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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.

4 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. 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.

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    /. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.