Privacy By Any Other Name

I respect the work he does, but Glenn Greenwald continues to strike me as a blogger who spends a hell of a lot of time on truths that aren't all that significant. For those who may not know, Greenwald was the blogger who did a hell of a lot of work in writing about the evil Bush administration warrantless surveillance program. (The very same one I blogged about back in July, the one that I determined wasn't as big a deal as it's critics were making it out to be.)

Anywho, Greenwald blogs today with more than a little bit of glee on the news that Sarah Palin's e-mail was hacked into and posted on the internet. Greenwald finds it ironic that the same right wingers who vigorously defended warrantless surveillance are up in arms over Palin's personal e-mail being made public. And sure, I can see the hypocrisy ... sort of. It just seems to me theres a big difference between someone in the CIA or NSA reading your private e-mails and having those same private e-mails posted on the internet for the entire world to see.

Like I said, I get it ... but, blah, blah, blah. Of course the right is outraged- the left would be equally outraged if this was their guy (or gal). More than anything, it just seems rather silly to me to get so worked up when these really are completely different types of issues. I've been working on a post on privacy rights I don't have up yet, but this to me is the biggest problem with the term as it's used in the political and legal sense. Just because certain actions fall under some large rubric of privacy, doesn't mean they have anything to do with each other.