At 1:15 AM -0800 4/8/97, Wei Dai gave some arguments pro and con privacy:
Privacy as Restriction on Signaling
.... Consider a possible future where every room in every house is wired with a camera that continously broadcasts to the Internet. Life would certainly be very uncomfortable in this future, as every trivial action must be carefully considered in order to preserve one's reputation.
Or peoples expectation about the range of private behavior will change to be more in line with the reality. Those whose behavior is 5 standard deviations away from the norm will be screwed.
Possible Benefit of Non-Privacy Limited
This is more of an argument for privacy technology, rather than privacy per se. Suppose that privacy-invading technology becomes much cheaper than privacy-enhancing technology. Given the arguments above it seems inevitible that governments will pass laws to restrict the distribution of certain kinds of information about individuals. But of course this will not keep the information out of the hands of those governments themselves and other resourceful organizations.
Such laws will support monopoly use of personal information, and as such be very unlikely to contribute to the good of society. At CFP '97, David Brin gave a lunch talk where he argued against privacy and in favor of accountability. The example he used was the cop and the driver, both with the secure recording TV cameras on their shoulders. Of course the crypto-anarchist view is you can use any information you can get, and I can use strong privacy technologies to keep you from getting it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bill Frantz | God could make the world | Periwinkle -- Consulting (408)356-8506 | in six days because he did | 16345 Englewood Ave. frantz@netcom.com | not have an installed base.| Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA