Aardvark Daily

The world's longest-running online daily news and commentary publication, now in its 30th year. The opinion pieces presented here are not purported to be fact but reasonable effort is made to ensure accuracy.

Please visit the sponsor!

Privacy versus protection (again)

20 June 2008

Sweden is well known to be a highly socialist society, where very high taxes are used to provide a wide range of "free" state services at a level far beyond that we see in most other western nations.

Surveys of the Swedish public indicate that this is an arrangement most people in that country are happy with.

However, a set of laws passed this week may well be giving some of those affected cause to re-think their support of that country's government.

I refer of course to the right the government has now given itself to spy with impunity on the phone calls and email messages of its people.

As is now common in such cases, the government of Sweden claims that it is necessary for its people to forgo yet another freedom in the name of "national security".

In this regard, Osama bin Laden and his gang have been more successful than they could ever have hoped.

But although they are intrusive and fly in the face of "freedom", do these intrusive and easily-abused monitoring laws really have a hope in hell of achieving their stated goal?

In an era where a modestly spaced desktop PC can encrypt data with such effectiveness that even IBM's new RoadRunner supercomputer would take almost forever to decrypt it -- aren't authorities simply kidding themselves?

There is not a country in the "free" world where the sitting governments haven't granted themselves a significant and far-reaching range of powers that just ten years ago would have been considered unacceptable by the people affected.

Yet now, because (I assume) we're just a bunch of cowering cowards living in fear of terror attacks, we let our rights to privacy and freedom be trampled by bureaucrats and politicians.

The terror attacks of 9/11 may have killed a few thousand people - but it's imprisoned billions more in a web of restrictive laws that see governments increasingly treating all citizens as terror suspects and potential murderers.

Can anyone dare to suggest that in light of this, the terrorists haven't won a stunning victory that will last for decades?

Quite frankly, I'd rather live on my feet than die on my knees (thank's Midnight Oil), I wonder how many others feel likewise but say nothing for fear of being seen as a traitor to "the war against terror".

Yes, it's a crime if terrorists slay innocent women and children in the name of their cause - but it's also a crime when hundreds of Kiwis die on our roads and hundreds more are badly injured as a result of alcohol abuse. But we don't have a "war against bad driving" or a "war against booze" do we?

Why not - clearly these (and many other things) pose a far greater risk than terrorism to each and every Kiwi in NZ.

Is it because Kiwis simply wouldn't allow a government to place a tracking/reporting device in every vehicle in the country just to save a few hundred lives a year.

Yet we allow our right to privacy to be totally annexed in the name of a cause which has taken barely a handful of Kiwi lives. We're even contemplating killing our rights to privacy in the name of copyright for goodness sake!

So how do we deal with the terrorists that would seek to imprison us in the chains of paranoia?

Well I say ignore them!

Every day, soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan die in the name of protecting the freedoms of others. If I got blown up in a terror attack, I'd consider that a small price to pay for ensuring that my friends and family weren't treated like criminals by their own government.

Unfortunately, I realise that I'm probably very much in the minority and, as a member of what we like to think is a democratic nation, I'll have to conform to the rules the largest minority have chosen.

However, so long as I still have the right to encrypt my data (thus protecting it from the prying eyes of those who "protect" us), I will do so.

And, for as long as I still have the right to voice my protest against the erosion of personal freedoms across the entire western world, I'll do that too.

Unfortunately, I suspect it's only a matter of time before these rights are also lost -- in the name of keeping me safe.

Why not just make "personal risk" illegal and be done with it.

Please visit the sponsor!

Have your say on this...

PERMALINK to this column

Oh, and don't forget today's sci/tech news headlines