schneier on schmidt

[Eugen Leitl]

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/12/my_reaction_to.html

December 9, 2009

My Reaction to Eric Schmidt

Schmidt said:

    I think judgment matters. If you have something that you don't want
anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place. If you
really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines --
including Google -- do retain this information for some time and it's
important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the
Patriot Act and it is possible that all that information could be made
available to the authorities.

This, from 2006, is my response:

    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.

    [...]

    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.

    [...]

    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.