Too often we listen to the “National Defence” rhetoric which stipulates that in the name of progress we must all make some small sacrifices. Small sacrifices, like when you are handled like cattle every time you wish to fly somewhere, treated like a criminal in every plane you board and forced to display your personal items in a little plastic bag, parading around like a confused lamb, been made to feel stupid because you bought a bottle of water before entering the terminal. Small sacrifices, like internet companies collecting all your metadata virtually having all your information at the press of a button. And sure it’s only metadata – because it would take some sort of genius to guess the contents of a phone call made to an abortion clinic, domestic abuse or suicide help-line.

The Conservative government is pushing this criminalisation to an even higher level with a manifold of legislations that has at it’s core the eradication of some of our most basic liberties. But remember, it’s OK if it’s in the name of national security. After all, their knowledge of what you do, your browsing history, what type of porn you watch, your last purchase at Amazon, who you hooked up with on Tinder, if you belong to some specific political party, who you tend to associate with, what your favourite writers are, what is the last book you read and every single place you’ve visited, is a small price to pay for the remote possibility that they will catch a terrorist. And who could oppose to that? How could someone possibly argue against the government’s actions without sounding like they’re defending the bad guys? How could we argue for internet privacy when so many children are at risk of encountering online predators?

This type of discourse is dangerously misleading, because it makes anyone defending the right to privacy and free speech complicit with terrorist organisations. We have a right to privacy. Furthermore, we are innocent unless proven otherwise, so how come we are all been treated like criminals? Data collection and invasion of privacy are clear violations of our rights, thus should not go unchallenged. Not only are this measures illegal, but they are also ineffective. If intelligence organisations are to catch the bad guys, mass collection of information can only hinder that enterprise. How could they find terrorists among so much noise? Mass surveillance and data collection are adding more hay to the stack, which makes it even more difficult for them to identify the real threats.

People in Britain will be facing one of the biggest threats to their liberties courtesy of the current government. While the US has seen the sunset to the Patriot Act and found some of the actions performed by the NSA unconstitutional, our own Home Secretary Theresa May is pushing to give GCHQ even more powers. The tragic thing is not what this lizard-woman is doing, but how little we care about it. As if we had lost any will to fight, to resist. Perhaps we genuinely believe that we have nothing to hide and feel that mass surveillance doesn’t affect us because we are good citizens. But this doesn’t feel right. After all, I don’t have anything to hide, and yet would rather not live in a house made of glass. I have nothing to hide, but I would still challenge the creepy eavesdropper listening to my conversation with a friend in the middle of the park. Privacy is not about hiding something, privacy is about sharing what you wish to share and having full authority regarding your information. In an interview with the Guardian, Edward Snowden explained:

“When you say ‘I don’t care about the right to privacy because I have nothing to hide,’ that’s no different than saying  ‘I don’t care about freedom of speech because I have nothing to say, or freedom of the press because I have nothing to write'”

Our right to privacy is fundamental to our freedom of expression. We must not let governments take it from us without even questioning why this has happened.