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David Brin on Privacy

Posted by michael on from the no-webcams-in-the-white-house dept.

David Brin is interviewed and provides some strong words on modern conceptions of privacy and why they're off-base. Brin asserts - and argues well - that a land with little privacy is a freer land.

7 of 271 comments (clear)

  1. A very basic fact... by irony+nazi · · Score: 4, Informative

    One cannot forget that the Right to Privacy is not a constitutional right. Nowhere in the Constitution does it state that American citizens have a right to privacy.

    --

    Bringing irony to the Slash-masses
    1. Re:A very basic fact... by Amarok.Org · · Score: 3, Informative

      Take a look at Griswold vs. Connecticut, as resolved by the Supreme Court in 1965. The Court ruled that the fourth amendment, as combined with several other factors, does in fact guarantee a basic right to privacy.

      As I have stressed to others in other threads, PLEASE do some research before deciding what rights you do or do not posses. How can you defend your rights if you don't even know what they are?

      --
      -- "Other than that, how was the play Mrs. Lincoln?"
    2. Re:A very basic fact... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      what did you think "searches" means?


      That obviously isnt a privacy amendment for two reasons. First, it only applies to law enforcement. Second, it rules on evidence. Just because a certain class of evidence can be suppressed in court doesnt mean your privacy hasnt been violated. The police can still spy on your sex life and even "accidentally" leak their information to A Current Affair.

      There is absolutely no right to privacy under Consitutional or common law. That's what statutory law is for.

  2. It's a Human Right by bartyboy · · Score: 3, Informative

    Look for yourself.

  3. Why It Just Can't Work That Way by Steve+B · · Score: 3, Informative
    A few of the gaping holes in Brin's notion of "surveillance with accountability":
    1. It's simply too easy for the people in power and their minions to walk away scot free even when we already know what they've done. I'll be willing to entertain arguments to the contrary when Lon Horiuchi is waiting for his appointment with a guerney and a needle.

    2. Accountability can be easily evaded by hiding behind pretexts. If some politician doesn't like you for a non-actionable reason (e.g. you tried to prevent him from getting re-elected), he can always find an actionable reason (e.g. you once smoked the Devil Weed With Roots In Hell[tm]). This is routinely done now, and would be far easier given the surveillance abilities Brin postulates (and, no, surveillance the other way couldn't catch it, much less prove it, unless it includes mind-reading).

    3. The notion of really wide-open government is simply not possible. Nobody in his right mind is going to allow some "citizen watchdogs" to leaf through genuine national security secrets; thus, there will always be safe harbors for abuse free from prying citizen eyes.

    --
    /. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
  4. Privacy for it's own sake is the whole point. by TheWizardOfCheese · · Score: 2, Informative

    To them, it's just as harmful for a supermarket to know what salad dressing you bought as it is for a convicted abuser to know the location of the battered wives shelter. But this is obviously absurd.

    Why is this absurd? The point is, if privacy is not valued for it's own sake, it will be taken from you when you really need it. Of course we don't need special rules to protect privacy when even Mrs. Grundy can see that it's needed.

    The Anschluss was approved by an overwhelming majority of Austrian voters. Albert Goering, who did not share the political beliefs of his more famous brother, described how this vote worked to his Allied interogators after the war.

    Voting took place in a large hall. In the centre there was a table, surrounded by seated officials, with ballots and ballot boxes. At the far end of the hall was a privacy booth. One approached the table and was handed a ballot with the Brinesque instruction that if voting "yes" (in favour of unification), there was no need for privacy - you could skip that long lonely walk to the booth. (Amusingly, the "Yes" alternative was printed very large on the ballot, the "No" very small. The Nazis weren't exactly subtle.)

    Goering insisted on using the booth, but of course this was tantamount to an admission that he was voting "no". He could afford to do this because his powerful brother could free him from the clutches of the Gestapo (as happened on more than one occasion.) Most voters didn't have that luxury.

    There was no way to argue the merits of privacy in the particular case, as Brin advocates, without arguing the case itself. If it had been possible to argue for privacy on a principled, rather than particular, basis, more people might have voted "no".

    --

    "The good reader is a rarer swan than the good writer."
  5. Re:Brin has no sense of perspective by payslee · · Score: 2, Informative
    Could Thoreau have done what he describes in Walden today? Of course not - or at least, not legally. He had no means to pay the property taxes that would be levied on his "house in the woods".

    Wasn't legal then either. Thoreau got tossed in jail for non-payment of taxes and sat there for a while with every intention of using the incident to publice his views on civil disobedience. Then someone paid his taxes for him, and they booted him out of jail. Slightly more info here.

    --
    Doing my part to piss off the religious right.