14 DAY TRIAL // Privacy is, according to the Merriam Webster dictionary, the state of being away from company or observation, but it can also mean the freedom from unauthorized intrusion.
The 12th article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights also puts privacy at the center of it all. “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks,” it reads.
What we’re dealing with nowadays is an effort of intelligence services of the world’s most powerful states, such as the NSA from the United States, or the GCHQ in the United Kingdom, to redefine what privacy is. They believe that in this day and age privacy only extends to what goes on inside your home and not the things you talk about on your phone, the emails you send (even though they’re the modern version of law-protected letters), the texts you receive and the chats you have online.
“For our part, intelligence agencies such as GCHQ need to enter the public debate about privacy. I think we have a good story to tell. We need to show how we are accountable for the data we use to protect people, just as the private sector is increasingly under pressure to show how it filters and sells its customers’ data. GCHQ is happy to be part of a mature debate on privacy in the digital age. But privacy has never been an absolute right and the debate about this should not become a reason for postponing urgent and difficult decisions,” said Robert Hannigan, the GCHQ director.
“Privacy has never been an absolute right.” That’s the 10,000 points phrase right there and it tells you all you need to know about how intelligence services see one of the basic human rights.
Some help, please!
In the very same article published by Hannigan in the Financial Times, he goes on to call for US tech companies to help them fight against terrorism by coming up with better arrangements for facilitating lawful investigation by security and law enforcement agencies than those available right now.
Roughly translated, this means that they don’t really like having to come up with proof, taking it before a judge and waiting for a warrant. The NSA didn’t even like going to its secret court and waiting around for permission, since it just went ahead on several occasions and collected data on innocent people without being allowed to.
They’re also working to guilt trip these Internet companies into betraying their users and handing over information about them to the intelligence agencies. They’re playing the “terrorism” card, playing it like it’s the new boogeyman.
The new boogeyman in town
Of course, terrorism is a serious issue and should not be joked with, but these intelligence agencies are using fear to control the masses, to get what they want. They’re basically telling the world to simply forgo its right to privacy for the greater good, since, after all, if you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to fear.
But the essence of any right that you have is that it doesn’t go away whether you have something to hide or not. Nodding your head and saying that you really have nothing to hide so they can just snoop through everything you own means that you’re throwing away one of your basic rights, one that should be protected.
Terrorism is a risk, a threat, but you can’t live in a constant state of fear that something bad could happen. Yes, bad guys use the Internet, just the same as the rest of us, but saying that services such as Facebook, Twitter and so on, have become “the command-and-control networks of choice for terrorists and criminals” is a low blow.
The Internet, as it was created, is meant to connect everyone, regardless of age, gender, location, beliefs and so on. Sometimes, you’ll find criminals on the Internet, murderers, thieves, child abusers, terrorists, violent individuals. You’ll also find nice people, people who have no violent tendencies, people who are just living their lives, including on the Internet.
There are threats everywhere, at every step, both online and offline, but keeping a tight control over it will just create a police state that no one wants to live in.
The innocent were the only ones oblivious to surveillance
What more evidence does one need about the fact that the intelligence community wants to snoop on you than the constant arguing that encrypting your data is a bad thing? Several law enforcement officials have stepped out and criticized Apple and Google for offering users the option of encrypting their phone data because they won’t be able to get the information from the companies themselves.
“Techniques for encrypting messages or making them anonymous which were once the preserve of the most sophisticated criminals or nation states now come as standard. These are supplemented by freely available programs and apps adding extra layers of security, many of them proudly advertising that they are ‘Snowden approved’. There is no doubt that young foreign fighters have learnt and benefited from the leaks of the past two years,” Hannigan states, making it seem as if these foreign fighters weren’t aware before Snowden shared the NSA files that they were being watched.
As if they didn’t know that they should encrypt their data. As if they didn’t know that they should use anonymizing tools. As if they didn’t know that they had to protect their identities when surfing the Internet.
The fact that terrorist groups were under surveillance is a secret to no one. What the Snowden documents have brought to light is that everyone is treated as a potential threat, as a potential terrorist; that no one’s data is safe and that innocent citizens are under surveillance. They’ve shown how the NSA and its international partners collect data on people, how they violate everyone’s right to privacy just because they can and because no one will tell them “no.”
What Edward Snowden has done may not have been legal, but sharing the things he found disturbing and most likely illegal has done a great deal of good. If intelligence agencies hadn’t overstepped their boundaries, hadn’t disregarded people’s rights to privacy and freedom of expression, Snowden wouldn’t have leaked any kind of documents, and we wouldn’t be having a conversation about why the fundamental human right of privacy needs to stay just the way it is and should not suffer any alterations, like the spy agencies would like.