Reconciling Information Privacy and Liberty? 871
thetan asks: "F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote that 'The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.' However, for many outsiders, it's hard to understand how cliques reconcile seemingly contrarian views.
For example, many US Republicans are against abortion but in favour of the death penalty (no doubt they have their reasons). Amongst the Slashdot commentariat, one often hears that information wants to be free, almost as a catchcry of the open source, copyfight and related info-libertarian movements. OTOH, these same Slashdot readers stridently guard their privacy, so presumably information about their shopping preferences or websurfing does not 'want to be free'. How does the intelligent and functional Slashdot crowd reconcile the liberty of other people's information with the privacy of their own?"
Libre, *not* gratis. (Score:5, Interesting)
Bwah ha ha ha...are you enjoying your stay in our dimension? When are you due back in BizzaroWorld? ^_^
Seriously, though, I don't think any intellectually honest Slashdotter out there would assert that the vaunted 'information wants to be free' catch phrase should be interpreted as 'free as in beer'. Information is most certainly not free...if it was, many of us would be out of a job. This being the Information Age, information is the prime economic mover, and therefore, most slashdotters are understandably upset when their own personal information is mined by corporations and passed around as currency. This leads to a very real devaluation of our personal worth, as the intrusiveness of companies serves to reduce our quality of life.
Prejudices (Score:5, Interesting)
Why the smear against Republicans? (Score:1, Interesting)
Why the smear against Republicans? Why broaden the question to *general* contradictory views? Why not just ask the specific question about information privacy?
The Republican position isn't even shaky, let alone inconsistent let alone contradictory. Fetuses are innocent human life. Murder convicts are guilty human life. Why is the idea of treating them differently so foreign? I mean, I disagree, but holding those two positions isn't contradictory. Quit disguising your smears as matter-of-fact "observation".
Same thing? (Score:1, Interesting)
MOD PARENT UP - Please. (Score:3, Interesting)
I have to agree with bigwavejas. Troll" on /. == Satire.
Oh, I wish there was a way to explain humor or a poor attempt at it to the mods.
And Goddam /. for inventing "Troll" and "Flamebait"
Famous "Troll"s and "Flaimers:" people:
Thomas Paine
Thomas Jefferson
Ben Franklin
Karl Marx
Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King
Martin Luther
Ghandi
etc ...
People who spoke what they truly believed and got Fucked for it!!!
Re:Apples to Oranges... (Score:3, Interesting)
For instance, if the local grocery store was capable of printing customized flyers (it'll happen) and knows you just bought a 24 pack of toilet paper, it could exclude that from the items offered to you. If it knows you buy milk every week and haven't yet this week, it could make sure that milk is front and center on the first page. Maybe you buy a lot of red meat, so you don't need the special coupon for that.
Now, you probably don't want your buying habits to be public information. I know I want mine guarded! But clearly, having the information public is both beneficial (in the example above we've saved ink, paper, postage and your time in browsing our flyer) and harmful (because your insurance company might raise your premiums because you eat too much meat).
I don't think there's any information out there that isn't beneficial to some and harmful ot others. "Information wants to be free!" *is* hypocrisy. It's just an adult way of getting to use other toys without sharing your own. (Not that I think there's anything really bad with that, but we should be more honest about it.)
Re:Not at odds, one in the same (Score:4, Interesting)
There are only two places this line blurs - when a person interacts with a corporation and when a person acts like a corporation.
In the first, while a corporation may choose to collect data on its customers, that data should never be for sale or distribution. Carelessness with or misuse of that data should meet with harsh consequences.
In the second, a person is engaging in public actions (such as the creation of intellectual properties) -- in such a case the information should be opened to public scrutiny.
These are my opinions. They are based around the fundamental assumption that, despite present legal structures, a corporation is not the same thing as an individual. Individuals have natural rights, and the right of a corporation to exist is something granted by a government. The two are not equal and thus the information they produce should also be unequal.
Re:Libre, *not* gratis. (Score:3, Interesting)
That just doesn't make any sense. Are you saying that it's more difficult to give a baby away than to terminate it? If you are saying that, should that be the compelling argument for abortion?
Re:Is all life sacred? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Abortion/death-penalty false dichotomy (Score:4, Interesting)
Many scientists make this very clear (and my wife is a research biologist, so we talk about this quite often):
There is a very distinct, provable, cellular and molecular difference between "Life" and "Human Life" in the normal process of cellular growth between a sperm and an egg. There is a very predictable period where that cell-that-is-dividing, can be told to become something other than a fetus. This is "Life". The cell is growing, dividing, becoming something larger than what it started as.
