[Brinworld] Car's data recorder convicts driver

[Adam Shostack]

On Wed, Jun 18, 2003 at 09:11:58AM -0700, Tim May wrote:
| On Wednesday, June 18, 2003, at 05:17  AM, Adam Shostack wrote:
| >
| >I wasn't arguing, I was quipping.
| >
| >I find the many meanings of the word privacy to be fascinating.  So
| >when someone commented that the car's tattle-box is or isn't a privacy
| >invasion, I thought I'd offer up a definition under which it is.
| >Its a definition that lots of people use, as John points out.
| >
| >Perhaps better than 'right' would be 'ability,' 'The ability to lie
| >and get away with it.'
| 
| I wasn't picking on you or your points, that's for sure. In fact, I 
| barely noticed whose message I was replying to.

Gives new meaning to anonymous postings. ;)

| My point was a larger one, that nearly all such debates about privacy 
| eventually come round to issues of "what have you got to hide?" and 
| issues of truth and lies.
| 
| This is why I like the "Congresss shall make no law" and "shall not be 
| infringed" absoluteness of the original Constitution. The language does 
| not natter about "truthful speaking shall not be infringed."
| 
| And this is why more recent legislation allowing government to regulate 
| "commercial speech" or to decide which speech is true and which is 
| false (as in advertising claims) is so corrosive to liberty.

Indeed.  The European data protection laws are fundamentally
unamerican.  Unfortunately, Congress has made laws, numbering each of
us, and then tries to regulate the abuse of that (free, freely usable,
legally enforced) numbering scheme.

Adam



-- 
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once."
					               -Hume