Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!wuarchive!emory!rsiatl!jgd
From: jgd@Dixie.Com (John G. DeArmond)
Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk
Subject: Re: Privacy of personal data (was Re: Personal Privacy Violations)
Message-ID: <5825@rsiatl.Dixie.Com>
Date: 16 Jan 91 05:27:33 GMT
References: <1991Jan06.230231.21840@hoss.unl.edu> <1991Jan10.204101.29296@hoss.unl.edu> <5776@rsiatl.Dixie.Com> <1991Jan12.180934.1314@looking.on.ca>
Organization: Rapid Deployment Systems (making go-fast things and things that-go fast)
Lines: 52

brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton) writes:

>If a doctor publishes your personal medical records, he has broken a
>confidence.   In the case of the doctor, I think it's even a confidence that
>is explicitly defined by the law or the medical association.


>Folks, the right of privacy is important, but the courts have only
>stated that the U.S. constitution probably *implies* a right of privacy.  On
>the other hand, it quite explicitly states, in the very first line of the
>bill of rights, that there is a right to freedom of the press.

>How on earth can one conclude from this that privacy as a right supersedes
>freedom of the press?   You might wish it did, but the document
>says otherwise.

But Brad, you've made my argument.  If the absolute freedom of the press
supersedes the right of personal privacy, then your doctor has the 
absolute right to publish your medical record wherever he wants and
any laws to the contrary are unconstitutional.  If on the other hand,
the right to privacy (or as the Supreme court once called it, "the
right to be left alone"), a right that, as I read American history, was
considered so basic that its existance was implied in the bill of
rights is supreme, then it is quite legitimate for the Supreme court
to uphold reasonable restrictions on the 1st amendment.  Some reasonable
restrictions ARE the rights of professional confidentailty, the limitation
on the press as applies to libel and slander and so on.

With regard to personal information, I would exert as much control over 
other aspects of my personal life as I do (or would like to do) with
my medical information.  I suppose that a demagogue could say that one
COULD exert this kind of control by simply forgoing things like credit, 
insurance, taxable income and other aspects of modern life.  This is,
of course, silly.  What we as society have to do now is make sure that 
our basic rights of privacy are at least as well protected in the computer 
age as it was in the paper age.

>If we let privacy supersede freedom of the press too much, soon the government
>will be claiming a right of privacy, I suspect.

Well, maybe the canadian government....  Wouldn't fly here.  After all, 
restrictions on said government are a primary reason for the existance of
the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

John


-- 
John De Armond, WD4OQC        | "Purveyors of speed to the Trade"  (tm)
Rapid Deployment System, Inc. |  Home of the Nidgets (tm)
Marietta, Ga                  | 
{emory,uunet}!rsiatl!jgd      |"Politically InCorrect.. And damn proud of it