Re: FUCK YOU: There's no general right to privacy -- get over it,

[Rich Graves <llurch@networking.stanford.edu>]

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Ray Arachelian wrote:
>On Thu, 12 Jun 1997, Declan McCullagh wrote:
>
>> http://pathfinder.com/netly/editorial/0,1012,1050,00.html

Pretty good article.

>> I have a confession to make: Unlike many of my
>> civil libertarian colleagues, I believe you have no
>> general right to privacy online. Sure, you have the
>> right to protect your personal data, but you shouldn't
>> be able to stop someone else from passing along that
>> information if you let it leave your computer. That's
>> your responsibility.
>
>Booooooooo! Hisssssssssss! Putting your bread and butter before your
>morals, eh? Maybe if someone would go through all your records and post
>them all over the net, you'd feel differently!

No need to go through them all. Just one record is guaranteed to set him and
his friends off.

>Declan, this truly sucks. :( I'm very disappointed in you. You are truly
>scum if you believe this.

Ray, he was talking about *rights*, not *morals*. I don't believe anyone has
an absolute *right* to privacy, but that doesn't mean I think it would be
anything short of morally abhorrent to knowingly post, say, Declan's social
security number. He has no legal or moral *right* to privacy, but it would
be morally *wrong*, and I would truly be scum, if I knowingly posted it. 

Rights are negative; morals are positive. The burden of proof is entirely
different. Journalists have a First Amendment right to be free from
government-imposed restrictions on speech, including non-criminal invasions
of privacy (some invasions of privacy can be criminal if the target is not a
public figure -- but such prosecutions are extremely rare), but some
journalists are truly scum. Others, like Declan in this case, get bashed
over misinterpretations and ideological flamers.

- -rich
 http://www.stanford.edu/~llurch/

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