Privacy too dear in new age of terror

IT IS absolutely adorable how children and puppies love to try and have their cake and eat it, too.

I see it daily when my own child just can't decide which toy to play with. He gets quite distressed when it dawns on him that to have one, he must put down the other.

My dog is the same - give her two large bones instead of one and, in her efforts to pick up both at the same time, she ends up getting neither.

Somehow the same trait just isn't so endearing in adults. I suppose it is because by the time we grow up, we are supposed to know and accept the concept that having two desirable but opposing things at the same time simply isn't possible.

Unfortunately, when it comes to privacy and security, a surprising number of New Zealanders don't seem to get this.

They are appalled to learn that our government's spy agency is spying, offended at the suggestion that customs officers employed to protect our borders may wish to do so by checking the contents of digital devices as well as our suitcases, and consider it entirely inappropriate that we may scratch the back of the big, brave grizzly bear that is the United States super power given that, without them, we are just a small island nation without friends - or planes with guns.

This week the news headlines made me laugh out loud. Andrew Little in bold typeface declaring the latest revelation of spying by our spy agency was a "mass invasion of privacy" made me wonder if he'd rather New Zealand gave up its surveillance operations and settled instead for mass invasion, full stop?

Nicky Hager claims the alleged surveillance of Pacific nations is "selling out" our friends, which is probably true and not very nice.

But I am a pragmatic person, and I can't help thinking that if I had to pick friends upon whom my life might one day depend, I'd probably split my lunch with the US before I offered any to nations like Nauru, Kiribati and Vanuatu. Harsh, but true.

Yes there is a price to pay to belong to "the club". There is usually a price to pay for anything of value.

And although, of course, I agree that there are certain things we should not have to do in order to belong to that club, as a small nation with little to offer (beyond a bouquet of metadata) and lots to gain, frankly we don't get to set the membership rules.

So what are our options? I suspect most people would argue that privacy is paramount, until perhaps they find themselves in an orange jumpsuit with a knife to their throat being held by a New Zealand resident who right now is probably shopping at the same supermarket as us, stopping at the same red lights, and using the same bandwidth to communicate his plans - privately.

There is no doubt about it, we are in a new age where wars are being fought not on battlefields in distant lands but in Sydney cafes, in Paris offices, in Canadian parliaments. The casualties of war are not trained soldiers who volunteer, but unarmed civilians going about their daily life.

We can either choose to be private, or to be safe. Both options are valid but if you choose privacy, don't ask "How could they have let this happen" when terror strikes close to home.

And don't put your hand up for help, either.