IT'S NO COINCIDENCE...:

If you've nothing to hide... (Mirko Bagaric, August 13, 2008, The Australian)

The recommendation earlier this week by the Australian Law Reform Commission to introduce an Australia-wide legally protected privacy right ismorally misguided and socially destructive. History confirms that humans don't need a strong right to privacy to flourish.

Moreover, the suspicion that results from us not sharing information about ourselves may be destructive of the common good.

Although not without qualification, the principle that "if you have done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear" has considerable merit. Privacy is often no more than code for the "right to secrecy", which is destructive of an open and free society.

If there were less privacy, criminals would find it harder to plot harmful acts (hundreds of crimes have been thwarted by closed-circuit television). We would be better placed to make informed investment decisions (no more tiresome "commercial in confidence" conversation-stoppers) and know more about the real agendas of our politicians.

...that the least effective department of our government is the intelligence services, the most secretive.

Posted by Orrin Judd at August 12, 2008 11:49 AM