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From: rogue@cellar.UUCP (Rogue Winter)
Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk
Subject: Re: The end of privacy... and so what comes next?
Message-ID: <kXDuZ2w163w@cellar.UUCP>
Date: 3 Apr 91 19:13:43 GMT
References: <63473@bbn.BBN.COM>
Sender: bbs@cellar.UUCP (The Cellar BBS)
Organization: The Cellar BBS and public access system
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I don't do drugs, but I've got plenty of reasons why I enjoy my privacy and 
why I would object to a cop searching me on the street.

1) I've lived all my life with the experience of having other people know 
   about me than I know about them.  Life without privacy is a life in which 
   reciprocity of information is nearly impossible, and creates a situation 
   in which trust has diminished value.  The need for trust and privacy is 
   not limitd to criminal relationships - trust comes from the free choice of 
   two (or more) individuals to reveal information to one another, whether 
   that information be personal, professional, or even trivial.

2) Police are not perfect, and there's no guarantee that while some future 
   cop may be able to call up a dossier on me within fifteen seconds that 
   every financial and political action I've made in the last five years, he 
   or she may not know that I've already been stopped three times today and 
   I'm sick to death of being frisked.

3) In a Star Trek world, privacy is still important.  And the accumulation of 
   data has less potential for abuse in a society which has fewer cultural 
   and sexual taboos.  Like perestroika, which failed by freeing the economy
   before freeing politics, you cannot diminish the priveleges of privacy
   before diminishing its need.