Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!lll-winken!grover.llnl.gov!howell From: howell@grover.llnl.gov (Louis Howell) Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk Subject: Re: Lotus Marketplace Keywords: CD-Rom consumer database,privacy Message-ID: <86377@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV> Date: 19 Nov 90 22:47:38 GMT References: <1990Nov16.205011.10348@uncecs.edu> <1990Nov17.074534.8751@looking.on.ca> <48514@cornell.UUCP> <8840@scolex.sco.COM> Sender: usenet@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV Reply-To: howell@grover.llnl.gov (Louis Howell) Organization: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Lines: 46 Nntp-Posting-Host: grover.llnl.gov In article <8840@scolex.sco.COM>, seanf@sco.COM (Sean Fagan) writes: |> A list of just names and addresses is bad enough, but tolerable (after all, |> you can get more-or-less the same thing from a few hundred or thousand phone |> books), but adding in the ages, income levels, genders, and races really |> frightens me. What if someone decides to go looking for old, rich widows, |> and break into houses found thereby? (Yeah, it's stretching a point, |> but...) Don't take this badly, but this is the classic, standard, control freak argument. It's so standard there ought to be a copyright on it. :-) Since I believe it's in the public domain, here's a schematic: would to do . is undesirable. Therefore, should be banned. Suggested substitutions for : gun, pornography, "Communist Manifesto", database, ethyl alcohol, automobile, BBS, "Bill of Rights", satellite dish, free press, tobacco, digital tape recorder, copy machine... If you only look at the worst case example, you've already made your decision. In reality, there are usually other factors involved. For example, "Can a prohibition be enforced without creating a police state?" "Does have benefits that outweigh the disadvantages?" "Can we control without regulating ?" "Is really undesirable, or just unfamiliar?" "Would a prohibition be enforced evenhandedly, or would it just strengthen an elite?" and similar questions should all be given careful consideration. We can probably keep a right to privacy in the sense of a right to be left alone, to conduct our affairs as we see fit. (We don't have this right completely now, but we could have it if we wanted it.) We will lose, however, the right to privacy in the sense of keeping certain facts secret. Face it, this is already gone, we're just debating a matter of degree. The only alternative is to give the government such a degree of regulatory power that we effectively lose all privacy in both senses of the word. -- Louis Howell "A few sums!" retorted Martens, with a trace of his old spirit. "A major navigational change, like the one needed to break us away from the comet and put us on an orbit to Earth, involves about a hundred thousand separate calculations. Even the computer needs several minutes for the job."