-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Fw: Posner on the Panopticon
Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2005 23:58:03 -0800
From: Fred Heutte <phred@private>
To: <declan@private>
fyi -- not for publication until the Post rejects this :)
Posner's piece is a masterpiece of propaganda. It's at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/20/AR2005122001053.html
Fred
------ mail forwarded, original message follows ------
To: letters@private
From: phred@private <Fred Heutte>
Subject: Posner on the Panopticon
Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2005 20:35:45 -0800
One has to gasp at the slippery logic in Judge Richard Posner's
view ("Our Domestic Intelligence Crisis," Dec. 21) that the
government's "machine collection and processing of data cannot,
as such, invade privacy."
For those who have followed his writing, Posner is, unremarkably,
a supporter of the Panopticon, Jeremy Bentham's thought experiment
for a prison in which all actions are tracked invisibly by a
central authority.
Bentham justified his concept on the grounds of cost-effectiveness
-- prisoners would self-regulate their activity to the norms of the
unobserved authority. But in a free society, it is we the people
who determine what is legal, and not an unaccountable central
authority.
The Founders of our nation knew that liberty must support the
necessary means for securing self-protection, while the tendency
of security is to find self-fulfillment through the suppression of
liberty.
In an uncertain world, it is impossible to predetermine the
perfect mix. Instead, our system of checks and balances was
specifically designed to allow that process to unfold as
circumstances change.
The likelihood, given the pervasiveness of electronic communication,
is that most of us will be caught in the drift nets of unimpeded
federal surveillance. It may be that, as Posner suggests, no
federal agent will ever view our captured thoughts. But experience
shows that unimpeded access leads to abuses of authority and
suppression of our great freedoms of speech and opposition to
arbitrary government power.
Following Posner's view, security always stands paramount,
and therefore liberty always loses. But as Benjamin Franklin
wrote, “Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must
begin by subduing the freeness of speech.”
Fred Heutte
Portland, Oregon
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