Ding-a-Ling

New technologies bring economic and life-style benefits but they also enable unparalleled invasions of privacy. Increasingly, we hear subtle - and not so subtle - arguments that endeavour to justify surveillance and the erosion of the rights of autonomy, anonymity, association and free speech that are a basic entitlement of every person on Planet Earth. The abuse of communication and other technologies is systemic in authoritarian regimes. Meantime, established democracies are being stealthily undermined as laws to protect established privacy and other rights fall well behind the curve; new systems of regulation and enforcement are urgently needed to protect citizens enveloped in a tsunami of technological development. Through the ballot box, individuals with voting rights still have the power to protect basic freedoms. Failure to forcefully exercise this right may well result in allowing your phone calls and all aspects of your private life becoming grist to the mill of public amusement as well as other - as yet unimagined - tyrannies. We all need to pay attention to the lessons of history. `Big Brother in the form of an increasingly powerful government and an increasingly powerful private sector will pile records high with reasons why privacy should give way to national security, to law and order [...] and the like.' -William O. Douglas, Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court 1939-`75 `If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear! -Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Minister for Public enlightenment and propaganda.' `Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say' -Edward Snowden, former CIA employee. `Privacy is something you can sell but you can't buy it back' - Bob Dylan