OverMatter

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Security and Privacy Aren't Opposites

"We've been told we have to trade off security and privacy so often -- in debates on security versus privacy, writing contests, polls, reasoned essays and political rhetoric -- that most of us don't even question the fundamental dichotomy.

But it's a false one.

Security and privacy are not opposite ends of a seesaw; you don't have to accept less of one to get more of the other. Think of a door lock, a burglar alarm and a tall fence. Think of guns, anti-counterfeiting measures on currency and that dumb liquid ban at airports. Security affects privacy only when it's based on identity, and there are limitations to that sort of approach.

Since 9/11, two -- or maybe three -- things have potentially improved airline security: reinforcing the cockpit doors, passengers realizing they have to fight back and -- possibly -- sky marshals. Everything else -- all the security measures that affect privacy -- is just security theater and a waste of effort.

By the same token, many of the anti-privacy "security" measures we're seeing -- national ID cards, warrantless eavesdropping, massive data mining and so on -- do little to improve, and in some cases harm, security. And government claims of their success are either wrong, or against fake threats.

The debate isn't security versus privacy. It's liberty versus control.

You can see it in comments by government officials: "Privacy no longer can mean anonymity," says Donald Kerr, principal deputy director of national intelligence. "Instead, it should mean that government and businesses properly safeguard people's private communications and financial information." Did you catch that? You're expected to give up control of your privacy to others, who -- presumably -- get to decide how much of it you deserve. That's what loss of liberty looks like.

It should be no surprise that people choose security over privacy: 51 to 29 percent in a recent poll. Even if you don't subscribe to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, it's obvious that security is more important. Security is vital to survival, not just of people but of every living thing. Privacy is unique to humans, but it's a social need. It's vital to personal dignity, to family life, to society -- to what makes us uniquely human -- but not to survival.

If you set up the false dichotomy, of course people will choose security over privacy -- especially if you scare them first. But it's still a false dichotomy. There is no security without privacy. And liberty requires both security and privacy. The famous quote attributed to Benjamin Franklin reads: "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." It's also true that those who would give up privacy for security are likely to end up with neither."

What Our Top Spy Doesn't Get: Security and Privacy Aren't Opposites

MacBook Air prediction from two years ago...

September 2005: "In two years I have a feeling that Jobs will announce an Intel-flash iBook that will be the thinest laptop ever made boasting the best battery life of any current machine." (OverMatter: Flash Memory Laptops)

Freedom = Success

Mavericks at Work: Where the Most Original Minds in Business Connect

Andrew Olmsted, R.I.P.

"I am leaving this message for you because it appears I must leave sooner than I intended. I would have preferred to say this in person, but since I cannot, let me say it here." - Citizen G'Kar, Babylon 5 (Final Post - andrewolmsted.com)

More: Andrew Olmsted Killed in Iraq and The Rocky Mountain News

iPhone Revenue

Apple "nets an estimated $80 for every $399 iPhone it sells, and that's not counting the $240 it makes from every two-year AT&T contract an iPhone customer signs. Meanwhile, about 40 percent of iPhone buyers are new to AT&T's rolls, and the iPhone has tripled the carrier's volume of data traffic in cities like New York and San Francisco." (The Untold Story: How the iPhone Blew Up the Wireless Industry)

Rudolph Giuliani on "Freedom"

"Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do." - Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, March 16, 1994 (Some Free Speech On Mayor's Words - New York Times)

Music Lessons

"Many musicians have understood that all they need to make a (very good) living is to have 10,000 fans. 10,000 people who look forward to the next record, who are willing to trek out to the next concert. Add 7 fans a day and you’re done in 5 years. Set for life. A life making music for your fans, not finding fans for your music." (Seth Godin's Blog)

