Nothing to Hide? Why Your Privacy Matters in a Digital World
From safeguarding individuals to protecting the foundations of democracy, privacy is vital to our well-being.
“If we are observed in all matters, we are constantly under threat of correction, judgment, criticism, even plagiarism of our own uniqueness. We become children, fettered under watchful eyes, constantly fearful that — either now or in the uncertain future — patterns we leave behind will be brought back to implicate us, by whatever authority has now become focused upon our once-private and innocent acts. We lose our individuality because everything we do is observable and recordable.” — Bruce Schneier.
It’s been over a decade since the controversial whistleblower Edward Snowden leaked classified information from the U.S. Department of Defence’s National Security Agency (NSA). The leak confirmed what many already believed to be the case, but the revelations were no less shocking.
Not only was the NSA conducting a massive illegal telephone collection program, as well as collecting mass amounts of online data, but almost all of the major tech companies, including Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, and Apple, were complicit in the agency’s behavior (though in some cases they were also being hacked by…
