The article deals with the relationship between privacy and public security, based on the speech by US (such as President Barack Obama and his Director of National Intelligence) and Brazil authorities (such as the deputies who signed the recently approved Cybercrime Report) on the importance of monitoring and access to personal data in order to combat a range of criminal activities. The hypothesis is that privacy as a "threat" is the result of a "moral crusade" (in terms of Howard S. Becker) that masks the prospects for political control and economic advantages derived from digital communication surveillance practices.