CLMN | The ugly truth about PRISM
The privacy debate is once again a hot topic because of the PRISM scandal, a “secret” project carried out by US intelligence agencies to gather data from pretty much everyone. It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that this is by no means a current matter. Gathering data has been going on all over the world since forever. For example, take the scandal decades ago about governments (US and UK, among others) that were apparently opening and reading mail through their corresponding postal services. Granted, this digital age makes it much easier to gather and interpret massive amounts of information, but the principle stands.
I find some of the arguments against government involvement to be completely ridiculous. Yes, it’s wrong when said surveillance is not warranted by actual suspicion. However, for all the people that throw constitutional rights around, there’s even more people who believe they are entitled to privacy on the internet, for whatever reason. Here’s the thing: hardly anyone reads the terms of agreement of pretty much anything at all. And companies include all kinds of dubious and non-specific statements there. Take Apple’s famous denial of service for anyone who is willing to manufacture weapons of mass destruction with their products.
Humor aside, technically the terms of agreement is a legal statement with the potential to be carried over to court. More so, when Instagram changed its privacy policy, the public was enraged at the possibility that a free of charge service, to which they were uploading their photos voluntarily, might claim rights over them. Here’s the thing. We are not entitled to privacy if we have double standards. Governments don’t break laws if those laws don’t exist in the first place. And though I’d love to cry out “Reform!” the probability of that is slim to none.CLMN | The ugly truth about PRISM
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