Why Do We Need Privacy?
Why do I think we need privacy on line, well for a start lets put aside the countries where it’s absolutely essential if you have something to say. In places like Saudi, Iran and China – if you start a harmless looking blog and criticize your government – you will be in big trouble very soon. But we like to think Western Democracies aren’t quite the same and free speech is protected.
So why do projects like the Intercept Modernization program ever start? This project thankfully shelved for the moment due to the cash crisis was intending to move the ISP logs onto a central database, that UK Government agencies could access. So a database with every web site you had visited in the last two years. Isn’t this enough for any right minded individual scream for some privacy and anonymous secure surfing.
They tell us it’s to prevent terrorism, but in reality they are spying on a few million innocent people in the hope of catching a few individuals (who are obscuring their data anyway). The people who have something to hide are well hiding their data anyway – so you only spy on the innocent and the stupid. Bit of a waste of time I think !
