Unfortunately privacy doesn't really work that way. The price of freedom and privacy seems to be the inability to truly prevent crime. It's the old idea of being innocent until proven guilty. It means that someone can do something pretty nasty at least once. Getting caught, punished and prevented from doing it again is good but not really relevant.
What governments seem to want to to do these days is predict when something bad is going to happen and prevent it. Privacy is sacrificed in the process. How far are we prepared to go to prevent such things as child abuse? It's a constant tug of war which the "think of the children" brigade seem to be winning at the moment.
>What's interesting is that every example quoted in the last >paragraph of the article resulted in some harm being done to >individuals and society.
You mean like the black people he mentioned in the last paragraph?
I believe the thrust of his argument was that society's and ultimately an individual's view of what consitutes harm is subject to changes. The freedom of black people was once considered to be harmful to white society, allowing people of the same gender to have sex was once considered harmful to society, and possibly most notoriously of all, Hitler's regime and a large proportion of German society once considered the freedom and even the lives of Jews to be detremental to their society. It may seem far-fetched but what will you do if the laws you live under dictate that being a geek is harmful to society and therefore illegal? Will you stop being who you are because the law says it's wrong and support your society in persecuting those who don't/can't/wont stop being geeks?
Slashdot Mirror
Unfortunately privacy doesn't really work that way. The price of freedom and privacy seems to be the inability to truly prevent crime. It's the old idea of being innocent until proven guilty. It means that someone can do something pretty nasty at least once. Getting caught, punished and prevented from doing it again is good but not really relevant.
What governments seem to want to to do these days is predict when something bad is going to happen and prevent it. Privacy is sacrificed in the process. How far are we prepared to go to prevent such things as child abuse? It's a constant tug of war which the "think of the children" brigade seem to be winning at the moment.
>What's interesting is that every example quoted in the last
>paragraph of the article resulted in some harm being done to
>individuals and society.
You mean like the black people he mentioned in the last paragraph?
I believe the thrust of his argument was that society's and ultimately an individual's view of what consitutes harm is subject to changes. The freedom of black people was once considered to be harmful to white society, allowing people of the same gender to have sex was once considered harmful to society, and possibly most notoriously of all, Hitler's regime and a large proportion of German society once considered the freedom and even the lives of Jews to be detremental to their society. It may seem far-fetched but what will you do if the laws you live under dictate that being a geek is harmful to society and therefore illegal? Will you stop being who you are because the law says it's wrong and support your society in persecuting those who don't/can't/wont stop being geeks?
Fiona
Here's a slightly more technical report on this from the BBC if anyone is still interested.