-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Ray Arachelian wrote:
On Thu, 12 Jun 1997, Declan McCullagh wrote:
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/ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQBVAwUBM6Hjh5NcNyVVy0jxAQG+sAH/f0ZbXItOdKI/jOfcY9mDxU/0hBoHQVdM XUW9xIHgKIgVzYzUrXFdmRL81Ku9IR77aJ6MEYrN5HjMNCZXusGdLg== =u4We -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----