I’ve seen a number of posts on Facebook today where people say things like “I don’t care, I’ve got nothing to hide”. I used to think like that too. But the bad news here is that it isn’t you they care about.

Let’s think about a couple of scenarios.

A journalist or an activist is trying to build a story around government or corporate corruption. The government or corporation in question gets wind of it. They can use this mass surveillance to dig up any embarrassing details about this person’s life and threaten to destroy them if they proceed. Let’s say the person has been having an affair or just talking shit about their boss in an email. When the security state has unfettered access to everything you’ve ever written or said on the phone or searched for online, they can destroy anyone who poses a threat to them.

A politician is trying to push through some major changes to, let’s say, election funding or corporate fraud or cutting back on the military. Again, this kind of unfettered access means that any past mistake or screw-up in their lives can be used against them, to stop them from pursuing their agenda of change.

This isn’t a crazy theory. If you read about what has happened in the last 100 years of history when the security state got out of control, you can see this kind of thing in action.

The Stasi in East Germany.
The KGB under Stalin.
The FBI under Hoover.
The CIA under …. well just the CIA forever.
Hell, even the NSA today.

The more access we give security agencies to have unfettered access to our personal information, the more damage they can do – not to you or I, we don’t matter – but to the people who are trying to curb their power or change the system.

That’s why it matters.

 

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