothing to hide” and as Eric Schmidt
himself once said, “If you have something that you don't want anyone to know,
maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place”. However, Snowden takes a
different approach and claims that this attitude is not the right way to look
at it. When you say, ‘I have nothing to
hide,’ you’re saying, ‘I don’t care about this right.’ You’re saying, ‘I don’t
have this right, because I’ve got to the point where I have to justify it.’ The
way rights work is, the government has to justify its intrusion into your
rights. While the “I have nothing to hide”claim and Eric Schmidt’s
quote is one way to protect yourself, I agree that our privacy shouldn’t
come down to a defensive position where we feel that we should have something to hide or that we can't search for something.
However, reality is that we don’t have full privacy, and
that said, Snowden recommends people to seek out encrypted tools and stop
using services that are “hostile to privacy.” Text messages are not safe either
– law enforcement can ask for warrants to access phones and carriers can be subpoenaed
for data.
One last piece of food for thought from Snowden “We can have
secret programs. You know, the American people don’t have to know the name of
every individual that’s under investigation. We don’t need to know the
technical details of absolutely every program in the intelligence community.
But we do have to know the bare and broad outlines of the powers our government
is claiming … and how they affect us and how they affect our relationships
overseas. Because if we don’t, we are no longer citizens, we no longer have
leaders. We’re subjects, and we have rulers.”
Read more at
The New Yorker video on YouTube (~58:30): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fidq3jow8bc#t=247
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