Resolved: When in conflict, the right to Individual Privacy is more important than National Security

For the sake of thoroughness, I will address Con's case. I apologize for the brevity of my remarks...I am under a time crunch.VALUECon values life. This implies that, ultimately, life is his most important end-goal.We would not say that a blank canvas is worth much money, yet we would probably agree that a Vermeer painting is worth more than I can possibly pay. The point here is that the canvas is not what is valuable, it is the painting that matters. Life is simply a canvas--it is what we do with it that adds meaning and color. If a person we locked in a 10x10 cell with no light or other human interaction, that is not a life worth living. Life therefore has instrumental good--and that is not to undermine that importance of that instrumental good. If used wrongly or abused outright, the instrument can lose its utility. But, ultimately, it is only an instrument just as the canvas is--the "painting" is what matters. The painting represents a human's dignity and their ability to self-actualize; i.e. a human's ability to fill their life with meaning and their canvas with paint. The conclusion I would like to draw here, therefore, is that this capacity for self-actualization/human dignity outweighs the value of life.Privacy is essential to this core value of self-actualization/human dignity. "Friendship and intimacy would be impossible...without the ability to [privately] reveal oneself more fully to some people than to others. Wider social interactions are also seen as dependent on people’s ability to include some and exclude others from their inner circle...[Also] by protecting the ability to have moments 'off-stage' when one can 'be oneself ,' privacy facilitates emotional release and promotes liberty of thought and action. This is in turn viewed as a vital precondition for meaningful participation in democratic society. Freedoms such as the right to vote and freedom of expression lose much of their value if people do not first have the chance to learn to think for themselves." All of this means that, "when one person interferes with the privacy of another, ‘[t]he injury is to our individuality, to our dignity as individuals, and the legal remedy represents a social vindication of the human spirit thus threatened rather than a recompense for the loss suffered." [1]DEFINITIONSJust a quick quibble here. Privacy clearly encompasses more than just keeping secrets. It is also about having private space and about having control of data. While I may not want to keep item X secret, I may only want to share this data with some close friends. If one of the friends revealed the information to others, I would still feel as if my privacy was violated. So, it's also about control. Privacy should thus be understood as encompassing six categories: "(1) the right to be let alone; (2) limited access to the self; (3) secrecy; (4) control of personal information; (5) personhood; and (6) intimacy." [2]CONTENTION 11. The resolution is asking a question of values. Which do we value more? This requires a theoretical analysis of that proximate moral, psychological, and social value of the principles in question. Even if privacy no longer exists, that doesn't negate the resolution. It can still theoretically be more valuable than national security. For example, Greek mythology is no longer practiced as a religion, but if I asked the question "is greek paganism better than Christianity" you could not answer that question simply by stating "greek paganism no longer exists" because its non-existance does not prove it is not better than Christianity. One requires a value judgement, the other a fact judgement. Similarly, you cannot negate the topic "privacy is more important than national security" by saying that privacy no longer exists. Privacy can still be more important. In fact, privacy's non-existence seems like a very bad thing. If my opponent insists that privacy is dead, my response is equally simple: let's bring it back.2. Clearly, privacy isn't dead. Privacy norms are being enforced now. "Google has been fined millions of dollars for violating its users' privacy and their own privacy policies. PATH, a purported privacy centric photo-sharing app, was just fined $800,000 by the FTC for violating their own privacy policies (for the second time) and the law. Instagram (Facebook-owned) recently attempted to change their privacy policy and claim ownership over the pictures in their members' accounts. The uproar was palpable and the company quickly reversed course, but trust was broken...Law abiding citizens are entitled to the right of privacy regardless of how electronic this world gets. Governments in the USA, Canada, as well as the European Commission, are lining up and saying 'Wait a minute. Privacy is a fundamental right of the citizens of our nations and we must protect it.'" [3] The recent EU ruling about the right to be forgotten is another great example, whereby users can force websites to remove old data about them, thereby making that data far more private. 3. If privacy is dead or dying, then all my harms re: privacy are imminent and thus it's all the more crucial we assert the value of privacy now.4. This contention has absolutely no link to his value.5. Obviously, people want privacy: "90 percent of us worry about online privacy." [3] "Meanwhile, 86 percent of people surveyed have tried at least one technique to hide their activity online or avoid being tracked, such as clearing cookies or their browser history or using encryption." [4]CONTENTION 2Right, Con is making it seem that with privacy, there would be no national security. That's just false. Certainly, national security exists in both worlds. Ultimately, Con needs to show that the loss of national security in Pro's world is significant enough to outweigh the gains in privacy. Unless he can do that, he cannot negate the evidence and impacts I have. Sure, invading people's privacy might save a few more lives, but that impact is never quantified, so it's impossible to really measure against my impacts. My impacts have priority because they're clearer and more easily weighed than Con's. SOURCES1 - http://www.victoria.ac.nz...2 - http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu...3 - http://www.huffingtonpost.com...4- http://www.nbcnews.com...