26 Privacy
20200514 Privacy is a fundamental human right according to the Australian Government’s Office of the Australian Information Commissioner. Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella and President Brad Smith have also stated the same principle on many occasions.
Without privacy we live in a state of fear, fear that anything we say may be overheard, or anything we do may lead to retribution or other inappropriate consequences. It severely constrains us, even though we do nothing wrong or illegal. There can always be found in something in what we have ever said or ever done, however innocent it may have been at the time, that would see us end up in jail in some jurisdiction.
Privacy is essential for freedom.
Unfortunately, Governments and Business in reality see it differently. The Morrison Government in Australia provided a worrying example. A government minister believed he had the right to breach the privacy of individuals by releasing “protected personal information” to his politically aligned journalists in 2016/2017. These individuals, ordinary citizens, spoke up against illegal government activities in debt collection, that allegedly lead to a number of suicides, as disclosed during a Royal Commission and reported upon in The Saturday Paper.
Citizens need to take care of their own privacy and Governments must support them, and today with some care our technology can help us but we need to start by protecting our own privacy.
Privacy gives us power.
In April 2025, Carole Cadwalladr, until shortly before then a journalist with The Guardian, in her TED talk, provides a salutary warning about our headlong rush into the demise of our societies. It is titled This Is What a Digital Coup Looks Like. Carole Cadwalladr had previously exposed the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal
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