Are Privacy And Security Opposites?

from the a-bogus-debate dept

A common debate these days is how much privacy we need to give up to guarantee our security. It goes back and forth between the privacy advocates and the security folks - who have convinced most people that there's a tradeoff. BusinessWeek has an interview with David Brin where he argues there's no such thing. To him, we certainly need to keep certain pieces of information (harmful information) private. But, otherwise, what we need to do is make things more open - so that everyone has access to information about others. He suggests that with more information, it makes everyone safer. This is sort of a parallel argument to the idea that open source software lets more people find and fix security holes. Certainly an interesting read. Basically, he's not worried about increased government powers concerning surveillance, but believes that we need to demand more accountability from them as well - and the ability to look at what they're spying on ourselves.

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