A dark Orwellian irony

For years, politicians have claimed that we have to “give up liberties to be safe”.

What exactly does that mean? What liberties are we expected to give up? To what extent?

A clue might be the phrase “to strike a balance between fundamental rights and security”. That is an expression often used when the EU deliberate on mass surveillance issues.

Fundamental rights are called fundamental because they are. They are essential. They mark a red line, that should never be crossed in a democracy. They exist to protect citizens from politicians and from the state.

To “give up” civil liberties or to “balance” fundamental rights is always to restrict them–changing the rules to incapacitate the people, handing more power over to Big Government.

From my point of view, to give up liberties or fundamental rights is to make people less safe.

To give up privacy, to compromise on rule of law and to limit free speech does only make society more safe if you define “society” as politicians and their functionaries. But if you think of society as the people, as citizens or as an open dynamic system–this kind of “safety” or “security” is pure newspeak.

At the same time government is getting evermore opaque.

It seems that we are caught in some sort of dark, Orwellian irony.

/ HAX