Politech: Cato's Adam Thierer criticizes EPIC's anti-Google "lunacy" [priv]

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: RE: [Politech] EPIC letter compares Gmail to FBI's Carnivore, 
Total Information Awareness [priv]
Date: Fri, 30 Apr 2004 09:16:54 -0400
From: Adam Thierer <athierer () cato org>
To: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>

Oh brother, I can't take this lunacy from the privacy absolutists anymore:



(1) What part of VOLUNTARY is it that these privacy fundamentalists do 
not understand? How many times and in how many ways must it be said: YOU 
DO NOT HAVE TO SIGN UP FOR THIS FREE SERVICE!


(2) Second, these privacy absolutists persistently attempt to equate 
private sector privacy concerns and government privacy violations. There 
is a world of difference between the two and it basically comes down to 
the fact that governments hold guns to our heads and coercively force us 
to do certain things against our will. That is the real Big Brother 
problem. Google, by contrast, isn't holding a gun to anyone's head and 
forcing them to sign up.


(3) If you're concerned about how government might co-opt this service 
for its own nefarious ends, that is not a Google problem, that is a Big 
Government problem. Let's work together to properly limit the 
surveillance powers of government instead of shutting down any new 
private service or technology that we feel the feds might have to chance 
to abuse.


(4) Final point about these privacy fanatics: Do they not believe in 
freedom of contract? Do I or do I not have a right to contract with a 
company to exchange certain forms of personal information for a the 
right to free e-mail access and storage? Can I not VOLUNTARILY agree to 
such a deal? If not, then I fear that there are a heck of lot of things 
in this world that these people would make illegal in the name of 
"protecting privacy."


Do they believe that companies like Google will - - out of the goodness 
of their hearts - - just hand over free e-mail services and massive 
storage capacity to everyone without anything in exchange? There is no 
free lunch in this world but Google is giving us about the closest thing 
to it. And yet, the privacy fanatics want to reject that offer on the 
behalf over everyone in society. Well guess what EPIC... you don't speak 
for me and a lot of other people in this world who will be more than 
happy to cut this deal with Google. So do us a favor and don't ask the 
government to shut down a service just because you don't like it. 
Privacy is a subjective condition and your value preferences are not 
representative of everyone else's values in our diverse nation. Stop 
trying to coercively force your values and choices on others. We can 
decide these things on our own, thank you very much.


- - Adam Thierer, Director of Telecommunications Studies, Cato Institute


_______________________________________________
Politech mailing list
Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/
Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)