Nope, keep the change, civil liberties edition

[and epic too, though i haven't followed them as closely as i have eff]

privacy is one of the big reasons why i liked hillary better than obama [even before the fabled fisa vote]. this page has excerpts from several of her statements on privacy, and you can read the entire transcript of her speech on privacy rights. and here's a link to the end of that speech:

UNCHECKED MASS SURVEILLANCE IS DANGEROUS

Now as there is a legitimate rush to step up our intelligence for real needs, let’s not forget all of the lessons we have learned over the past 220 years. What might seem sensible at the moment can be used unscrupulously in the future. Unchecked mass surveillance without judicial review may sometimes be legal but it is dangerous.

Every president should save those powers for limited, critical situations, and when it comes to a regular program of searching for information that touches the privacy of ordinary Americans, those programs need to be monitored and reviewed as set out by Congress in cooperation with the Judiciary...

So we don’t need to abandon our cherished rights. We don’t need more false debates – liberty versus security, privacy versus danger. What we need is to come together and develop a consensus about how to protect our privacy in a more data driven and dangerous world.

This issue is too important to be dealt with haphazardly. It is really too important to be ignored.

So let’s stand by a few cherished American ideals. Let’s think intelligently about how to apply what we now face in the new century within the framework of values that have stood the test of time.

We are, after all, a country built on individual liberty, including individual privacy, as well as collective safety and security...

And as we look at the rights of the people and the imperatives of the government, we need to see them from the same vantage point, not as competition but as all of seeking the kind of results that will make us a safer, freer people.

Our Constitution is fully up to the challenge of protecting our privacy and our security today. The real question is whether we are up to the challenge of enacting laws and implementing policies that honor it.

if you're into parsing people's words endlessly, you can find openings in there for letting 'national security' override civil liberties, but overall i was hopeful that she meant what it looked like on the surface, that she really does believe that mass surveillance is harmful and that she really would have fought to turn the tide of massive intrusions into our privacy.

meanwhile, online at least, discussions of the candidates and their digital policies too often devolved into b-b-b-b-but, transparency! even when they started out talking about privacy, as witness this two-parter on hillary and obama back when they were candidates:

i know, i'm relitigating the primariez here, but still...