Why Free Speech Is Even More Important Than Privacy
http://lauren.vortex.com/2016/05/why-free-speech-is-even-more-important-than-privacy
Supporters of the EU's horrific "Right To Be Forgotten" (RTBF)
generally make the implicit (and sometimes explicit) argument that
privacy must take precedence over free speech.
As a privacy advocate for many years (I created my ongoing PRIVACY
Forum in 1992) you might expect that I'd have at least some sympathy
for that position.
Such an assumption would be incorrect. At least in the context of
censorship in general -- and of RTBF in particular -- I disagree
strongly with such assertions.
It's not because privacy is unimportant. In fact, I feel that free
speech is more important than privacy precisely because privacy itself
is so important!
It's all a matter of what you know, what you don't know, and what you
don't know that you don't know.
Basically, there are two categories of censorship.
The first consists largely of materials that you know exist, but that
you are forbidden by (usually government) edict from accessing. Such
items may in practice be difficult to obtain, or simple to obtain, but
in either case may carry significant legal penalties if you actually
obtain them (or in some cases, even try to obtain them). An obvious
example of this category is sexually-explicit materials of various
sorts around the world.
Ironically, while this category could encompass everything from
classic erotic literature to the most depraved pornography involving
children, overall it is the lesser insidious form of censorship, since
at least you know that it exists.
The even more evil type of censorship -- the sort that is fundamental
to the "Right To be Forgotten" concept and an essential element of
George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four" -- is the effort to hide actual
information in a manner that would prevent you from even knowing that
it exists in the first place.
Whether it's a war with "Eastasia" or a personal past that someone
would prefer that you not know about, the goal is for you not to
realize, to not even suspect, that some negative information is out
there that you might consider to be relevant and important.
Combine this with the escalating RTBF demands of France and other
countries for global censorship powers over Google's and other firms'
search results, and it becomes clear why privacy itself can be
decimated under RTBF and similar forms of censorship.
Because if individual governments -- some of whom already impose
draconian information controls domestically -- gain global censorship
powers, we can't possibly assume that we even know what's really going
on in respect to negative impacts on our privacy!
In other words, RTBF and similar forms of censorship can act to hide
from us the very existence of entities, facts and efforts that could
be directly damaging to our privacy in a myriad number of ways. And
if we don't know that these even exist, how can we possibly make
informed evaluations of our privacy and the privacy of our loved ones?
To make matters worse, much of this applies not only to privacy
issues, but to an array of crucial security issues as well.
Attempting to maintain privacy and security in a regime of global
censorship designed to hide facts from the public -- irrespective of
the occasionally laudable motives for such actions in some specific
cases -- is like trying to build a skyscraper on a foundation of
quicksand.
You don't need to be an architect, a computer scientist -- or a
privacy expert -- to recognize the insanity of such an approach.
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein ([email protected]): http://www.vortex.com/lauren
Founder:
- Network Neutrality Squad: http://www.nnsquad.org
- PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com/privacy-info
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: http://www.pfir.org/pfir-info
Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
Google+: http://google.com/+LaurenWeinstein
Twitter: http://twitter.com/laurenweinstein
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: vortex.com
I have consulted to Google, but I am not currently
doing so -- my opinions expressed here are mine alone.
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