Tuesday, November 19, 2002 :::
To jump into this privacy discussion, mostly between Dean here and Kate at the Kitchen Cabinet, I think one of the key problems is that assumptions that once were valid are no longer reasonable. Even without the new laws, records which have always been "public", but kept in the back room of the courthouse in one of thirty full filing cabinets, are now indexed and searchable. The local market didn't keep track of what groceries you paid cash for, but now they give out savings cards, with which they track your preferences, and maybe sell the data to others. I'm not sure people really realize this yet.
Simlarly, this war on terrorism involves a paradigm shift that I don't think anyone has fully figured out how to handle yet (I know I haven't), in that warfare and crime are getting blurred. Technology has progressed to the point where small groups of individuals can threaten large groups of people, or even the country as a going concern. We need a re-think of how much power the state needs, how best to check this power, etc.; I think we probably have to give up a little in terms of privacy, but there's substantial danger of using a chainsaw where a scalpal is called for. Data can be tracked, for example, but be made procedurally difficult to obtain. For most domestic functions, there's no reason to surrender any civil liberties whatsoever, and our military in Afghanistan was not out of line shooting at whomever needed shooting, without even considering whether the target would be able to hire an attorney or would need a public defender. I think, though, that we need to start thinking of these as extremes of a continuum, though, rather than fully distinct realms.
I offer no solutions, only problems -- that's the kind of guy I am.
::: posted by Steven at 8:15 AM
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