Schneier on Security

OzJuggler • January 2, 2006 8:19 PM

This blog is about security in general, not just the confidentiality aspect. Whilst privacy is about confidentiality, there are other concerns in society that would require the availability of so-called “private” information.
Some commentators have even claimed that privacy is a modern invention, and that prior to the 20th century nobody had any privacy due mainly to living in small villages where everybody knew everybody and people talked to their friends about everything. For most of human evolution, living in small tribes was the norm.

To detect early indicators of unacceptable behaviour must have been easier in such societies than in our modern cities, and that is without any involvement from an official police service.
If we desire privacy for the individual then aren’t we also usurping the role of the general public in maintaining standards of behaviour – in some cases for the benefit of society as opposed to any individual?

If “privacy” does not seek to deny ordinary friends, neighbours, and citizens access to our personal information and activities, then isn’t “privacy” really a power struggle specifically between the individual and the State? In that case hasn’t the need for community self-regulation been lost in the debate?

Perhaps the “privacy” debate should be renamed to “counterfascism” since that seems to be the true goal of the “privacy” advocates.

OzJuggler • January 2, 2006 10:26 PM

@Greg

the police a more likely to implicate more innocent ppl than bad guys with
these massive databases and information gathering.

Ah, well now we’re back to the issue of PROFILING! Bruce has said it doesn’t work, at least in the context of terrorism and airport security, and I agree.

What happened to innocent untill proven guilty!

Oh we still have that, but now it’s just a question of how much red tape, harassment, libel, and mud-slinging is considered acceptable by authorities even before you’ve been charged with anything.

What I was getting at is that you can’t argue for blanket privacy across the board or else you deprive society at large of any means of dispensing revenge..uh I mean justice.. to society’s transgressors. If you want to prevent crime by detecting early signs then some invasion of privacy is even more important, although I would argue that proper family care and education in childhood is the best preventative strategy.

Your point about the new ability of mud-slinging to travel globally is something I’d not considered. Globalisation creates the need for greater privacy because the consequences of any disclosure are now less certain in the long term than prior to the 20th century.

Your example is poor mainly because the police have rules about not publicly identifying people who are under investigation – exactly the same procedure that makes privacy advocates uncomfortable. So Big Brother can watch you if he’s told you he’s watching you, but not otherwise. Very handy for crooks to be notified that they need to lay low for a while! But if invasion of privacy is authorised in secret by the courts then it is again a lack of transparency that invites corruption and spurious invasions of “privacy”. But I guess we can’t remove the threat of the Trustworthy People turning sour, no matter which way we slice-and-dice it.

I can’t prove it, but I think privacy is an instance of the Prisoner’s Dilemma, and not everybody involved wants to co-operate.