Security and Privacy where do you draw the line?

There has been lot's of pressure is being put on RIM the manufacture of the popular BlackBerry platform about making their system less secure and giving governments access to the data on RIM's Servers. This will be a huge loss to consumers rights and privacy if RIM allows this. Is doing business in oppressive counties worth the hit to RIM's reputation as a secure way to transmit important communications in the name of "National Security"? Governments use this excuse to justify anything that will violate and/or take way a persons rights that are granted to citizen by their respective nations constitutions, in Canada the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Governments say they have to do this to stop terrorists; well I would argue wouldn't it be easier to track or restrict the purchasing of products that can be used to create harmful weapons or discourage these kind of plans be easier (i.e. banning and prohibiting the sale of large knives, guns and materials that can be made into explosives). Granted materials such as fertilizer can be used to make explosives, but you can uses security checks when people who what large and/or highly pure quantities of the material. In a age of hyper paranoia by our governments; a "Big Brother" approach from George Orwell's 1984 seems to be the approach our so called "elected officials" like to take all in the name of protecting our national security. What I find interesting that even according to RIM's own website RIM it's self can't access the messages on their own servers due to their security policy "The operators of the BlackBerry Infrastructure don’t have access to the customer keys and therefore can’t see the content of any of the messages." There was a time like during the "cold war era" where technology like this was banned from being in so called unfriendly countries. So if security is such a concern why do we give these unfriendly countries this kind of technology? Wouldn't be easier to ban it? Where is the corporate responsibility to our own private security? Where is our "elected" governments responsibility to our "privacy". Why do they allow this kind of allow the trade of this kind of technology with people who want to supposedly destroy us? Are we as a people willing to allow the loss of our Freedoms for short term financial gain? Are we so blinded and uninterested in our own political process that those who are elected get a free pass to do what they want with little or no question? At what point are will people say enough is enough. In Canada there are plans to scrap the long form census, the government feels it's a violation of your privacy, but they'll go to facebook and demand your personal information if they think they need it. Is it hypocritical or is it just the way things are? Over the last 20 years the world has changed dramatically, where we go from here is up to us. These issues with RIM and The United Arab Emirates, Google and China are just the beginning. I don't know about you but I'm going to be watching our Federal and Provincial governments very closely for changes like this. Here in Canada your innocent until proven guilty, not guilty until proven innocent. Unless we favor kangaroo courts like the ones being played out in Guantanamo Bay and in William Shakepeare's The Winters Tale. Then they will want to "kill all the lawyers". - (Shakespeare's King Henry VI; Act IV, Scene II) where the laws will be made by the few elite in a mocked up "democracy" that will not have any benefit for anyone but the rich. There are two ways we can go, one where laws are made fair for everyone or not at all. If we lose what we have then we become no better then those who would want to destroy us.

Posted via email from The OptionKey Blog