Why no one cares about privacy anymore | Politics and Law - CNET News

[archerships]

"As a social good," says Richard Posner, the federal judge and iconoclastic conservative, "I think privacy is greatly overrated because privacy basically means concealment. People conceal things in order to fool other people about them. They want to appear healthier than they are, smarter, more honest and so forth." That isn't a defense of snooping as much as a warning of the flip side of privacy--concealing facts that are discreditable, including those that other people have a legitimate reason for knowing.

via news.cnet.com

Posted via web from crasch's posterous

Comments

[gwendally.livejournal.com]

Privacy is a safeguard to freedom. Privacy is freedom from judgment, and judgment is the step that comes before fascism.

When I keep things private it is mostly because I don't choose to let others know enough to form opinions on what I ought to do. The more information I give up, the more they feel enabled to decide how I ought to live my life. The "shoulds" don't start - can't start - if they don't know what I'm already doing.

[denorae.livejournal.com]

Good point, privacy is necessary until our society becomes substantially less judgmental. If all privacy was eliminated today, no one would get hired for a job, or go on a date, or really get anything done; we'd all be paralyzed by judging and being judged.

I wonder how the elimination of privacy would affect communication. Much of our communication today is based on trying to understand someone else's position, or convince them of our own. What if there was no need to do that, because you could just look at a person's past and see which of their experiences prompted a certain decision?

[istar.livejournal.com]

I think privacy is also useful in concealing nice things -- maybe I have a good business idea or I'm working on a piece of art; I'm glad that I don't have to announce my plans to the world before my project is finished. I'm glad that I can (theoretically) go on vacation without everyone knowing where I am and how to get ahold of me. I can make anonymous donations, anonymously answer questions, or practice random acts of kindness without it being traced back to me.

Privacy is a social good because it offers, even briefly, ownership of that which is essentially un-ownable once it becomes public (ideas, words, pictures, time).

[evelynne.livejournal.com]

:O

How about the idea that there are things about me that are nobody's god damn business? Or the fact that people can use innocuous knowledge (and not falsifying knowledge, like this guy is suggesting) about other people to cause damage to them in some way? Jeez. I'm a very open person, but I don't think openness should be the default.

[spoonless.livejournal.com]

I think he may be concealing the truth =)

[kenshi.livejournal.com]

Folks need to get used to this, because it is the future. The internet has made old-fashioned notions of privacy quaintly obsolete and somewhat suspect. This new generation of kids who have grown up "digitally native" have a radically different attitude towards privacy than we do - they don't really trust it or see the need for it - and the culture will follow them in that.