November 24, 2008

You can help with one of the most important public policy issues of our times

I’m pretty passionate about electronic freedom these days.

Issues of privacy and liberty take at least five forms:

  • Censorship
  • Admissible evidence in court
  • Admissible evidence in investigations (not exactly the same thing)
  • The consequences of damaging information leaks from the government to the private sector
  • Potential chill on useful technologies (e.g., electronic health records) caused by any of the other four kinds of issue

Taken together, that amounts to much of the Bill of Rights – or other countries’ equivalents — plus a whole lot of life-saving technology on the side. I.e., it’s more than huge.

That’s from a detailed recent post that ends with a call to action:

Please join me in raising awareness. Blog yourself. Send email to those who might have influence. Or – and this one’s really easy – just go to the suggestion page at www.change.gov and help draw the incoming Administration’s attention toward these crucial issues.

Please, please do at least one of those things. There’s still enough time for freedom to be preserved, since the worst practical threats are still some years off. But if it doesn’t happen during an Obama Administration, when will it happen, in the United States or the rest of the world? The time to make a difference is now.

Comments

One Response to “You can help with one of the most important public policy issues of our times”

  1. Very chilling effects | DBMS 2 : DataBase Management System Services on July 28th, 2013 11:38 pm

    […] was making similar points back in 2008 — but I was greatly over-optimistic about the Obama […]

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