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 ************************