Should Cyborgs Have the Same Privacy Rights As Humans?

Jason Koebler (3528235) writes When someone with an e-tattoo or an implanted biochip inevitably commits a crime, and evidence of that crime exists on that device within them, do they have a legal right to protect that evidence? Do cyborgs have the same rights as humans? "The more you take a thing with no rights and integrate it indelibly into a thing that we invest with rights, the more you inevitably confront the question: Do you give the thing with no rights rights, or do you take those rights away from the thing with rights?," Benjamin Wittes, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, who just released a paper exploring the subject, said.

Comments

Re:Humans have too much

[MtnDeusExMachina]

Of course, an Anonymous Coward complaining about too many privacy rights. Nothing ironic about that.

Re:Humans have too much

[Anonymous Coward]

Your name is just as anonymous moron regardless if you posted it publicly. We still don't know who you are but if we wanted the first anon can be tracked as easy as you.

Re:All the evidence is beginning to suggest...

[khasim]

That would be nice. But in the meantime ... it's about property. From TFA:

But our laws do not recognize the rights of machines themselves.

Because they are non-sentient property. Ask again once AI is achieved.

But what is the difference between that and having a phone with you - sorry, a computer with you - all the time that is tracking where you are, which you're using for storing all of your personal information, your memories, your friends, your communications, that knows where you are and does all kinds of powerful things and speaks different languages?

And the difference between a stored text communication and a written letter? Learn the 4th Amendment.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Machines, meanwhile, remain slaves with uncertain masters.

Really? "Slaves"? Maybe you should look into actual slavery.

As to "uncertain" just look for the sales receipt or lease agreement. My car is a machine and there is no uncertainty as to who owns it.

... understanding that we are - if not yet Terminators - at least a little more integrated ...

Fuck you.

Learn what technology really is before you go off on movie tangents.

Re:All the evidence is beginning to suggest...

[khasim]

A word doesn't automatically take its worst possible meaning.

Here is the quote from TFA. It provides the context.

Machines, meanwhile, remain slaves with uncertain masters.

No. That is not referring to an IDE drive.

Or, more completely:

Humans have rights, under which they retain some measure of dominion over their bodies. Machines, meanwhile, remain slaves with uncertain masters. Our laws may, directly and indirectly, protect peopleâ(TM)s right to use certain machines - freedom of the press, the right to keep and bear arms. But our laws do not recognize the rights of machines themselves.

So no. They are not talking about an IDE "master/slave" situation. They are talking about humans using machines (with examples provided) and equating that to "slavery".

Re:Humans have too much

[ATMAvatar]

Assuming that it was impossible to have *any* privacy, you would immediately see widespread persecution of anyone who didn't fit the "norm". Shortly afterward, anyone with any intelligence would cease any public activities which did not meet general approval and start looking for ways to engage in them so that only other people with those hobbies would know about it - in effect, clamoring to restore the lost privacy.

In short, a life without privacy is one where you must live according to how everyone else wants you to live, whether than living how *you* want to live. It is a prison without bars.

A camcorder is a camcorder, even up your bum

[apraetor]

If you commit a crime, and videotape yourself doing it, the police can execute a search warrant to recover the recording and use it against you in court. Just because you choose to hide the recorder inside your own body -- whether it's surgically implanted or just up your arse -- doesn't change the legal argument. New legal ground will only be exposed when we have brain implants which directly interface with your mind; if the device records your thoughts as you think them THEN the 5th Amendment would potentially come into play.

zero privacy = full control

[globaljustin]

just simply had full transparency?

this question reeks of absent-minded techie "disruptive innovation"

so zero privacy rights...everyone can look at everything? have you thought this through?

so the password to the safe where I keep my guns...that's open for everyone?

does this "full transparency" apply to only digital information? if so, people would just do things they want by paper like before there was ever digital technology of any kind...so it seems that your "full transparency" must include non-digital...which means at any time, my personal affects can be looked at by any person?

what about my business plans? do those get to be secret or does "full transparency" apply to those too?

"full transparency" is a totalitarian dream...so the answer is, if you loose your right to privacy, all the others follow...

can we end this line of questioning forever? privacy rights are a fundamental thing...no need for any techie "disruptive" "innovation"