Beyond that point, where the cell has decided to continue to grow into a fetus and can no longer be repurposed as a non-fetal cell, it becomes "Human Life".
We seem to have no problem taking out cancerous tumors from our bodies, and those are also cells which are dividing and being nourished by the human bloodstream (technically, they are cells which are programmed to die, and ignore that signal, while new cells are put into place to replace them, hence the "tumor"). Why is killing one set of human cells wrong, and killing others ok? Who makes that decision? The state? The government? Where does it stop?
Personally, I see people deciding who should live and who should die all the time, without a single care for the larger body of humanity that will be affected (as well as their own life as a result of that crime), from all facets; economic, social and political.
I too am completely unreligious, and have my own beliefs about life, the world and the number 42.
Re:Ah, shades of gray! (Score:2, Interesting)
Sweet! You totally ruined your topic by adding in an absolute truth. I detinately don't care about mosquitos having a right to live nor other pests. I don't care if other humans have a right to live and i don't care who decides to take away that right. All I care about is my rights. When i start to dictate rights to other people that do not affect me, then i am wrong because i am taking away liberty and freedom in the purest sense. Without privacy, freedom does not exist.
The whole idea about "Water likes to flow downhill" does not exist if all the water only existed at sealevel.
Re:Libre, *not* gratis. (Score:3, Interesting)
I believe the word you are looking for here is "charitable". Socialism is more concerned with forcing others to be charitable, which is yet another of those "contradictory ideas" we're discussing.
It's perfectly possible to be charitable and non-socialist.
Furthermore, it's perfectly possible to share information out of your own self-interest.
He who receives an idea from me receives instruction for himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine receives light without darkening me. -Thomas Jefferson
Ideas vs. Data (Score:4, Interesting)
Data, on the other hand, comes in a lot of forms. Some of those forms, like data collected in government-sponsored studies, should ALSO be free. Free because we've already paid for it. Free, as in beer. Other forms of data don't "want to be free," and personal information like medical records are surely one of those. Of course, there are some reasonable exceptions. Like aggregated disease statistics.
With data, I think there is a balance. I'm a privacy fanatic, but I'd surely hate to see us in as big a mess with regulating the use of personal information as we have with copyright regulation. Good grief, can you imagine if we all acted like the RIAA, suing friends for telling other friends about our lousy bowling scores?
Part of where the line is drawn for me (and the "fair use" doctrine relies heavily on this) is the use to which data is put. Since uses for others'personal information is almost entirely either prurient or commercial in nature, I strongly disfavor that sort of "sharing." It's not cognitive dissonance to dislike seeing people getting personal monetary or "prurient" gain from the uncompensated work of other people, but to be totally fine with non-selfish uses.
Just because this can't be reduced to a short catch-phrase doesn't mean it's inconsistent. Life is complicated. Millions of people who would never STEAL anything under any circumstances instinctively realize that while downloading a song they haven't paid for isn't WRONG, but that downloading and using someone else's credit card number IS wrong. It should be obvious that this is complicated, but that reasonable rules can be derived.
~
No i disagree (Score:1, Interesting)
Thieves and Intent. . . (Score:4, Interesting)
The Village is dying of thirst. By pure chance, a limitless wellspring is discovered. The man who discovered the spring is calculating and without pity, and he refuses to tell the village where the water source is unless the people pay his outrageous fee. The community suffers deeply.
One night a clever Thief follows the man and discovers the location of the wellspring. The Thief hurries home and tells the community. Everybody proclaims him a Hero. The community is saved, and goes on to thrive and become happy and healthy.
Sometimes the Thief is also the Hero.
I would say that Ownership of information is far less important than the Intent of the owner.
-FL
Re:Libre, *not* gratis. (Score:1, Interesting)
Most of the major evangelical groups which appose abortion believe in some form of original sin -- that's the whole point of baptism, after all. So the unborn child isn't actually innocent; in fact, a few sects hold original sin up as worse than murder.
Selfishness is Human Nature (Score:2, Interesting)
Since the release of their own personal information would hurt them in some way, they're against the "freedom" of that information.
Only the rare individual will be for something that will benefit the vast majority but hurt them personally.
There's no conflict in the two views, just ordinary selfishness. Part of the brilliance in the original design of the US government is in the use of selfishness in what I call the "Balance of Greed" to keep the country reasonably free and prosperous. The problem, of course, is what happens when one party or the other stops being greedy enough to steal the other guy's lunch. But never fear, sooner or later an opportunist will come along to balance things again. It's inevitable.
