Liberty vs. The Common Good

The debate that raged between Apple and the Federal Government was on the surface about security, privacy and encryption. However, in a larger sense it’s about the balance between our liberty and right to privacy vs. what some perceive as the greater good of the nation.

When we put up with the indignities of the TSA, we are agreeing that the greater good of security, check makes certain individual liberties. When we pass laws about personal vices, about speed limits or about guns or fundamental civil rights, the framework is the same.

In fact, when we look at the history of America, right on through our present day polarization, we see this struggle between individual liberty and the common good as a fundamental debate that links us directly with our founders.

This is the tension that Colin Woodard writes about in American Character: A History of the Epic Struggle Between Individual Liberty and the Common Good.

My conversation with Colin Woodard:

There is no privacy! Should we just get over it?

Back in 1999, almost fifteen years ago, Sun Microsystems then Gadfly-in-Chief Scott McNealy made his infamous statement that “you have zero privacy anyway, get over, it.” There was a kerfuffle at the time, mostly that he had the nerve to say such a thing. Imagine, someone telling the truth.

The fact is he was right then, and all the debate from time to time, about terms of service for Google or Facebook, has resulted in very little change in the private sector, with respect to online privacy. In the public realm, the Snowden revelations really only confirmed what many have suspected for a long. We have not privacy.

So the question now is, should we just get over it, or actually try to do something about and if so what? Will some people opt to become a digital recluse, or is all of this just the price of progress?

Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Julia Angwin looks inside the world of privacy today in Dragnet Nation: A Quest for Privacy, Security, and Freedom in a World of Relentless Surveillance.

My conversation with Julia Angwin:

Privacy

I’ve often quoted the former head of Sun Microsystems, Scott McNeally who once said, almost a decade ago that “there is no privacy, get over it.” And that was before Facebook, apps, Foursquare, location based retail, etc.

To a large extent this raises the issue of a generational divide regarding our attitudes about privacy. But what we don’t often think about is whether or not our attitudes about privacy are shaped by culture, economics and class. Harper's contribing editor Garret Keizer offers an interesting new anaylsis,  in his new book Privacy. 

My conversation with Garret Keizer:

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