Arguments _against_ privacy, anyone?

["E. ALLEN SMITH" <EALLENSMITH@ocelot.Rutgers.EDU>]

From:	IN%"rre@weber.ucsd.edu"  6-MAY-1996 01:21:22.00

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
This message was forwarded through the Red Rock Eater News Service (RRE).
Send any replies to the original author, listed in the From: field below.
You are welcome to send the message along to others but please do not use
the "redirect" command.  For information on RRE, including instructions
for (un)subscribing, send an empty message to  rre-help@weber.ucsd.edu
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Date: Sun, 5 May 96 02:28 PDT
From: privacy@vortex.com (PRIVACY Forum)
Subject: PRIVACY Forum Digest V05 #10

PRIVACY Forum Digest        Sunday, 5 May 1996        Volume 05 : Issue 10

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:    Sun, 21 Apr 1996 15:58:03 -0700 (PDT)
From:    Phil Agre <pagre@weber.ucsd.edu>
Subject: Call for bad arguments against privacy

In my online newsletter, The Network Observer, I periodically summarize
and rebut bad arguments against a broad right to privacy.  At the end 
of this message I've included a partial list of the arguments I have
discussed so far.  I would like to gather another batch of arguments,
probably for the July 1996 issue of TNO, and I am hoping that you can 
help me.  Please send me any bad arguments against privacy rights that
you have encountered, even if you can't quite figure out what's wrong
with them, and even if you don't have a specific example ready to hand.
Arguments concerning specific issues such as government records, medical
privacy, and video surveillance are particularly welcome.  Once I finish
this next set of arguments and rebuttals, I'll gather the whole set into
a "handbook" that can be distributed freely on the Internet.

Thanks very much.

Phil Agre

Encl:

The Network Observer can be found on the Web at:

  http://communication.ucsd.edu/pagre/tno.html

The privacy articles can be found indexed a little ways down the page.
Here are most of the arguments that I have discussed in past issues:

  * "We've lost so much of our privacy anyway."

  * "Privacy is an obsolete Victorian hang-up."

  * "Ideas about privacy are culturally specific and it is thus
     impossible to define privacy in the law without bias."

  * "We have strong security on our data."

  * "National identity cards protect privacy by improving
     authentication and data security."

  * "Informational privacy can be protected by converting it into
     a property right."

  * "We have to balance privacy against industry concerns."

  * "Privacy paranoids want to turn back the technological clock."

  * "Most people are privacy pragmatists who can be trusted to make
     intelligent trade-offs between functionality and privacy."

  * "Our lives will inevitably become visible to others, so the
     real issue is mutual visibility, achieving a balance of power
     by enabling us to watch the people who are watching us."

  * "Once you really analyze it, the concept of privacy is so
     nebulous that it provides no useful guidance for action."

  * "People *want* these systems, as indicated by the percentage
     of them who sign up for them once they become available."

  * "Concern for privacy is anti-social and obstructs the building
     of a democratic society."

  * "Privacy regulation is just one more category of government
     interference in the market, which after all is much better
     at weighing individuals' relative preferences for privacy
     and everything else than bureaucratic rules could ever be."

  * "There's no privacy in public."

  * "We favor limited access."

  * "Privacy in these systems has not emerged as a national issue."

		[ Submissions that would be interesting to the general
		  readership of the PRIVACY Forum would also be very
		  welcome here.  -- MODERATOR ]
		  
------------------------------

End of PRIVACY Forum Digest 05.10
************************