Privacy and Its Discontents

Clark Neily andNorbert MichelThere ’s an iconic scene in the movieSpinal Tap where lead guitarist Nigel Tufnel, reacting to a production error that has rendered the band ’s latest record album an unadorned black square, exclaims, “There’s something about this that’s so black, it’s like, how much more black could this be? And the answer is none, none more black.” Last Wednesday’sop ‐​ed in theNew York Times by self ‐​styled “digital ethics” adviser and privacy‐​skeptic Reid Blackman evokes a similar response: How much more wrong could this piece be? The answer is none, none more wrong.Blackman ’s thesis—that while the ability to speak privately “can be beneficial,” we should condemn technologies that wholly preclude government eavesdropping—could only resonate in a socio ‐​political environment of complacency and overconfidence, where the blood‐​spattered streets of Tehran, Hong Kong, and Moscow are as much of an abstraction as our own government’s serial predations against slavery abolitionists, civil‐​rights leaders, whistleblowers, journalists, and countless others. Contra Blackman, we should celebrate the advent of technologies and applications that enable people to speak to one another freely, secure in the knowledge that what they choose to say privately cannot be heard by others, no matter how much various government actors may wish to dis courage, punish, prevent, tax, or otherwise exploit those com...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs