Privacy and Freedom Is More Important Than Security

Let’s start with the philosophical fundamentals. Limiting civil liberties and the right to privacy in the name of defending a liberal democratic nation is the ultimate hypocrisy. Modern, western liberal democracies exist to protect the rights of their citizens. The great John Locke, spiritual father of the modern liberal democracies, believed that all people were born with god-given rights, one of which was liberty, and that the purpose of governments was to protect those rights. If that same government is attacking our liberty and our privacy under the guise of keeping us secure, than it is betraying its very essence.

In many cases, invasive surveillance laws are passed amidst panic, often right after a terrorist attack when citizens are scared and desperate for anything to make them feel secure again. It was in such a climate, just after the September 11 terrorist attacks, that the US government passed the Patriot Act. In these desperate times people rally together, but they are also easily manipulated. It is these moments of crisis that prudence is more important than ever. The hysteria caused by terrorist attacks is largely caused by a cognitive bias rampant in the human race known as the availability heuristic. The availability heuristic causes people to consider something more dangerous or more imminent when they can easily bring it to mind and imagine it. It’s why people are often more afraid of terrorist attacks than cancer even though Americans are over 6,500 times more likely to die from cancer. It is almost always because of these types of exaggerated risks that our governments take away our freedoms in exchange for security. But if we recognize that the risks are over-blown we realize that giving up our rights isn’t worth it.

I don’t hear people advocating large scale surveillance in order to crackdown on drug trafficking. There are legal channels in which the police can obtain a warrant which permits them to tap a potential terrorist’s phone or his or her computer. These legal channels exist for a reason, so why should our governments bend the law and spy on us?

The largely ineffective TSA is a classic example of what’s known as “security theatre.” Security theatre is a security action that is very visible but not very effective and thus gives people the illusion that they are being protected but doesn’t produce actual results. When it comes to anti-terrorism policy, we are extremely susceptible to security theatre because of the availability heuristic discussed above. Basically, it’s more important that it looks like something is being done to protect us than that something is actually being done to protect us. Because terrorism is an over-blown threat and politicians know it, they can dazzle us with security theatre and gain our admiration even if nothing effective is really being done. Meanwhile this wasted money could have been spent on something useful like healthcare or education. What’s worse is that in this post 9/11 climate of panic, we’ve been taught that privacy invasion is necessary to keep us safe, and so we take it on faith. The violation of our basic human rights has become a grotesque kind of security theatre in itself.

Let’s stop worrying about national security for a moment and worry about personal security. Thanks to the increasing digitization of every aspect of our lives, it is becoming easier and easier for companies and the government to mine our personal data. This digitization of our reality is sending us down a very slippery slope into a world in which every aspect of our being is being monitored by corporations. “But wait,” you might be saying, “corporations can’t use my data without my permission, and I won’t give it to them!” Well, you’re correct in that corporations need your permission to use your data, but what’s terrifying is that you’re actually going to give it to them. As more aspects of our personal lives become connected to the internet, we become more and more easy to spy on. Corporations will learn to take advantage of all this information, and they’ll also come up with ways to make us comply. For example, the John Hancock Company has announced that they will give discounts on health insurance to customers who meet certain requirements based on their FitBit data. Of course, the company says you don’t have to participate, but you want cheap health insurance don’t you? These types of policies will only become more prevalent, and eventually corporations and even the government may require you to plug into their spy networks in exchange for access to services as essential as welfare or applying for a job. First they tell us we need to give up our rights in exchange for national security, next we’re giving up our rights for cheaper health insurance.

The right to privacy lie behind the 4th Amendment to the Constitution, which bans unreasonable “search and seizure”. When the government collects and shares information about its citizens, it is conducting an electronic version of such banned searches.

Any idea that increases the power of government agencies should be rejected. In the past, government agencies (for example, the IRS tax authorities) have misused their power over citizens. More power means a greater potential for abuse.

Tighter security controls can also be used to target particular ethnic and religious groups in a way that is unfair and biased. This is bad in itself, but it also risks setting such groups against our society and creating more future terrorists. If Osama Bin Laden is saying that America is at war with Islam, picking on Muslims at airports because they have brown skin and Arabic-sounding names only plays into his hands.

Measures aimed at travellers to the USA affect the innocent as well as the guilty. This is especially true in the case of foreign nationals. Tighter entry controls may keep out foreigners (for example, scientists, tourists, students) whose skills and money could be good for the United States. In any case, many terrorist attacks around the world have been carried out by citizens against their own country, not by foreigners.

History has shown that the excuse of national security has often led to the loss of basic rights. For example, Japanese-American citizens were locked up during World War II on security grounds. We should not allow the government to take even small steps in a direction that can lead to something worse.

The war on terror is not a war like World War II. The enemy is not a state and it is not clear how victory will be reached. This means any loss of privacy will be open ended and may last for many years. But even in times of war, America’s strength is in our rights and freedoms. It is American individualism and personal freedom that our enemies often hate the most. By changing our society to make us less free we are playing into their hands. A victory at the cost of the liberties that make our society great is not worth having.