>> "The Apple boss, who last year publicly acknowledged he is gay, added that “history has shown us that sacrificing our right to privacy can have dire consequences”
Why would this detail possibly be relevant to the point Tim Cook was making?
Why would this detail possibly be relevant to the point Tim Cook was making?
When the Nazis came to power, they used those previously obtained lists to round up the homosexuals and send them to death camps. A lesson that privacy matters even if you think your current government and/or its use of data is benign.
Beyond that, by saying it's ok for governments to snoop on private communications, it's normalising that same behaviour by China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, etc, etc. It's not good enough to say that it's alright for the West to do it because they are good guys and not ok for despotic regimes to do it because they are bad guys. It's a matter of principle that it's wrong for everyone to do it.
That is the only way to set a standard and hold every government to it. We should figure out what line in terms of privacy and respect for personal rights we would like China, Russia, etc to abide by. It's only ok for our governments to do things that we would accept as being legitimate for those governments to do. That is the only way to normalise respect for the individual and protect our personal freedoms in the long term.
Even in the United States, there is a social cost to being known to be gay. Arguably [in most communities] it's low enough that it's better than the alternative of trying to keep it a secret, but the cost still exists. Certain people will not want to be your friend or do business with you if they know you're gay. You may not care about those lost opportunities... you may have plenty of friends and business opportunities... but it still limits your options. In some small dogmatic communities even in socially liberal countries, you might be ostracized, and your only options are to keep it a secret or to start a new life somewhere else.
Privacy in the "cloud" means keeping information secret from people who you'd rather not have judging you based on that information. It could be a close-minded community, or health insurance companies, or even something relatively innocuous and minor like some interest of yours that would raise eyebrows even among your friends.
Among those social consequences could be regular physical abuse, or even being beaten to death.
In the U.S., the cultural shift on this issue was so fast that it's easy to forget that we're not that far removed from Laramie, Wyoming and the brutal murder of Matthew Shepard in 1998 for being gay, or that LGBT individuals couldn't serve openly in the Armed Forces until 2011. [0][1]
Today that same state issues and recognizes gay marriages, and DADT is a fading memory. That's head-spinningly fast for a cultural and legal change of that magnitude.
Personally I think that this is one area where Tim Cook's sexual orientation probably influences his thinking, and in a very good way. He's smart enough to know that government access to Apple's data is more than enough for the government to build its own "pink lists" today.
Like Tim Cook, I believe we are not so close to the precipice that we can't use the normal political process to put a framework around our intelligence services that both safeguards privacy and protects our nation's interests.
I (contrary to prevailing opinion here), have great respect for our security agencies, and believe the men and women that staff them are mostly well-meaning public servants performing a valuable service.
But as we all know, this is not about today's government. It's about the unknown governments that will come to power in 10, 20, or 100 years, and in countless generations to come.
It's easy to design a government that you know will be staffed by decent men and women. But historically that is not an assumption upon which we can rely.
As James Madison said, our institutions should be designed to survive being "run by devils."
If I confront the issue directly: Do I feel our nation could survive as a free society if today's security apparatus was run by devils?
No. No, I do not.
Personally, I have a lot of trouble talking about privacy to my mother. She's firmly seated in the "I've got nothing to hide" camp.
I'm forwarding her this thread so she can see some differing opinions (that weren't written by me).
It's a fact that people who are being watched, or even who think they might be watched, behave different then those that think they are totally private [1]. So in order to discover who you are or how to deal with certain problems you encounter in life, you have to have an environment with the least amount of external influences possible. Having no prying eyes avoids self-censoring and conforming your thoughts or behavior to what you think that is expected by others. This way privacy is the matrix of diversity, new idea's and insights and a way to free ourselves from doctrines and repression.
http://chronicle.com/article/Why-Privacy-Matters-Even-if/127...
>> "“We still live in a world where all people are not treated equally. Too many people do not feel free to practice their religion or express their opinion or love who they choose,”
For one thing, his speech included direct references to the importance of privacy for marginalized groups (including homosexuals), especially in places where it is been illegal.
Moreover, I personally think it's one of the reasons that I believe Cook (far more so than other technology people) has a credible commitment to privacy. He's a very private person himself (in fact, he only came out last year), and I think that personal preference for privacy shines through in how he's running Apple.