The Privacy Candidate

Alsee writes "Wired News reports 'electronic civil libertarians' hearts are a-twitter' over US Presidential hopeful Senator Hillary Clinton's bold stance on the right to privacy. Wired quotes Clinton: 'At all levels, the privacy protections for ordinary citizens are broken, inadequate and out of date.' Clinton gave a speech last June to the American Constitution Society (text, WMF) in which she addressed electronic surveillance, consumer opt-in vs. opt-out, cyber-security, commercial and government handling of personal data, data offshoring, data leaks, and even genetic discrimination." Would you consider a candidate's stand on privacy important enough to sway your vote?

Comments

Re:Hillary's talk is cheap

[Juzzie79]

government shouldn't be in the business of legislating morality Sorry, as I know this is slightly off-topic, but isn't that one of the government's main purposes? For example, most people consider it amoral to murder someone, so the government passes and enforces laws that specify penalties for murder. Ultimately if government is working as it should, they are legislating the morals of *most* of the people across *all* of the people. I know it's not a perfect world and so it doesn't always happen that way, but if you can come up with a better system, I'd love to hear it.

Re:The right to privacy is underrated

[fyngyrz]

Four strongly related questions for you: (1) Where are these candidates that care? (2) What "power of the vote" do you have in mind? (3) Surely it isn't choosing between the next party-picked pair of democrats and republicans? Assuming it isn't, then (4) how do you propose to get a 3rd party in there?

When you can answer those, you will have uncovered the American zeitgeist, and you'll know why we are not going to have a revolution or honest candidates for political office.

I can certainly answer them for you, but it won't have the same impact as when you understand it intuitively. The problem is that middle america and upper class america is pretty comfortable with the status quo; they don't care that the political system has gone rotten on the inside, that the two entrenched parties are machines replacing candidate A with B who has precisely the same legislative priorities, that is, being bought by lobbyists, screaming "save the children", and "praying" before every hypocritical meeting. The voting public does not care that the voting machines are crooked, they don't care that the president is making "law", that kids are dying in the middle east. What do they care about? Next week's paycheck, american idol, if their kid is doing ok in sports, and how they're going to get laid. That's it. There are exceptions, of course, but they are too few, as witness the fact that things are steadily getting worse, not better.

They're unconstitutional as Hell but Congress and SCOTUS are not doing a thing about it, and we aren't either, because...

Let me finish that for you: "We can't." USSC appointments are for life. So we're screwed for the lifetime of those people. Executive orders aren't the only signs of a USSC out of control; ex post facto law and punishment, commerce clause absurdities, 2nd amendment erosion, approval of eavesdropping without warrants (I'm referring to FISA... getting approval *afterwards* is about as messed up an idea as anything they've ever come up with), constant refusal to hear cases that deal with important issues on absurd technicalities... the USSC is composed of enemies of the constitution and the people, but you will not see anything done about it - legally, we can't, and practically, we won't.

Re:The right to privacy is underrated

[iminplaya]

Why would anyone be swayed by a candidate's stand? We've seen candidates "stand" for "no new taxes" and "limited government". ?? This is as if this woman is specifically trolling Slashdot. "The voices in the TV" are talking to me. If you guys fall for this, then I can safely say that you have crossed the event horizon. This woman has a past that every bit as entertaining as the Bush Family's. Well, all I can say is that she's definitely covering all her bases. (And they belong to us?)

...she even did joint sessions with Newt Gingrich

That can be taken two ways. Does Bill know about this? Anyway, it hardly makes me feel any better about her "stand".

..Clinton's regime...

I couldn't put it better myself. Just more of the same. BAH! HUMBUG!