Glenn Greenwald: Why privacy matters

[securitybreach]

Everyone using the Internet should watch this.

Glenn Greenwald: Why privacy matters:

 

http://youtu.be/pcSlowAhvUk

[Guest LilBambi]

This is SOOOO relevant as I noted on Twitter when I posted about it.

 

Way to go Glenn Greenwald and TED for posting this!

[ebrke]

I read today (can't remember just where to source the author) that what people who contend they have nothing to hide are really saying is "I'm not the sort of person who has anything I don't want my government to know about." Somehow it's always "the other", the bad sort of person, who has something to fear from surveillance. They never seem to think that the government watching you today is not the same government that will watch you next year or the year after that. Once the door is open, you have no control over who comes in.

[Guest LilBambi]

That is so true!

 

Which usually leads to this sad type of inevitability:

 

When the Nazis came for the communists,

I remained silent;

I was not a communist.

 

When they locked up the social democrats,

I remained silent;

I was not a social democrat.

 

When they came for the trade unionists,

I did not speak out;

I was not a trade unionist.

 

When they came for the Jews,

I remained silent;

I wasn't a Jew.

 

When they came for me,

there was no one left to speak out.

 

Martin Niemöller* - Wikiquote

 

*Friedrich Gustav Emil Martin Niemöller (14 January 1892 – 6 March 1984) was a Protestant pastor and social activist.

[Guest LilBambi]

The history of that saying (which has many variants over the years) is here:

 

The best-known versions of the speech are the poems that began circulating by the 1950s.[1] The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum quotes the following text as one of the many poetic versions of the speech:[2]

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

 

Niemöller created multiple versions of the text during his career. The earliest speeches, written in 1946, list the Communists, incurable patients, Jews or Jehovah's Witnesses, and civilians in countries occupied by Nazi Germany.