The UN human rights chief, Navi Pillay, has compared the uproar in the international community caused by revelations of mass surveillance with the collective response that helped bring down the apartheid regime in South Africa.
Pillay, the first non-white woman to serve as a high-court judge in South Africa, made the comments in an interview with Sir Tim Berners-Lee on a special edition of BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, which the inventor of the world wide web was guest editing.
From The Guardian
I guess just about anything momentous is going to be compared to apartheid with that background. I myself have often wondered why some people are forced to send their IP packets on one side of the fibre, and others get to use the other side of the fibre. And why do some people have Macs and others Windows? Definitely apartheid, no question.
You’re having me on, right?
The equating/comparison wasn’t so much about the crimes as the unease and opposition they provoke. (My own headline is misleading. The Guardian‘s a little less so, but still OTT: “Internet privacy as important as human rights”.)
Ms Pillay’s comparison seems to me to be about “the uproar in the international community” over mass surveillance and “the collective response” (a slow train coming, so, eventually) to apartheid.
For me: this line speaks… (and seems true):
What’s your opinion? Seriously. No hurry.
– P
My opinion on the right to privacy? It is a very important right. One that this generation seems far too quick to give away.
My opinion on government being caught involved in big time surveillance? Finally! Sunlight is the best remedy. Big government is a massive danger to all of us, and technology allows big government to look small on the outside.
My opinion on this latest uproar? Too little, too weak. BAU is only months away. More needs to be done.
The dangers of too much privacy? We need to ensure that the only result is not to protect porn sites, the slave trade, pedophiles etc. Such privacy is not a right.
Zen tiger is absolutely right … too little too late.
Privacy is universally regarded now – as the sole preserve of those who have something to hide.
In reality … since the existence of organised groups of human beings .. privacy and any right to it … has never been valued or endorsed. Or at least thats what History seems to teach.
As i write this i am in a room shielded by numerous strips of cheap tinfoil .. including a tinfoil hat to shield my brainwaves (such as they are).
Nothing will change.