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Reality can't wait to catch up with me. When yesterday I blogged about Bruce Schneier's explanations why privacy is a human right, little did I know that the Powers That Be were spoiling for a fight on the issue as I was typing.

As The Register reports, the UK government wants to bring into force a provision that has been lying around since 2000, which would let authorities force someone to disclose their encryption key or face up to five years behind bars. The rationale? You guessed it: Terrorism.

You and I will remain guilty until proven innocent.

What do you have to hide? When it comes to privacy, that's not the question, says Bruce Schneier in an excellent comment on Wired.

Privacy is an inherent human right, and a requirement for maintaining
the human condition with dignity and respect.

Two proverbs say it best: Quis custodiet custodes ipsos? ("Who watches
the watchers?") and "Absolute power corrupts absolutely."

On the background of a new surveillance scandal going public every week or so, Schneier deals sternly with those who all too readily give up individual freedoms for a false sense of security.

How many of us have paused during conversation in the past four-and-a-half 
years, suddenly aware that we might be eavesdropped on? Probably it was a 
phone conversation, although maybe it was an e-mail or instant-message exchange 
or a conversation in a public place. Maybe the topic was terrorism, or politics,
or Islam. We stop suddenly, momentarily afraid that our words might be taken 
out of context, then we laugh at our paranoia and go on. But our demeanor has 
changed, and our words are subtly altered.

This is the loss of freedom we face when our privacy is taken from us.
This is life in former East Germany, or life in Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
And it's our future as we allow an ever-intrusive eye into our personal,
private lives.