[Cryptography] Gilmore response to NSA mathematician's "make rules for NSA" appeal

[Walter van Holst]

On 18/09/2013 01:50, John Gilmore wrote:

> Re Big Data: I have never seen data that could be abused by someone
> who didn't have a copy of it.  My first line of defense of privacy is
> to deny copies of that data to those who would collect it and later
> use it against me.  This is exactly the policy that NSA supposedly has
> to follow, according to the published laws and Executive Orders: to
> prevent abuses against Americans, don't collect against Americans.
> It's a good first step.  NSA is not following that policy.

What makes me a tad bitter is that we apparantly live in a world with
two classes: US citizens and the subhuman rest of it. NSA-style blanket
surveillance violates the fundamental right to privacy and ultimately
also the fundamental right to freedom of expression.

These are not rights that are solely vested in the exceptional
Americans. The Bill of Tights already alludes to their universality,
although it took the UN Declaration of Human Rights to explicitly
acknowledge their universal nature.

The way the debate is being framed in the USA does not endear the rest
of the world to the USA any more than the USA's track-record in foreign
policy already has.

Other than that I wholeheartedly agree with what you wrote.

Regards,

 Walter