privacy NOT versus security

i've been growing increasingly perturbed by the notion that there is some tension or conflict between privacy and security and i want to set the record straight.

there is no such conflict. my privacy is completely compatible with my security. there is no tension between them, no conflict. ultimately they have the same goal - protecting the things i think need protecting.

often when people talk about privacy vs security they're not talking about the purely person perspective, though. they're talking about other organizations that are expected to help protect an individual's privacy. here there can be a conflict, but not because of some tension between privacy and security, rather because the organization's interests are not aligned with those of the individual. they never are, they aren't supposed to be, it's not reasonable to expect them to be. even amongst individuals alone, my interests, values, and priorities are different from your interests, values, and priorities - by chance we might happen to agree on what needs protecting on a general level but when it comes to the finer details there will always be disagreement.

when we hand over our information to an organization (or when it's handed over for us) we expect that organization to act as our partner in protecting that information - and to the extent the law requires them to do so they usually do. but the organization's interests, values, and priorities are not the same as our interests, values, and priorities.

that is where the true tension exists - not between privacy and security, but between the interests of different parties. whether those parties are two individuals, an individual and a company, or an individual and a nation - any conflict exists between those parties (because they have different needs), not between privacy and security. security of the whole vs. privacy of the individual is a conflict between entities, not strategies.

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