Should we have the right to private communication?
Background
Communication
Currently in North America, it is very difficult to communicate privately. Only by using strong encryption may one have a seblance of private communication, and even this is continually being hammered away at by politicians intent on having government ``back doors'' into cryptosystems.
In general, though, this issue has largely been ignored and already decided: nobody may communicate without being eavesdropped upon.
This is getting worse very quickly. All email is monitored. All broadcast communications (cell phones, all international phone calls, some domestic phone calls, radio communications) are monitored. While it is true that there is still an outside chance a particular email wasn't sifted-through by Echelon (``only'' 1/5 emails are seen by Echelon), one originating in North America has almost certainly gone through Echelon.
With newfound powers under the Patriot Act (among others), US FBI officers are installing more Carnivore systems, which give them direct access to trunk lines on the Internet. This allows them to monitor all the traffic through that trunk. Once enough Carnivore systems are installed, the FBI will be able to monitor *all* American Internet traffic: what email you send, which Web sites you visit, what you say in IRC, which mailinglists you belong to, what songs you download, which you buy at eBay, etc.). Should Canada foolishly decide to continue recklessly giving away soverignty by continued negotitions for a North American ``security perimiter'' and unified command structure for the military (i.e. the US would command Canada), this might easily be expanded to ``all North American Internet traffic''.
If government were perfect (i.e. there were absolutely no bad laws) and law-enforcement were perfect (i.e. there were no bad cops), then this might be acceptable. It might -- in such a scenario -- be okay that the governments has a complete profile on everyone: who they know, what they say, what their political beliefs are, what groceries they bought last week, when their last oil change was, who they live with, etc.
I don't think so.
Furthermore, I certainly don't think government is perfect, and in fact I'm not entirely sure it's *possible* for government to be perfect, if only because there will likely *always* be at least one person who disagrees with a particular law. It's also not the case that law enforcement is anywhere close to perfect; there are many thousands of unscrupulous, corrupt or just plain stupid police in Canada and the US.
We have checks and balances for a reason. We don't give police unlimited powers for a reason. These reasons are sound: we don't want one bit of government to have too much power.
A giant cross-referenced database of the minutiae of everyone's lives should not exist, privately or publically. While it is possible to imagine ``good'' uses of such information, it is also very easy to imagine great abuses of such information, either by those with legitimate access or by those without legitimate access. I think the latter concerns are paramount; no matter how much easier it might be to ``pre-emptively'' arrest people who have a bad-looking profile than to do actual police work, ignoring a person's legitimate right to be left alone by government when they've done nothing wrong is a far worse infraction.
Centralization can generally be viewed as bad: concentrating power increases the chances that a poor decision-maker will occupy the position of power at some point, and do great harm. By distributing power, we mitigate such potential because most people are good; most people are rational most of the time. Hence, if power is distributed, one or two ``bad apples'' won't cause much damage, since the other ``good apples'' can over-ride them.
Conclusion
If our society has any pretext of valuing privacy, or of valuing the concept ``innocent until proven guilty'', or of valuing personal freedom, then we should stop such databases from ever existing, and dismantle those that already do exist.
What to do.
Further, there are a couple of simple steps which people can easily take right now to help prevent the collection of information, or at least make collected information less usable:
1. Most importantly, encrypt your email. The more people who have (and correctly use) strong public-key cryptography, the harder it is to widely monitor email communication. There is no reason why every single email one sends cannot be encrypted; software exists and is relatively easy to use. Visit http://www.gnupg.org to learn about the GNU Project's implementation of public-key cryptography; download it; make a key-pair; learn how to use encryption; learn how to use keyservers; send me email encrypted for key 0x579911BD.
2. Don't give out personal information. All manner of businesses are now asking for things like names, phone numbers, email addresses, etcetera. There is no reason, typically, for them to have this information. Does Safeway need to know that ``Mike Warren'' just bought toothpaste and condoms? No, yet they might know about this through the use of their Club Card (unless it's under a fake name/phone number, like mine). Many retail stores now routinely ask for your phone number. Don't give it to them. Or, if you don't want to argue, just give them a fake one (perhaps just your own phone number with a digit or two changed, thus increasing the chance that it's a legitimate phone number).
3. Never, ever, give you your social insurance number to anyone. The only legal reason this may be legitimately requested (in Canada) is for taxation reasons (i.e. only your employer may have it, or your bank if you have an RRSP).