Here is your link for the day.
I'm not sure how I feel on this issue.
While I think everyone should drive safely (despite my unsafeness sometimes), I also agree that this could produce results that would be undesireable. I'd rather be ticketed by an officer who actually saw me do it, rather than by a seemingly more capricious GPS system.
Of course, if everyone did the things they were supposed to do, the privacy activists wouldn't have anything to worry about, would they? And the lawyers would be out of a job.
But, privacy is nice. Necessary even, though I have nothing to hide from anyone. Because, if you follow the logical drift, there are some things that need to be kept private in a person's life.
Because no one wants to know about my eating or sleeping habits, do they?
Heavens, I certainly hope not.
Monday, August 07, 2006
Privacy: Is it necessary?
Posted by Daishi at 4:22 PM
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5 comments:
The example given in the article is misleading; police are able to calculate the speed of vehicles involved in a crash based upon forensic evidence and a healthy dose of calculus (I'm not talking "CSI"-style CGI-techno-fluff, just good, old-fashioned math). The black boxes would have, if anything, simply confirmed what the officers deduced on their own.
If no one has access to the boxes recording such information, except with the owner's permission, I can't see any reason a person should be concerned about their existence. We keep track of other bits of history (journals, e-mail, oil changes) without worrying about other people accessing them - even though we know that such things can be seized for an investigation.
On the other hand, if the boxes can be accessed by other people without the owner's knowledge or consent that is alarming. It's going to happen, too. Better start working on improving your driving habits now.
Thus my point, that those who already obey the law have nothing to be worried about. But I agree that access to such things will happen, and that we should get ready for it.
By the way, I like your term: CGI-techno-fluff.
Well, I didn't mean those who obey the law have nothing to worry about - that's usually the argument by implication that gets used by government and Big Brother types who argue for more invasive measures. I simply meant, in a theoretical sense, if you have control over the information then you should feel just as safe (or just as worried) as you do when you control other bits of information, such as your journal.
The argument by implication I was referring to goes something along the lines of "If you're concerned, you must have something to hide."
True. As always, you are a paragon of right thinking...
In a gospel sense, I find it a bit ironic: More control equals a safer feeling for a lot of people. Isn't everything, ultimately, outside of our control? And I'm not talking about consequences...
Yep. No one is ever truly independent, no matter what they think; too much of what makes up our world is far beyond our ability to control, and the subtle influences others exert on us often go unnoticed.
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