[link|http://www.privacyfoundation.org/privacywatch/report.asp?id=79&action=0|Everybody's missing the point]

Excerpts:

In fact, the new powers of sight demanded and received by the FBI aren't all that awful. What bugs me terribly is that there have been no accompanying and countervailing powers of oversight, enabling citizen watchdog groups to observe how these new powers of vision are used. That second half of the deal was never offered to us. Nor did most of our protectors in the civil liberties community even ask...

Both groups assume a fundamental trade-off between safety and freedom, and derive economic benefit from the fact that we swallow this awful notion.

But is such a trade-off real? I can tell you that I refuse to even let it be a basis for discussion! Nobody tells me that I must choose between safety for my children and their freedom. It's a non-starter.

Can we have both safety and freedom? The evidence can be seen all around us. We are - even after 9/11 - toweringly safer and freer than any other people in history. The two go together. All it takes is breaking the stupid notion of dichotomies and trade-offs.

I say:

Privacy is a form of power - a defensive power. The more active power a person has, the less privacy we can entrust him with. The less active power a person has, the more likely he has a legitimate need for privacy. But even then, there are limits. No power without accountability.

Do away with executive privilege, and they can set up all the spycams they want, as far as I'm concerned. Oh, and I'll gladly consent to (voluntarily) running the occasional bit of Microsoft software, as soon as they completely open their code base.