Tim May[SMTP:tcmay@got.net] wrote:

On Thursday, August 9, 2001, at 01:55 PM, Trei, Peter wrote:

...

Aimee, who is somewhat of a newcomer to our list, is groping towards an idea which seems to hold the minds of many contributors; that the contents of our private data are as personal, and should be as inviolate, as the contents of our heads.

To those of us to whom the use of computers is as natural as breathing, our data are as much a part of us as our memories, and we instinctively feel they should be just as intimately held.

We now use computers as extensions of our minds - a vast store of knowledge, ideas, and abilities. This ability simply did not exist at the time the Constitution was written, and as computers grew out of accounting equipment, their data came to be treated as 'papers' rather than 'memories'.

I agree with your sentiments, but not where I think you are going with this.

Importantly, there is nothing in the Constitution about "memories" have special protection. There is "secure in one's papers and possessions," there is language about under what conditions a person may be compelled to testify, but there is no special protection or language about "memories."

Well, the 5th protects one from having to testify against oneself. I'm not going trying to go Choatian on you (is he on vacation?) but the personal data I store on a machine which I own, have sole access to, and which I stored with no immediate intention to show to others, seems to have properties more similar to a personal memory than does a piece of paper in a file cabinet at my accountant's office. That being the case, being forced to divulge my personal data, to be used against me, *feels* like the sort of thing the 5th was meant to prevent. [Lets not get into particular legal arguments at this point - I'm talking about my gut reactions.]

And I think writings on a computer are no more special than writings in journals and letters and personal papers. Many of the Founders and their contemporaries were _prodigious_ writers, generating thousands of notes and letters a year. Many were ardent diarists.

They were also ardent burners of old personal papers. Part of Faustine's point is that with a keylogger, there is no private space outside the skull. The simplest drafting out of an idea - including ideas that may be immediatly discarded as wrong/immoral/illegal/unworkable - become known to the eavesdropper. [good stuff deleted]

The problem is not that "memories" are being seized. The problem is that "secure in one's papers and possessions" has become a joke, a null and void idea.

The solution is pretty obvious to most liberty-minded folks:

1) End the War on (Some) Drugs. This will eliminate most trafficking, distribution, money laundering, and gang war crimes.

The Economist recently (July 26) ran a special report (10-15 pages) on the diasaster that is US drug policy, with a set of strong arguments in favor of legalisation. It'd be worth your time to read it: http://www.economist.com/background/displayStory.cfm?Story_id=706591 and following articles, with an editorial at http://www.economist.com/background/displayStory.cfm?Story_id=709603 [deleted]

5) Fewer things criminal, but punish real crimes harshly. Instead of letting an arsonist off with a stern lecture while putting a kid selling blotter acid at a Dead concert in prison for 10 years, don't prosecute the kid and kill the arsonist. For thieves, put them on a work gang for several years. For murderers and rapists (real rapists, not Wimmin's Lib victims), kill them. 6) For cops found guilty of inserting toilet plungers into detainees, kill them. 7) For those involved in burning the Waco compound, kill them. And so on.

[This is really a separate and off-topic issue] I object to all killing except in immediate and urgent defense of life and limb. I won't attempt to persuade you here. But even if I were a serial killer like Dubya, I would stop shy of killing rapists and other non-murderers. If rape as well as murder carried the death penalty, rapists (the real rapists you refer to) would be strongly motivated to murder their victims - doing so eliminates the best (and usually only) witness against them, and even if they are convicted, carries no additional penalty - it's tough to make someone serve two death sentences consecutively.

But stop manufacturing police state thoughtcrimes and then using the courts to rubber-stamp hunting expeditions for more crimes revealed in papers and diaries and computer discs.

Agreed.

--Tim May

Peter Trei