Do Privacy Fears Allow Terrorism?

carbon3C writes "Privacy advocates are luddites, says Heather MacDonald, a lawyer at the Manhattan Institute. She says we should shut up and let the government do what it wants. Our government only wants to protect us, and would never misuse technology. How do we send a clear message that non-luddites (conservative and liberal) are concerned about privacy precisely because we do know so much about technology?" Leaving your front door wide open is a great idea, until someone you don't know walks through it.

Comments

Re:Use technology to invade her privacy

[pubjames]

Do what those guys did to Poindexter - collect all available information about this woman, and post it on a web site.

Something similar happened to the Minister in charge of this kind of stuff in the UK. It's a good eye-opener for them, although I would hold back on posting it on a public web site. The Mr Mature option is to send it to them personally and tell them to imagine what it would be like if it got posted publicly...

Another example

[Ripplet]

OK, here's an example of misuse of such information.

In one attempt to undermine the weapons inspection process, it was revealed that Harvey McGeorge of UNMOVIC had "a leadership role in sadomasochistic sex clubs."

Like, so what. Some people do that. It's his private life, it has nothing at all whatsoever to do with his ability to do his job as a weapons inspector. And yet, the only possible reason for publishing that information was to diminish him in the eyes of the public, to try to reduce the credibility of the inspection process as a whole.

Does anybody think their own or anybody else's private lives won't be vulnerable to such abuses?

(More details on this can be found here.)

Who the hell is paying her? ...

[Greedo]

Well, a bit of Googling (tm) turned up a fairly detailed bio, along with links to other articles, one of which is related to the posted article.

A quick look over some other articles of hers pull out choice quotes such as:

What the homelessness industry really wants is total exemption from the law for street vagrants, so that they can remain publicly visible until the final throes of alcoholism and schizophrenia drive them to the hospital or the grave.

Apparently she's a contributing editor at the
Manhattan Institute's City Journal. And the M.I. is a 501(C)(3) non-profit organization, so maybe a donor list is available.

Some more choice info on the M.I.:

... the Manhattan Institute, a CIA initiated "think tank" funded by far right Eugenics advocates like the Pioneer Fund and corporations such as the Rockefeller's Chase Bank which have historically promoted the Eugenics agenda. The Manhattan Institute has sponsored research projects and books like the Bell Curve, Fixing Broken windows and numerous others which propose the idea that blacks are mentally inferior. While the Manhattan Institute is not publicly advocating mass extermination or mass relocation of minorities the policies it does promote are mostly about targeting black and Latino inner City populations in such a way as to make relocation an attractive option and elimination a day to day reality. ...

The corporations, banks and far right race-obsessed groups that fund the Manhattan Institute today were in many cases backing Hitler's rise to power just 70 years ago. They are also the same groups behind Giuliani's Senate campaign and GW Bush's Presidential bid. Chase Bank, the Manhattan Institute's main sponsor, has publicly apologized on numerous occasions for its avid support of Hitler and its enthusiasm to turn over Jewish Bank accounts to the Nazis before they were ever asked to do so. ...

The Manhattan Institute's founder, former CIA director William Casey, ... ...

Along with ongoing subsidies from a number of large conservative foundations, the Manhattan Institute has gained funding from such corporate sources as the Chase Manhattan Bank, Citicorp, Time Warner, Procter & Gamble and State Farm Insurance, as well as the Lilly Endowment and philanthropic arms of American Express, Bristol-Myers Squibb, CIGNA and Merrill Lynch. Boosted by major firms, the Manhattan Institute budget reached $5 million a year by the early 1990s."

Nice.