Changing definitions
In 1999, Scott McNealy, the notoriously arrogant and self-absorbed chairman of Sun Microsystems, said, "You have no privacy. Get over it."
His profits come first. Your privacy is a remotely distant second. His greed trumps your rights; after all, he does represent a corporation, and we all know that corporate rights trump individual rights.
Apparently, members of the Bush administration hold our fundamental liberties in as much contempt as McNealy. It seems that anonymity should no longer be considered a component of the inherent right to privacy:
As Congress debates new rules for government eavesdropping, a top intelligence official says it is time that people in the United States changed their definition of privacy.
Privacy no longer can mean anonymity, says Donald Kerr, the principal deputy director of national intelligence. Instead, it should mean that government and businesses properly safeguard people's private communications and financial information.
Never mind the fact that, without some possibility of anonymity, privacy becomes meaningless. That no longer matters. What matters to people like Kerr is the White House's ability to snoop into every facet of your private life without warrant, justification or oversight. We're supposed to trust them not to misuse our personal information, just like we're supposed to trust McNealy and his corporation's benevolence.
According to these men, we live in a brave new world, where freedom means not being sent to Guantanamo, peace means perpetual war, prosperity means living beyond our means, security and torture mean whatever the White House says they mean, and privacy does not mean keeping personal information secret. Words change. Times change. Values change. According to them, we're just supposed to adapt to the fact that rights we once enjoyed have now become quaint relics of a past they consider irrelevant.