Does privacy equals freedom (and if not why not) ?

I am not a privacy freak. Anyone looking through my garbage, my emails or even my windows will yield little scandal or titillation. Wife plays with phone. Boy plays with phone. Girl crafts tiny little cute things too small to admire without glasses. All wear clothes. Dad yells at kids cause he can't find his glasses Dad has a nap.

What did you expect from a middle-aged father in the suburbs - cooking meth, or training to be a super-powered vigilante?

I have tended to lean towards the 'nothing to hide, nothing to fear' argument to explain why I don't jump up and down about the potential for surveillance of my family and myself in this country at this time. Too old for the wild stuff - too young for the really kinky stuff. Get your thrills elsewhere folks.

Then in chimes in Edward Snowden,

"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."

Pow.

Now as a libertarian I am very concerned about free speech, Ed, I just don't like that you invented a right – the fabled Right to Privacy. And how's the weather in Gulagostok by the way?

In Australia we have no Bill of Rights so no specific right to privacy or anything else for that matter. We have only the laws of the land – and with regard to privacy they are not as strong as many Australians believe. Most of the existing laws deal with workplace surveillance and what can, and cannot, be published.

Even in America citizens do not enjoy privacy as a constitutional right. US citizens must rely on good old laws like we do that mostly protect them from bad publicity, identity theft and unwanted door-knockers

As far as I know – there is no such thing in this world as an absolute constitutional Right to Privacy. And if there is - it's probably in a third world bastion of freedom like Zimbabwe or Myanmar.

There is a popular notion of the Snowden generation that privacy equals freedom. The idea being that the less "they" know about what you are doing the less likely "they" are to stop you from doing it, or publicise what you are doing .

Possesion of cannabis is illegal in here NSW. Police could access your metadata and find that you bought a herbal vaporizer online. You also watched on Youtube a video about making cannabis extracts. Or the old fashioned way - your bank statements show a purchase at Harry's Happy Headshop with your identity confirmed by CCTV footage taken in the street and the card you used to pay for parking. Either way they could put two and two together and come around with a warrant to search your home knowing that they will find some pot and have sufficient evidence to prove that it is yours. Even if you are not charged or convicted, being outed as a pot smoker could cost you your job if you are, say, a cop or a lawyer.

So who will protect us if we have no rights?

Ask anyone in politics or the media and the answer will be the same. We need laws. The government needs to enact legislation at both the state and federal level to protect the rights of Australian citizens blah blah.

No. You cannot protect rights that don't exist. You cannot legislate your way to freedom. Laws do not make you free.

A true libertarian finds fault not so much in the aforementioned invasion of privacy as in the prohibition of a particular harmless herb. Or that police could get such a warrant (unlikely), or that they would want to (very unlikely).

Libertarians say cut out the middleman - just abolish the laws that make cannabis use illegal so we won't need laws to cover up it's widespread use.

Privacy does not equal freedom - it's just a workaround. It is making new laws to protect us from old ones. We end up with more laws which equals less freedom.

There are of course other ways an invasion of privacy could trip you up. Think Ashley Madison, Hilary Clinton, Shane Warne, Donald Trump. Think porn and how you might feel to find someone was looking over your shoulder and taking notes while you watched it.

Once again it's the libertarian freedom riders to the rescue. “Damn straight I'm looking at schoolgirl amputee porn - I'm a libertarian blogger and a member of the Sex Party for christ sake. And no that's not a bloody bong – it's an aromatherapy device, you idiot. Now get off my lawn.”

Infidelity, sexual preferences, medical history, dick pics, there a so any things that could shame us.

So don't be ashamed. Be an adult (adults don't do dick pics). Take responsibility for your actions and accept there may be consequences. Teach your children to do the same. Do anything but support the creation of laws that will take away your freedom.

Don't run. Don't hide. Because remember - you are free.

How I became a Libertarian (and maybe you could too)

If a liberal is a conservative who has been arrested, and a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged - then a libertarian might well be a conservative who has been harassed by the police for walking his damn dog.
 

So I'm not Rosa Parkes but hear me out. I was walking my dog on an almost deserted beach mid afternoon and wondering where the hell everyone was when a NSW Police taxpayer funded four wheel drive vehicle drove along the beach and stopped nearby me. My dog had never seen a vehicle of any sort on the beach and ran to greet it in her friendly doggy way. Down goes the window and a uniformed police officer beckoned me over.

There is a serial rapist about and cruelly preying on lone middle-aged men in board shorts, he said - not. Nor did he warn of sharks nor rips nor burqua clad beach babes. The threat to society, he explained, was my good self and my canine accomplice.

“Your dog is too far away from you (he did actually say this that's why it's in quotes) The law states that the dog must be under your direct control which it is not.” His well trained eyes took in my facial expression and classified it as nonplussed so he explained “It might run off into the sand dunes, or get in a fight with another dog. Or something.”

Now I am old and I am wise and I have learned to hold my temper by keeping my mouth firmly shut so I nodded in thanks to the officer for his input and let him go about the business of harassing the one other dog walker on the beach about half a kilometre away.

Well.

At first I assumed that some rich city dickhead had paid a couple of mill for a beach house and found that it fronted a off leash dog beach and started a campaign of complaint to make the dogs go crap somewhere else. Or the Greens dominated Council of Cat Owners had once again escalated the War on Dogs and let slip some dogs of their own.

But no – it turns out that in Byron Bay some brain dead sociopath had encouraged a young woman to pat the dog in the back of his ute.

She did - and the dog bit off her nose .

It turned out that the dog was vicious (duh) and officially a dangerous dog supposed to be muzzled and on a leash in public. Obviously it was neither.

So of course the logical thing to do is to dispatch the Police force to a beach 30 kilometres away and harass anyone throwing a stick into the surf for their dog to retrieve. And not only dispatch the crack troops of the Future Crime Department but those from the elite Future Imaginary Crime Squad who can dream up offences such as Dog Found in Sand Dunes with Intent.

It's called overpolicing. And it's a thing.

Now you may think this trivial. No one was hurt, charged or seriously messed up in any way. But had I told this cop what I thought of him, his job and his Body Mass Index I could well have been arrested right there on the beach. My dog would have objected to this and could well have been shot. 

If you think I'm being dramatic - remember what happened to young Corey Barker at the Ballina cop shop when half a dozen police kicked the crap out of him for mouthing off while in their custody for a charge that was later dropped. Or the Brazilian student who was stomped strangled tear gassed and electrocuted to death having run from Sydney police after unlawfully consuming a packet of biscuits. Or Cameron Doomadgee - beaten to death in police custody in Queensland in 2004 - arrested for calling a police deputy a dog.

 

But this is not a critique of the NSW Police Force. This is about freedom and how we are giving it away like it is a worthless relic from another century.

I this what you want for your tax dollar? Do you want to be caught in a web of laws and regulations, of police and rangers, parking inspectors, speed cameras every time you walk out your door? Do you wish to suffer for every piece of stupid shit done by people you have never laid eyes on? Do you want to be harassed maybe arrested tried convicted beat up or shot because some shiny-bummed bureaucrat sends a knee-jerk memo to a bunch of TAFE educated shift workers? Do you really truly want a bloody nanny?

Not me. Thanks anyway.

No I'm not going to rant.

I just want you to consider that might be going in the wrong direction where it comes to the creation of laws and their enforcement leading to a culture of creeping oppression of Australian citizens. Of you and me. Of us.

Consider that our freedom is something the law and it's forces should be dispatched to protect not destroy.

And don't forget that, for now anyway, you and I are free.