Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sdd.hp.com!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!jato!dave
From: dave@jato.jpl.nasa.gov (Dave Hayes)
Subject: Re: The end of privacy... and so what comes next?
Message-ID: <1991Apr1.191504.10205@jato.jpl.nasa.gov>
Reply-To: dave@elxr.jpl.nasa.gov
Organization: Jet Propulsion Lab - Pasadena, CA
References: <63473@bbn.BBN.COM>
Date: Mon, 1 Apr 91 19:15:04 GMT

cosell@bbn.com (Bernie Cosell) writes:
>1) Just look at the caller ID debate.  There is the barely veiled
>accusation that anyone who would want to make a call under the cloak of
>anonymity MUST be up to no good, and so the need for anonymity is
>viewed as an exception, and if it is awkward or difficult to make an
>anonymous call that's OK.  In all the years I've been debating in and
>around the general topic of privacy, I've _never_ found a persuasive
>argument to counter this.  

Here's one: (like I posted before) You are at a friends house. You
wish to call another friend, but the person whose house you are at
does not want your other friend to get his number. 

You are respecting your friend's privacy (not your own) in making the
call with Caller ID blocked.

>Why shouldn't police be allowed to frisk
>people at random on the street?  or search cars [or even homes] on a
>hunch, or less?  

If the police were bastions of integrity, then this would be OK. However,
as so recently demonstrated in Los Angeles, they are far from it. Allowing
random searches on the street allows the police to frisk an innocent
(who may or may not be politically active) and "find" some cocaine (even
though the innocent has never done drugs in his life) on him.

>If you don't do drugs, why do you bitch so much about
>drug testing?  

Again, if the tests were 100% accurate...this would be OK. However:

1) They aren't. 

2) There are people in the world who can function better than you or I
and still be on several drugs. WHat do DRUGS have to do with lousy performance?
Personally, I don't care what your state is...if you can't do a specific
job (for whatever reason) then you don't need to be doing it do you?

Drugs are not the issue. They are only meat for the lions of irresponsibility,
something to blame the world's problems on. A company that drug tests is obviously
ignorant of that basic premise.

>Or, as has been seriously proposed and may well come to pass soon,
>self-id'ing boxes for automobiles so that you can pay tolls
>electronically on-the-fly.  How convenient!

Yeah...tolls like speeding tickets. Great...that car is going 55.21
miles per hour...send 'em a speeding ticket and increase our revenue.

>temptations, and the case for keeping privacy will be more and more
>tenuous and abstract.  And it will only get worse: with the march of
>technology, the _potential_ for greater security and convenience, and
>the _apparent_ triviality of the privacy you would cede, and where
>they'll argue (perhaps correctly) that for this specific case you don't
>really have that privacy _now_, will all make the lure of the new toys
>virtually irresistable, and make the pro-privacy folk look more and
>more like Luddites.

*Sigh*

The POINT of privacy is to insure that the government doesn't have
too much control over your personal life...so that we don't have
a "illusory" set of freedoms which is really a dictatorship. There are
too many people in this world (and most of them in this country) who 
would control the way you think, talk, act, and breathe. You'll find
that those same people argue AGAINST privacy...so they can see what
you are doing "wrong" and "fix" you.

If this is the world you want, then by all means go ahead and embrace
it. Personally, I would like to take my own responsibility for my
own life....make my own mistakes...and fix myself.

>Is it hopeless?  Where does the trail lead us?

Down the road paved with good intentions...

-- 
Dave Hayes -  dave@elxr.jpl.nasa.gov - ames!elroy!dxh

History is not usually what has happened.
       History is what some people have thought to be significant.
