In a democratic nation, is privacy from the government a right or a luxury? Just how vital is privacy in our lives?
Who would object to ID cards? Opening of private mail by government officials? Government chaperones? Searches without warrants or probable cause?
Is there any logical argument for the right to privacy, apart from “I don’t wish to see the government meddling in my life”?
I’d like to think that should be enough right there.
But it’s more complicated than that. We’re clearly on a path (not even recently) where privacy will be mostly an illusion. As a direct marketer I can get all sorts of information on buying patterns for individuals by name if I wish to purchase it. And the credit scoring services know a godawful lot about it.
I don’t see any means to put that particular djinni back in the bottle without costing us a lot of efficiencies upon which many firms rely.
My answer would be to include government in the old ‘lack of privacy’ game and let the citizens snoop the government files at will and easily. They can snoop us…we can snoop them. And if the government has something they feel MUST remain secret (for whatever reason) they can have a panel of judges determine the status…as long as the default is public access.
I recommend David Brin’s The Transparent Society as a good read on this subject.
In a democratic nation, the right of the people extends to removing the current government, if they so choose. This being the case, a right to privacy is necessary.
Privacy (n) - The state of being free from unsanctioned intrusion.
I don’t see how the one follows from the other, buddy. Bear in mind my response time will be slow as I’m on the road but I’d be interested in hearing you expand on that.
I don’t think that snooping thing would work too well because some cops would use snooping for personal agendas ie: black mail, humiliation, harrasment ect. Given the current levels of American apathy, such a scheme seems scary to me anyway.
I would like to see a way more transparent goverment though. Since I with all the other voters have the final say about who gets to do what I think we should have way more intel about the goings on in goverment.
Is it possible to organise a rebellion with out privacy?
In theory, I don’t see a need for privacy. In this idea, privacy is only a commodity because everybody has some. Take a world with glass walls, and people would adapt, I think. Privacy would be a non-issue, because they don’t need it. I think this goes hand in hand with modesty. There is no modesty on a nude beach? Is this because nobody has clothes? Do people with clothes make the naked ones feel vulnerable?
In reality, however. I hate when my window is open at night because people driving by might get a glance in. All they would see is my kitchen table and stuff, but for some reason it bothers me. I am open about many things in my life, but closed about the things everybody else is closed about. I think it is a bit of a secret that I hold for insurance purposes, or due to a self esteem issue. Who knows.
Personally I think it is a luxury and a right. I just don’t believe it is a necessity, and it isn’t a right I think I would bother dying for, certainly not like my freedom.
Well, sure. It’s called 'voting the bastards out.
On the subject of government abuse I would be far more concerned about private industry abusing it. And in many ways it’s already out there. While I don’t know anything in particular about an individual if I wanted to say, get the names and addresses of all persons in a specific zip code who shop at Ikea or are software programmers I could do that. It would cost me between $65 and $125 per thousand names and addresses. $5 more if I wanted phone numbers. And it’s perfectly legal for me to do so.
I first started thinking about this as a reporter/business weenie. All the people who were talking to me ‘off the record’ were doing it because they had something to hide that shamed them somehow. A criminal was hiding it…or a subordinate was informing on a boss and didn’t want to lose their job.
But aren’t we sending the wrong message there? Even though they fill a vital role whistleblowers have to be protected. Instead they should be lauded for their actions. If you find out the guy above you murdered 3 people to advance his business interests should you have to worry when you turn him in? No, you should be rewarded for your honesty. Instead you get a pat on the back and need to find a new job. It’s just sickening to me.
And don’t even get me started on politicians. Ugh.
I suppose it depends on exactly what actions “abuse” includes, but I disagree with that. There is an inherent difference between a corporation abusing citizens’ right to privacy and the government doing it. There are specific proscriptions on what constitutes legal action by companies and though they are (often enough) broken, the guilty party typically achieves this either through legal loopholes or by simply violating them outright and hoping that they don’t get caught (and, if they do, they just pay a settlement that is small enough for the whole affair to still be profitable for them).
While the government can also operate through legal loopholes, it has the distinct ability to establish its own laws and precedents, making it harder to control. (Note that the executive branch has grown increasingly powerful over the years, shifting the balance of power toward government agencies (e.g., the president can declare a state of emergency in which civil liberties curtailed).) Moreover, the government exists to serve the people while companies are only obligated to their stockholders, so the abuse of civil rights by the government is not only (potentially) more damaging and dangerous, but is also a greater wrong in that it contradicts the purpose of the institution.
So I agree that corporate infringements on privacy may be more worrisome with regard to frequency, but I also think that intrusions by the government are more detrimental and more difficult to catch.
I certainly think privacy is a right, although I realize that, as far as the Constitution goes, it is derivative, not explicit. And I take issue with Epimetheus’s contention that privacy is unnecessary and that people can adapt if it is taken away (that is to say that though people can continue to live without privacy and will modify their behavior accordingly, it is something so fundamentally human that it is a natural right).
Cheers, People AoverT.
If the situation is such that a rebellion is mandated, do you actually believe that privacy will be respected?
I assume that the OP mostly refers to ordinary circumstances. If your government becomes a dictatorship overnight, the debate about privacy immediatly becomes moot.
At the current state of technological progress it remains impossible for our goverment to watch and moniter every single person alive, every moment of every day. Until some sort of vast web of artifical intelligence or advanced heuristics programs become availible, there is a very small chance that you would be monitored at any given time.
I think it’s desirable but not always attainable to have it that government and businesses are not allowed to know things about you beyond certain limits.
What is possible to enshrine is laws that deny them the authority to act on knowledge that people didn’t elect to share with them. It slows them down and gives them a bit of a disincentive, one that sometimes means they won’t bother prying until they’re really provoked to be curious about you personally, enough to so invest the resources. (We need more such laws).
Example: if the company is not allowed to act on knowledge of employee drug use obtained illegally, and drug tests were ruled an illegal invasion of privacy, Company A might still be able to get information through health insurance claims information (illegally) or complicated covert sampling techniques, but can’t directly use it to fire or admonish Employee X. If it weren’t illegal for them to have access to that information, Company A could routinely take hair and urine samples and have employees who tested positive called to conference and warned, then fired on the third violation or something. With it being illegal, obtaining the information requires more effort and acting upon it is both more tactically complicated and less satisfying (doesn’t set a highly visibile example for the other employees if they have to fire you for cobbled-together fake reasons), and even risky (Company A could get sued if Employee X gets any evidence of what the real deal is). I assume Company A would still occasionally go to the trouble of obtaining this information if sufficiently provoked, but they’d be less likely to do it routinely for all employees.
Rarely is the question asked: is our privacy laws enshrined?
:smack:
Rarely is it ever asked ‘Are any laws truely enshrined?’
After all, laws are changed every day and if can be created by men, they can be just as easily deconstructed.
Cheers.