WHY PRIVACY IS WORTH IT TO DEFEND

This note will discuss and debunk several arguments made in favor of limiting people’s
privacy for the sake of security. Written by Rifan. 

Through this article I am going to show you objective and logical reasoning why we should
completely challenge that myth and start disbelieving any bullshit preached by big data maniac such
as US, and unfortunately our government.

In order to challenge it, I need to build two important foundations; first is why privacy is
important in modern life, and second is whether or not policy that infringes privacy is actually
necessary and effective to “protect” us from “threat”.
 
We all have to concede that we live in fucked up world, where competition is tough, and
when everyone of us always think about how to survive than how to socially contribute to others.
This crazy competition forces us to be someone else, and often what we do in real life do not
represent what we really are. Let me show you simple scenario. It would be important for gay and
feminine men to pretend being straight, conforming to masculinity and start to earn money, build
muscle, and use heavy voice. It is also equally important for women to succumb to patriarchy, take
sexism as consequence of life because otherwise women won’t be able to get proper life, career,
and acceptance from sexist men. It is utterly crucial for socialist youth to sacrifice his/her life only to
work for big corporation, let this companies exploit poor labor only to survive and get some money
to buy foods and shelter.
 
In this fucked up life, we have no option but to hide our real expression and we often
express our “real personality” in other avenues, particularly social media/virtual world. LGBT
community gain support through website and Gay forum, geeks go to probably 4chan to stay geek,
and women secretly share their feeling to fellow friends about how abusive their husbands are. In
short, virtual expression is now turning into our real identity and obviously our real identity are very
important to be freely expressed without any fear of being infringed by 3rd party. 
 
It is very uncomfortable for some women to share their experience about masturbation,
worrying the fact that the white male officials will read these stories and jerk off. It is frightening for
gay athlete to share his story via facebook, if he realizes that NSA might read and discover it.
Infringing privacy is a flagrant violation to basic right, which, in my humble opinion is even closely
similar to rape. Government takes away our core identity without consent under the name of
“homeland security” that is usually assumptive and broadly defined. No matter how much important
national security is, it is always wrong to sacrifice basic right. We are society that carries high morale
and we all know that it is disgusting for us to (sorry to say) rape Osama’s kid in order to make him
surrender and leave Al Qaeda. 
 
That is in general my view about the first foundation. And so far we receive few challenges
about this matter because most of hawkish supporters of Prism cannot have reasonably logical
response to it. Hence, let us move to another foundation that to be frank, repeatedly used by many
homeland security preacher. INFRINGING PRIVACY IS EFFECTIVE AND NECESSARY! 
In order to challenge this view, I will try to deliver 3 sub points.

1. Firstly, this program is mostly abused and have huge tendency to corrupt. Having ability
to infringe privacy is a huge power to have. Why? Because when you can infringe privacy
means that you do not need any consent as requirement to this action. Often times,
under the name of “immediate action”, government directly wiretaps without any court
order. Not only unlawful, but this has a huge tendency to be abused by government
itself. We cannot always assume that government is benevolent and trust me; it is
statistically proven that the bigger power you have, the more corrupt you will be. US is
proven multiple times abusing Prism by directly committing espionage to numerous
countries such as China, EU, and even 3rd world states. South Korean ex leader used
similar program to wiretap the owner of Samsung for personal purpose, and Tony
Abbott Shamelessly wiretapped Indonesian Government for stupid reason. Usually,
many people and ironically debaters would say “That is too technical let us rely on law
enforcement”. I am sorry but I need to say this as “Bull Crap”. Most of the governments
that we are talking above are essentially superpower countries that are not afraid with
sanction, and they have too much power to bully us back if we resist against them. The
problem is getting worse by the fact that access to affordable lawyer is very hard that
deters us to sue government for misconduct. 

2. Even if government is too good to be true, this program is unfortunately not necessary.
Why? Government can easily use any slightest accusation as threat. Public policy is made
based on likelihood and this is what most people dismiss. Just because I can crash
president’s car when I drive that will possibly ruin the whole nation, it does not mean
government can ban all of us to drive. This is 0.000001% chance and we have to be
realistic that it is unlikely to happen. The same logic applies to Prism project. Let us
question ourselves how can a physically disadvantaged women can be potential threat
for the nation, and how can a young drag queer can be potentially an enemy of the
state. This assumption is too wild and very bad to make. That is why we need to have
preliminary report and investigation, followed by court order that has assessed
objectively that someone is having reasonable suspicion. Let me show you simple
scenario. Hizbut Tahrir is known as its view to demonize west and support caliphate. Yet,
they are personally not conforming to terrorism. With this program, it is no surprise that
government can covertly infringe their privacy because any view that despises west is
equal to bombing and terrorism.
 
3. Lastly, we all know that the program is not efficient. We deal with big data, where it
records millions of information and conversation every millisecond. Too much data will
never help us to properly respond to threat. We deal with too much probability that
might be hard to decipher. It is now clear evidence that US government has increasingly
wrongful detention especially after prism is started. More people are accused by them
as threat, although it s strongly proven otherwise. In return, we use huge number of
budget that is very important to spend especially for food stamp and free education.