Last week, security expert Bruce Schneier wrote a column for Wired in which he answered the famous defense of spying: "If you're not doing anything illegal, then you shouldn't be worred." This is almost exactly verbatim what my Spanish host mother said about living in Franco's Spain. Isabel actually didn't mind the Franco regime, partially because she was a white, middle-class Catholic wife and daughter who wasn't stirring anything up. Her motto: "Si no te metías con nadie, nada pasó" (If you didn't [mess with] anyone, nothing happened to you). When polling indicates that 63% of Americans agree with warrantless, illegal, poorly-justified wiretapping, something's wrong. Isabel is a great woman, but she doesn't understand one of the fundamental rights that come with living in a democratic society: we shouldn't have to justify our actions to our government. We shouldn't have to explain to FBI agents why our phone conversation isn't subversive. A lot of people, I believe, don't understand this. Schneier sets them straight:

Cardinal Richelieu understood the value of surveillance when he famously said, "If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged." Watch someone long enough, and you'll find something to arrest -- or just blackmail -- with. Privacy is important because without it, surveillance information will be abused: to peep, to sell to marketers and to spy on political enemies -- whoever they happen to be at the time.

Privacy protects us from abuses by those in power, even if we're doing nothing wrong at the time of surveillance.

We do nothing wrong when we make love or go to the bathroom. We are not deliberately hiding anything when we seek out private places for reflection or conversation. We keep private journals, sing in the privacy of the shower, and write letters to secret lovers and then burn them. Privacy is a basic human need.