One often hears this question raised, and I have yet to come up with a nice logical explanation for it. Let’s assume that the proposal is to have everyone monitored (visually, let’s say), and that there is absolutely no chance of any information reaching non-government hands (so that nothing that the videos hold will be posted on the internet for all to see). The best arguments I can find against it are
Everyone’s doing something prosecutable, or has at some point.
There is no logical reason to oppose this, just an emotional holdover from the times when if an animal was watching you, it probably wanted to eat you.
Even if I don’t do anything illegal, I do a lot of random stuff that I don’t want anyone, government officials included, knowing. Do I want the government to know how much time I spend masturbating? Do I want the government to know when I have a shitty day and just want to cry to my mom over the phone for an hour? Do I want to government to see me dance around in my room as I get dressed in the morning? No, of course not.
Even if these videos never made it to the internet, chances are somebody would watch them and that somebody would be one person too many for me.
Why did people care that Nixon’s administration broke into the Watergate hotel? After all, the Democratic commitee headquartered in the hotel wasn’t doing anything illegal.
athelas, privacy should be the default state, and there should be required a burden of proof that there are really good grounds for violating it. Turn the question around: why should the government *want * to violate my privacy? Aren’t you conservatives *against * government interference in day-to-day lives? Or does that really boil down to “I want lower taxes, and will happily eliminate any program that doesn’t benefit me directly in order to get them.”?
Also, you don’t think that politicians might violate privacy in order to gain useful information to use in an election? You’re probably too young to remember Watergate, but do you have any reason to believe that Karl Rove is more principled than Nixon was? Or is it okay as long as it’s a Republican/conservative doing it?
The innocent man has far more to fear than the guilty one. The worst that can happen to a guilty man is that he will get the punishment he deserves. But the innocent man risks being prosecuted and punished for a crime he did not commit. That is why there are limits to the power of government; to reduce the errors in prosecution that punish the innocent.
I do things in private that I don’t want people to see. Not because they’re illegal, but because they’re silly or they’re unusual or they’re just not very civilized. I don’t care that private citizens won’t see it; I don’t want anyone to see it. Period.
Plus it’s a complete lack of respect for my personal boundaries.
Plus, if someone accumulates enough of this kind of info, it might not be too hard to twist it from “unflattering but normal” to something a lot worse. Presentation is everything.
The problem is that in the end, the the recordings of your personal life are in the hands of other human beings, and human beings are judgmental, emotional, biased, and cruel.
One might take the route of saying, “Well, what we don’t know won’t hurt us, and since we can’t really tell if NSA workers are having a laugh at your expense, what’s the harm?” However, the issue of human prejudices becomes a problem if someone’s bias, someone’s culturally relative judgment of morals, and someone’s confusion of mores for morals allows an invasion of privacy beyond what is necessary, to ensure the safety of society. Because that’s what we really are talking about, isn’t it? A moral issue/judgment? Do we need someone who holds strict celibacy as a moral absolute passing judgment on a libertine or a “furry?”
Now, one might object to this argument by saying, “Well, that’s why we have standards to follow and well defined laws.” All well and good, but I have two answers to this. First, this goes back to humans being poor judges of character, basing things on emotion and previous bias. Will the Puritan’s criticism of the Fetishist’s behavior lead to an unfair invasion of privacy without any legal precedent? Possibly. And before anyone cries “Slippery Slope Fallacy!” understand that this is a very real possibility, not some distant dystopian future that requires millions of random steps in between.
Second—and this is somewhat related to that Oy! said regarding burden of proof—this is why we have a warrant system, to hold individuals, and the system, accountable to the people it is supposed to be protecting. Now, I think most people understand that we live in troubled times and that, because of the nature of the enemy who threatens us, spying is a necessary tool to stop them. The issue most of us take is with the unwarranted, undocumented, unaccountable spying that seams to be happening. With the warrant system, we are ensured that our law enforcement has provided a reasonable amount of proof to justify the invasion of a citizen’s privacy, and that a separate entity that, ideally, doesn’t have similar vested interest in the possible abuse of the spying system, ratifies this proof. Not only that, but the official documentation with the warrant system means that, in due process of law, citizens have access to the full reasoning behind their privacy invasion, and all parties who are guilty of abusing the system or blatant incompetence that leads to breakdown of due process will be held accountable.
Give us a reason for the spying, write it down, ratify it, and make that information available to the citizens. That’s all we ask. Our entire government is based on checks and balances, with the biggest check of all (if we weren’t so god damn complacent), is that of the approval of the people. What’s wrong with basing our sub-systems on that same principle? What’s so wrong about a system which empowers both the law enforcement agencies to do what is necessary to stop terrorists and the people to ensure that their liberties are maintained and that they system is not abused?
I got a pimple on my butt. I do not think it is an illegal pimple, but all the same I do not care to tell the neighbors about it, that would be four people. But for sure I want the government to know about that pimple, there might be WMD in there. And I know Ican trust them. Instead I foolishly ask my wife "Hey hon, take a look at my rump, I think I got a pimple on my rear. “oh dear she says, I will lance it” She does and is now a part of a conspiracy! oh well, I got a knack for getting my butt into trouble!
Point is I do not like telling the neighbors about pimples on my butt. The nothing to hide nothing to fear argument is bull. I got plenty to hide, none of it illegal.
The foundation of freedom is personal dignity, and the foundation of dignity is privacy.
What kinds of things are you picturing here? Speeding? Yes, against the law(although typically not a crime - typically an infraction). But there’s no mystery - everyone knows driving faster than the speed limit is a violation.
What else do you imagine? It really scraes me to realize that you seemingly picture the law as this morass of arbitrary, inpenetrable set of conflicting and mysterious rules that no one can ever know or obey.
That ain’t it.
The criminal law prohibits things that people know are illegal. You may disagree with the rationale – for exmaple, you may say that a seventeen year old should be able to consent to sex, or that fucking a sheep should be legal, or whatever. But you certainly know those things ARE illegal.
What do you imagine might be (a) illegal, and (b) a complete surprise?
I don’t think you can justify the reverse of “people have a right to privacy.” Society (or the government) don’t have an absolute right to be protected from violators of its codes. Where would that right come from?
Also, this kind of monitoring would seem to eliminate the presumption of innocence.
Isn’t there a constitutional amendment that states somewhere that the Government has the right to go about whatever it thinks its business is without interference from its own citizenry?
