Privacy is a right!

Welcome all to my reflect on privacy for week 9.

I am, unsurprisingly for those who know me, a contradiction in regards to the issue of privacy. I am, simply, a true believe that people have a right to privacy. For myself, however, I am unconcerned.

Okay so lets break that down a little because it is rather unusual for someone to take a stance on something they don’t feel personally effected or connected to. I feel, as citizens belonging to one country or another (or if your really unlucky not belonging to anyone), that people deserve to have the thing they had rather not share left that way. Broken into privacy leads to the gathering of snapshots and you loose the whole picture. In other words there is not context when information is taken from someone without their consent. Without context meaning is misconstrued and ‘people’ end up in indefinite custody without a warrant or rights. I don’t believe people can be so naive to say that ‘well if you’ve got nothing to hide…’. To misquote an oft used saying ‘information is power’ and those who want your information are not to be trusted with that power without strict accountability and oversight.

In my play activity this week I talked about being surprised there wasn’t more information on me. Either that or it’s not easily searchable. I shouldn’t really be that surprised, the Internet isn’t psychic. I have not put anything online that I would care if the world knew, except my bank details and even then there isn’t much there so I’m not really worried. I am not concerned about my personal privacy, in some ways I am a private person but those are the parts of me that don’t go online. My image is not private and is online in a variety of places (and states of undress) but I have the medium and legitimacy of being a life model which guards me against feeling exposed by this.

The discussion surrounding the data retention laws just passed by the senate is an interesting tension. Much of the conversation I encounter against data retention centres on trust. Do we trust the legislative bodies of this country not to exploit this power and to hold this collected data safe against anyone who would take it? There is much argument among interested parties about what constraints where added or not added to these laws. Having not read the legislation I could not say definitively that the warrant process for obtaining data on whomever ASIO of the AFP deem untrustworthy is rigorous. The fact remains: I do not trust the current government to draft legislation or ASIO to enact said legislation that is strong enough to withstand the sort politicised fear mongering and talk-yourself-into-it style of corruption that these sort of laws are so susceptible to.

I have deliberately avoided talking about the elephant in the room: Terrorism. Nor am interested in getting into that discussion. I realise that this is the motivation for the new laws, national security seems to be the only thing this government ever seems to win on (and even then I’m not sure the public are buying it mush anymore). I do know this though, data retention would not have stopped the Martin Place hostage situation from happening. It may or may not stop young muslims from joining ISIS, it is hard to say. I do know that unfair targeting based on race or religion will make these same young people more likely to go to place where they feel less marginalised and more powerful. And unfair targeting is just what these laws have the potential for.

Signing off,

L

(sorry if its a bit rough, I got excited and it’s too late in the day for a decent edit)