Corpora(l|te) punishment.
by Chris on Oct.13, 2005, under General Thoughts and Rants
“I believe in the rights of the individual.”
Beware of people claiming this, as it is often followed by a statement supporting the restriction of those rights. This time is no different.
I believe in the rights of the individual.
But I am starting to wonder about the domains in which those rights are exercised. Is it supportive of individual rights to permit corporate entities the same rights as actual people?
This comes about from reading a book on privacy issues — Database Nation — which enumerates a lot of abuses of the increasingly-connected and documented world we have created for ourselves. Now, I know I’m not the first person to read a book like that and say “Oh noes! How can I hide my porn habit now?!” but I do see some truth in his statements about how the right to privacy might be protected.
The problem is, I don’t necessarily accept that there is a right to privacy, per se.
Anyway, assuming that there is, I’m not sure who is less qualified to protect it — private industry, where they can make money for selling and abusing the information that they are supposed to protect, or government, repository of all things personal, with a vested interest (lately, especially) in making sure that we all conform to standards of behaviour that may or may not be driven by religions that we don’t all share.
It’s ucky.
Anyway, Char complained about a lack of posting, so I figured I’d polish off this draft. So there.
October 22nd, 2005 on 8:40 pm
In fairness, Char can’t really complain too much about your not posting. I mean, just look at her track record.
October 23rd, 2005 on 11:33 am
Remember “Earth” (David Brin)? One of the central ideas was that transparency was essential given the power of corporations and governments – or something like that. It seems to me that you disagreed with that at the time. What changed your mind?
Mum
October 23rd, 2005 on 4:14 pm
It hasn’t—if anything, my views towards privacy have slewed further away from Brin’s goal of a transparent society. What I’m saying here is that it’s possible that the goal of preserving personal distinctiveness may only be achievable through the arguably lesser evil of government intervention in the business-citizen relationship.