The state vs the people

This summer of 2013 brought into focus a conflict that has lurked in the background for over a decade. The individual's right to privacy versus his or her security is now officially on society's agenda. The line between protection and prying has never been more blurred. This is most apparent on the the Internet - that vexed playground that offers unprecedented potential for both freedom (to the point of lawlessness) and protection (to the point of oppression). Privacy may well be a human right but recently it clashed with the requirement for liberal democracies to defend themselves. It all boils down to the fact that, in order to prevent future terrorist attacks, security agencies need to accumulate large quantities of data from cyberspace and analyse it preventively for patterns, suspects and possible connections. Infringements on privacy are justified by balancing them against the greater good of security. The Internet expansion, witnessed in the 1990s, and the culture of freedom it created were made possible by its technological underpinnings (open and standard protocols, for instance), by opening up the infrastructure to commercial activities, the governance model and the initial absence of laws and regulations aided by the free software revolution. All of this should not be taken for granted: it can be endangered, and that's exactly what is happening.