I recently read Little Brother by Cory Doctorow. It's a good read, well written. The story is about a 17 year old boy living in San Francisco in the aftermath of a terrorist attack in the city on the scale of 9/11. Homeland security descends on the city in droves and institutes all sorts of measures that are supposed to root out terrorists and make the American citizens living there safer, with the standard cry of the professional paranoid that if you aren't doing anything wrong, you don't have anything to hide and shouldn't mind them poking their noses into every facet of your lives.

Right?

Doctorow touched briefly on the difference between privacy and secrecy, and that's the point that really struck me, through the whole book. For example, doing a bowel movement is not shameful, unnatural or secret. But it is private. We don't hide the fact that we all take a crap daily, it's not a secret, but neither would we want Homeland Security agents, or anyone else for that matter, watching us do our business.

This seems to be the distinction that is missing in the brou-ha-ha developing south of the border about the backscatter scan (aka the naked pictures, and variations thereof) and the TSA policy that to get on a plane in the States, you have to either be oogled nekkid, or have a security person grope your genitals. Especially since they seem to have the mindset that anyone who objects to these two options, and/or refuses them, must have something to hide and therefore must be a terrorist bent on smuggling some sort of weapon or explosive on board.

And exactly how many terrorists have they caught by these measures? The answer is none. How much time and money and outrage has been spent on these measures? The answer is Way Too Much.

This same distinction becomes pertinant in any discussion of security, including online protocols and Internet surveillance by various governmental authorities, for whatever reason - thwarting terrorists, catching pedophiles, or preventing copyright violations. Where do we draw the line between giving up privacy in order to find secrets that are harmful to many people, or vulnerable people, and stating clearly that the view of the professional paranoids that anything they can't see is hiding dangerous secrets is wrong?

After years of privacy being sacrificed to the highly nebulous concept of security, the balance might finally be tipping towards valuing privacy again. I guess the world (and especially Americans) got tired of not being able to do their crap in private...