Star letter

It’s strange that Jon Honeyball should trot out the tired old line “those that have nothing to hide, have nothing to fear”. After all, as Edward Snowden once put it: “Arguing that you don’t care about privacy because you have nothing to hide is like arguing that you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say.” In a liberal Western democracy, there may be some validity to Jon’s assertion, but most of the world doesn’t live in a liberal democracy. Moreover, our own is under attack. Liberal democracies are a recent and possibly transient phenomenon, and for the majority of history, people’s beliefs, preferences and identity exposed them to discrimination or actual harm.

Jon is smart enough to think of all the potential ways in which information about a person could be used against them by employers, insurers, service providers, the state and hate groups. Protection of the state has to be weighed against protection of the individual. The state is never going to be on the right side of this argument for obvious reasons, so we as individuals have to be vigilant. I don’t think I have anything to fear by sharing my data today, but tomorrow? Paul Moorhead

Contributing editor Jon Honeyball replies: “I’m afraid you’ve missed the point I was trying to make. I am defending the right to privacy, but I’m saying not all data should have the same rights. In particular, not everything should have identity. The unidentified internet will continue to thrive. But for many things where your presence is benign it should be left open to be identified. And it’s high time the discussion was had in public.”