Info wants to be free like water wants to leak (Score:3, Interesting)
Hope that explains the analogy.
As for information being free and privacy, privacy is a stopgap measure to protect those with less access to information and less ability to act on that information from depredations by those with more information and ability to act on it.
If there were no imbalance, there would be no need for privacy. If anyone actually used information in a way the majority considered immoral, then everyone would know about it an could stop the abuse. There would be no need for privacy in financial transactions because everyone would know if you stole. There would be no need for privacy in personal affairs because no one would be able to use that information against you unfairly.
This assumes some perfect method of not only recording everything that happens to everyone on the planet all the time, but distributes the information to everyone else and correlates it so that any important information can be sorted out of the huge mass of information that is of no importance.
Until that time, although your personal and private information "wants to be free" in the same way that water wants to leak out of a glass if it can, you should try to make sure your glass has no cracks in it.
Re:Libre, *not* gratis. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:not to take a side (Score:1, Interesting)
And sitting here in Houston where nearly 200 cases have been re-examined and quite a few convictions were overturned because the police department's crime lab lied on the stand about DNA (and now other) tests, I'd have to say I agree.
I vote that the punishment for putting a person who is later proven innocent to death should be having the prosecutor put to death as well. If it turns out the prosecutor played hanky-panky with the evidence, they win a slow and painful one.
In the end, throwing around "Democrat" and "Republican" is pointless. It's obvious that neither party gives a shit, how long has the Republican party had control of our government now? Abortion is just used by the Republicans to convince Christians to vote for them, if they actually banned it, they would lose their best bait for reeling in that voting bloc.
Re:It's pretty simple, actually. (Score:3, Interesting)
However, like I said, I disagree with your take on this. I think the underlying question is interesting, many slashdot readers feel that information should be free, except their private information, which they want complete control over.
That being said, like others have pointed out, the "mantra" of "information wants to be free" is really just an observation. Like when a guy wins the lottery, and you say, "that guy is really lucky!" You are not saying that guy is currently lucky and good things will keep happening to him, you are just labelling him as being lucky based on what has happened to him in the past.
Re:Libre, *not* gratis. (Score:3, Interesting)
While it may not be solely attributable to the failure of the previous generation to breed, that is sufficient cause regardless of any other factors. Within the next 10-20 years, barring a dramatic shift in immigration levels, over 50% of the population of North America will be either retired or under the age of 18. If you need confirmation, I would suggest discussing it with an insurance agent... they've known for years that this was coming.
The fact of the matter is, this whole "women and men working, fucking for fun, heaping social distain on those who breed, killing their babies and partying like the world is on fire" social experiment will be demonstrated to be an abject failure within the next hundred years. None of which is to imply that I think we need to keep women barefoot and fat-bellied with no rights... but the way we're living now simply isn't going to last.
Oh, and since there doesn't appear to actually be any conversation going on here about the actual TOPIC of the article for me to address my comments to, I'm gonna throw them in here:
My perspective on freedom of information and privacy:
1) Ideal: I have no privacy, and neither does anyone else. I have access to all information about anything and everything and use it to make better decisions, and so does everyone else. People are less likely to be prejudiced against me when they find out about my little eccentricities, because they know damned well that everyone has them.
2) Less than Ideal: I have complete privacy and so does everyone else. No one has any access to information about me that I do not choose to allow them to have. People are highly likely to be prejudiced against me for my eccentricities, as I am highly likely to be prejudiced against them for theirs, but I have the control to protect myself from these consequences because they won't find out unless I allow them to.
3) Worst Case: I have the illusion of privacy and so does everyone else. I do not generally have access to information about other people, and they generally don't have access to information about me, but we still don't have any control over our privacy, because a select few shadowy figures we know nothing about have overwhelming access to information about us all, and have an overwhelming power over us because of it. Because of our collective ignorance, we all judge each other harshly, and because we are human, we all have secrets that would have people pulling out the pitchforks should we be exposed. Therefore, we all live in fear and disconnect ourselves from our fellow man as best we can to minimize our exposure to this risk.
I don't value my privacy at all, quite frankly. If there was a referendum tomorrow asking the question "Would you support legal changes that removed privacy protection and mandated absolute public transparency at all levels including personal, commercial and governmental" I would indeed support it. But that doesn't mean I'm interested in further cementing entrenched power structures by giving them a spotlight into my life while we the teeming masses continue to stumble around in the dark.
Nature is mostly vacuum (Score:3, Interesting)
Its like living in a universe where the phlogiston theory actually works.
People are so stupid.
Comment removed (Score:2, Interesting)