This house believes that security in the modern age cannot be established without some erosion of individual privacy - Rebuttal speeches

Second Proposing speech

I think I am a little confused by our first opposing speech. According to the debate topic “this house believes that security in the modern age cannot be established without some erosion of individual privacy”, he should be arguing that security CAN be established without privacy erosion. However, he’s instead chatting about a totally different matter. Our first opposing speaker struggles to demonstrate that security SHOULDN’T be established at privacy’s expense [...]

Second Opposing speech

In the following, I will try to demonstrate why privacy should not be eroded in order to gain some illusory security feeling. The advocates of the motion stated that privacy was a new concern and that it was ipso facto a “rich man's problem”, and not an important one. This fact is not very relevant: years ago, by the same state of mind, you could have told that health was a “rich man's problem”, not affordable while there were still people dying of starvation in the world […]

Second Proposing speech

I think I am a little confused by our first opposing speech. According to the debate topic “this house believes that security in the modern age cannot be established without some erosion of individual privacy”, he should be arguing that security CAN be established without privacy erosion. However, he’s instead chatting about a totally different matter. Our first opposing speaker struggles to demonstrate that security SHOULDN’T be established at privacy’s expense.

Unfortunately, his attempt is brave but pointless. He kept saying again and again like any eccentric privacy advocate, how freedom, anonymity and privacy are important and should be protected. He complains about current trends and calls for action against future and probable increases of privacy violations. SO WHAT? Are you suggesting that security CANNOT be established without some individual privacy erosion? How can I do my job right now? How am I supposed to start my rebuttal with someone that seems to agree with me?

Anyway, I think I’ll try to reduce the confusion in this already complex debate. First, I’ll dig a little bit what we understand by privacy, privacy respect, privacy violation. I don’t believe everyone has the same definition but it’ll become clearer to argue based on solid and clear hypothesis without mixing everything up. Then, I’ll try to show that what most people consider as privacy violation is not. Lastly, I’ll conclude that technology use to fight crime and terrorism could even enhance individual privacy concerns.

According to Wikipedia, “Privacy is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves and thereby reveal themselves selectively”. Privacy is the ability to keep for ourselves what is concerning us. The right to privacy is mentioned in the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interferences […]”. Therefore, privacy violation consists in any theft or disclosure of private information to third partys or the public without agreement.

Sorry for the previous blabla, now it’ll become more interesting. What are police officers doing to better fight against crime and terrorism? Basically, they’re simply collecting and analyzing massive amount of data. My question is: does it consist in a privacy violation? Do we have anyone seizing data for other uses? Do we have any disclosure of individual data? Answer is no and no. Police officers are either watching at live streams of data (video) that belongs to the public space (it’s just a centralized and efficient way of monitoring security in the streets). Or they retrieve information for specific investigations. If you’re a suspect, they investigate about you. If you’re not, they don’t. There’s absolutely nothing new with it.

Besides, relating to the huge amount of data stored in police and agency databases, what’s the matter? Remember just one thing: machines are blind, computers are blind, databases are blind, wires are bind, and algorithms are blind. Everybody is blind in this story. There’s nobody spying your all-day behaviour. If you think the opposite, you’re being paranoid and must be cured for obsessive and regular deliriums.

Use of technology should all the more be promoted to reduce murders and terrorist attacks that they’ll work soon without human interaction. Machines will soon analyse, solve and prevent crimes without human interference. No police man will look into your mail inbox, no police man will look into your house, no police man will rummage into your computer hard drive. A machine will get the job done and remember: machines are blind. They won’t judge you because you’re gay, black or whatever. They’re totally neutral. In this regard, they don’t violate your privacy because they absolutely don’t care about you. They care about facts.

Today transparency advocate have a huge limit: they always argue that everybody must reveal everything about them because if they’re hiding something, it means they’ve done something wrong. Usual counter argument talks about gays who don’t (and are totally right) about not disclosing their sexual orientation because they could suffer from persecutions. If only machines are aware about data concerning you, you’ve nothing to be worried about. They won’t judge your political opinion or sexual orientation. Eventually, you can become transparent without fearing any aggression. And in a transition period before “machines takes control of society security”, it’s exactly the same thing: a restricted number of qualified people have accessed to delicate data and they respect existing rules protecting your citizen privacy.

As a conclusion, don’t misjudge technologies! They’re not trading your privacy for security. They’re enhancing both!

by DD

Second Opposing speech

In the following, I will try to demonstrate why privacy should not be eroded in order to gain some illusory security feeling. The advocates of the motion stated that privacy was a new concern and that it was ipso facto a “rich man's problem”, and not an important one. This fact is not very relevant: years ago, by the same state of mind, you could have told that health was a “rich man's problem”, not affordable while there were still people dying of starvation in the world…

The next argument I would like to deal with is that “everybody is an exhibitionist” (seventh paragraph). It is such a fallacious reasoning: “Everybody uses facebook Some facebook users don't mind their privacy therefore nobody need privacy”. And even if you can not find the faulty logic in the previous statement, not everybody uses facebook: there are still people so concerned about privacy that they try their best to protect it! So privacy is maybe an issue that rose recently, but it is nonetheless an interesting issue.

Moreover, the erosion of privacy does not imply by any mean security : for instance, who would decide to live in a house with transparent walls to gain more security ? And how much money was invested pointlessly in CCTV to discover that it does not allow the justice to find criminals[1]?

And even more pernicious is the fact that, even if we destroy any kind of privacy and if we log and analyse every action of every individual, this creates new security issues: who will be granted access to these data ? For which purpose ? And how harmful could hijacking such a database be? Maybe we should be aware that eroding our privacy somehow makes us more vulnerable: http://pleaserobme.com/ is a good illustration for that phenomenon. This website makes the list of the people who reveal on social network that they are away, with the idea that these empty houses can be robbed more easily. A weaker privacy implies less security…

Now that we have seen that cutting on privacy is not a way to ensure security, we will try to focus on other means to achieve security.
First, let's focus on the roots of the lack of security : poverty, idleness and emulation. Poverty because someone starving might be less inclined to abide by the law. Idleness because breaking the laws can be considered a hobby out of boredom. Last one, emulation, because one is more likely to copy behaviour seen or heard about: on the French television, the journalists once show burning car, and after this coverage, cars burnt in many French cities (October 2005).

With this simple explanation, it is easy to see why security does not benefit from privacy erosion as the latter has no effect on poverty, idleness or emulation. And we can also infer some ideas to improve security: first one would be to stop making a huge noise every time there is a problem, like in October 2005. I am not saying that we should violate the freedom of the press/the freedom of speech, just that we should be aware: over-emphasizing events make them more likely to be reproduced. Then, there might be ways to reduce idleness: exploring them is not the aim of this post, but this would be an interesting approach to fight for security. And to prove that security and privacy are not antagonistic.

As a conclusion, we should keep in mind two facts: first, violating privacy does not create security, and may even sometimes create insecurity. And second, there might be ways to explore to make the world more secure, without eroding privacy.

by S.F.

[1] http://www.2424actu.fr/actualite-sociale/mort-d-une-femme-dans-le-metro-parisien-l-auteur-toujours-en-fuite-1923649/#read-1923618