More on The Wire

"As The Wire unveiled its fourth season in 2006, Jacob Weisberg of Slate, in a much-cited column, called it “the best TV show ever broadcast in America.” The New York Times, in an editorial (not a review, mind you) called the show Dickensian. I agree with both assessments. “Wire-world,” as Simon calls it, does for turn-of-the- millennium Baltimore what Dickens’s Bleak House does for mid-19th-century London. Dickens takes the byzantine bureaucracy of the law and the petty corruptions of the legal profession, borrows from the neighborhoods, manners, dress, and language of the Chancery courts and the Holborn district, and builds from them a world that breathes. Similarly, The Wire creates a vision of official Baltimore as a heavy, self-justified bureaucracy, gripped by its own byzantine logic and criminally unconcerned about the lives of ordinary people, who enter it at their own risk. One of the clever early conceits of the show was to juxtapose the organizational problems of the city police department with those of the powerful drug gang controlling trafficking in the city’s west-side slums. The heads of both organizations, official and criminal, wrestle with similar management and personnel issues, and resolve them with similarly cold self-interest. In both the department and the gang, the powerful exploit the weak, and within the ranks those who exhibit dedication, talent, and loyalty are usually punished for their efforts.

There are heroes in The Wire, but they’re flawed and battered. The show’s most exceptional police officers, detectives Jimmy McNulty and Lester Freamon, find their initiative and talent punished at almost every turn. Their determination to do good, original work disturbs the department’s upper echelons, where people are heavily invested in maintaining the status quo and in advancing their own careers. The clash repeatedly lands both of them in hot water—or cold water; at the end of the first season, the seasick-prone McNulty is banished to the city’s marine unit. What success the two attain against Baltimore’s most powerful criminals is partial, compromised, and achieved despite stubborn and often creative official resistance.

One measure of the complexity of Simon’s vision is that the powerful obstructionists in The Wire aren’t simply evil people, the way they might have been in a standard Hollywood movie. While some are just inept or corrupt, most are smart and ambitious, sometimes even interested in doing good, but concerned first and foremost with their next promotion or a bigger paycheck. They are fiercely territorial, to a degree that interferes with real police work. In the premiere episode, the very idea of a separate squad to target the leadership of the city’s powerful drug gangs—which one would assume to be a high law-enforcement priority—is opposed by the police department. It’s imposed on the commissioner by order of a local judge, who’s outraged when a witness at a murder trial in his courtroom fearfully recants her testimony on the stand. To spite the judge, the commissioner staffs the unit with castoffs from various police divisions. Some of the castoffs are so alcoholic or corrupt they’re useless, but some, like the lesbian detective Shakima Greggs, or the patient, wise Freamon, or the ballsy, streetwise McNulty, are castoffs precisely because of their ability. In Simon’s world, excellence is a ticket out the door.

In one of the show’s most interesting set pieces, a remarkable police major, “Bunny” Colvin, frustrated by the absurdity of the city’s useless drug war, conducts a novel experiment. Without the knowledge of his superiors, he effectively legalizes drugs in West Baltimore, creating a mini-Amsterdam, dubbed “Hamsterdam,” where all of the corner dealers are allowed to set up shop. By consolidating drug dealing, which he knows he cannot stop anyway, Colvin eliminates the daily turf battles that drive up the murder rates and dramatically improves life in most of his district. Calm returns to terrorized neighborhoods, and his patrolmen, freed from their cars and the endless pursuit of drug-dealing corner boys, return to real police work, walking beats, getting to know the people they serve. The sharp drop in his district crime stats shocks the department’s leadership and makes Colvin’s peers jealous—and suspicious. They assume he’s cooking the books.

Again, it’s a tribute to the depth of Simon’s imagination that this experiment isn’t presented as a cure-all. He doesn’t minimize the moral compromise inherent in Hamsterdam. Many addicts see their severe health problems worsen, and the drug-dealing zone becomes a haven for vice of all kinds. Decent people in the community are horrified by the officially sanctioned criminality and the tolerance of destructive addiction. The experiment ends ignobly when news of the unauthorized experiment reaches the ears of a Sun reporter. City Hall reacts to the story with predictable horror, scurrying and spinning to escape blame. Colvin loses his job, and the city goes back to the old war, which is useless but politically acceptable. "

(The Atlantic Online | January 2008 | The Angriest Man In Television | Mark Bowden)

LineRider "Discarded"