Anyone who makes you choose between privacy and security wants you to have neither

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This is especially confusing because what we call “privacy” used to be called “security” in the time of the Constitution. Knowledge of which puts a rather different spin on “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated”.

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I think it’s not really a contradiction. People “being secure in their persons” is quite different than being “secured by others”. The latter could be anything from alliance to imprisonment. When I look at “security” being considered or imposed by government, the term I look out for is “trust”. Like in the sense meant by the term “Trusted Computing”. It’s a sort of sneaky “trust” which is implicit and hierarchical and amounts to having your access controlled by a central authority on the condition that their authority will not be compromised nor abused. The trap is that this refers to who your vendor of government trust - not who the user trusts.

Things and systems can be secured for a person, or against a person - or both. Privacy can certainly be construed as one type of security, but security can be more broadly defined.

This could easily be re-framed as, “Anyone who needs to break the law in order to enforce the law, is ripping you off.”

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Very surprised you haven’t mentioned the IPT Ruling. We need a pin prick of light at the end of this dark and festering tunnel.

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The free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.

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Yet Boing Boing continually reports on Google’s newest projects with general enthusiasm.

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Those quotes come in handy so often, I usually can’t even remember which ones are historical and which are just from the game.

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