ASIS 2013Security vs. privacy
Those who ask you to choose security or privacy and those who vote on security or privacy are making false choices. That’s like asking air or water? You need both to live. Maslow placed safety (of which security is a subset) as second only to food, water, sex, and sleep. As humans we crave safety. As individuals and societies, before we answer the question “security or privacy,” we first have to ask “security from whom or what?” and “privacy from whom and for whom?”
How much privacy are you willing to give up for security? This conversation has dominated the headlines in recent months and participants in a recent poll on the ASIS LinkedIn Group were nearly split on what has precedent — security or privacy concerns. The question below generated nearly 100 comments from practitioners worldwide.
In a Pew Research poll, 62 percent said it was more important to allow the government to search for possible terrorist threats even if it meant giving up privacy: Security vs. Privacy — Which Side Are You On?
The responses:
- Security – 52 (48 percent)
- Privacy – 48 (44 percent)
- Other – 7 (6 percent)
ASIS 2013/(ISC)2 Security Congress speaker Raj Goel, CSSP, weighed in with this blog post:
Those who ask you to choose security or privacy and those who vote on security or privacy are making false choices. That’s like asking air or water? You need both to live.
Maslow placed safety (of which security is a subset) as second only to food, water, sex, and sleep. As humans we crave safety.
As individuals and societies, before we answer the question “security or privacy,” we first have to ask “security from whom or what?” and “privacy from whom and for whom?”
Until 1215, every prince, king, emperor, and conqueror thought he had divine right and was either a god or a manifestation of god. The Magna Carta, for the first time in recorded human history, stripped Kings and Emperors of their divine right. Why? Because the nobility had enough of the incompetencies and cruelties of the ruling monarch.
In 1628, Sir Edward Coke established in English Common Law that “a man’s home is his castle.” In 1791, the U.S. Bill of Rights gave us the Fourth amendment, “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
Each of these articles gave us, the citizens, the commoners, rights that were hard-fought by a small-band of revolutionaries. Franklin, Jefferson, Washington, Madison, Adams, and countless others bled so that the masses could watch “Keeping up with the Kardashians” today.
Today, every techno-geek with classified access, every system administrator, every spymaster and bureaucrat in the information acquisition, analysis, and marketing machine presumes that he or
