Do Only Criminals Have the Right to Privacy?

The worst part today is the smug cynics who shrug off the fascist invasion of our privacy by saying of course the government knows everything we do; get used to it.

That's the attitude of the hordes bowing under communist regimes. It doesn't get much more un-American.

David Cole at The Nation:

Defenders of the new surveillance typically argue that if you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to fear. This familiar claim ignores the fact that privacy is valuable not just to criminals, but to all of us. We all close the doors to our bedrooms and our homes, whether or not we are engaged in criminal conduct. We all use password protection for our personal computers, regardless of whether we are doing anything wrong. Privacy serves a multitude of ends other than protecting criminals; if that weren’t the case, we wouldn’t have protected it in the first place.