Good Grief!

Edward Felton has written some thoughtful commentary on recent criticism of Howard Dean’s March 2002 keynote address at a state security workshop.

Felton summarizes the situation better than I can, but in a nutshell…Declan McCullagn used Dean’s speech to portray him as an anti-privacy candidate. Felton and others (Larry Lessig and Andrew Orlowski) point out that McCullagn’s piece ignores Dean’s emphasis on the need for personal privacy. Overall, the consensus is that Dean was most guilty of naivety.

It’s hard to resist the “black or white” trap and see the shades of grey–especially on the tough issues like balancing the rights of safety and privacy. But as Felton says, “there is a special circle in hell reserved for those who try to destroy the middle ground…”