logoalt Hacker News

localuser13yesterday at 11:12 PM1 replyview on HN

>National security and "public safety" carve outs need to be eliminated. So long as those exist, we have no right to privacy.

This is overly absolutist, or maybe idealistic view. National security and public safety IS more important than individual right to privacy. As an extreme example, if your friend was dying, you had a password to my email, and you knew that you can use information in my inbox to save that person i really hope you would do it.

In general I think that police with a court order should be able to invade someone's privacy (with judge discretion). I mean they can already kick down someone's doors and detain them for several days - checking email doesn't sound too bad compared to it, does it? I think they should also be legally obliged to inform that person in let's say 6 months that they did it.

The problem is that modern world is drastically different than the old world when you needed to physically hunt down letters. Now you can mass scan everyone's emails, siphon terabytes of personal data that stasi could only dream of, and invigilate everyone. This is something that is worth fighting against.


Replies

marcus_holmestoday at 3:47 AM

> National security and public safety IS more important than individual right to privacy.

I disagree.

Because as soon as you open the door to governments reading your mail, they will read your mail. They can't help themselves. [0]

The only way of stopping them from doing this to excess is to stop them doing it at all.

The "National Security and Public Safety" thing is what they say to justify it, but that's not what the powers will actually be used for. They will actually be used for far less noble purposes, and possibly actually for evil.

We are actually much more secure if we don't let the government read our mail.

[0] In the UK, anti-terrorist laws passed in the post-9/11 haze of "national security and public safety" are routinely used for really, really, minor offences: https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/anti-terror...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7369543.stm