#privacy

[T]here is both an intrinsic and instrumental value to privacy. Intrinsically, privacy is precious to the extent that it is a component of a liberty. Part of citizenship in a free society is the expectation that one's personal affairs and physical person are inviolable so long as one remains within the law. A robust concept of freedom includes the freedom from constant and intrusive government surveillance of one's life. From this perspective, Fourth Amendment violations are objectionable for the simple fact that the government is doing something it has no licence to do–that is, invading the privacy of a law-abiding citizen by monitoring her daily activities and laying hands on her person without any evidence of wrongdoing. Privacy is also instrumental in nature. This aspect of the right highlights the pernicious effects, rather than the inherent illegitimacy, of intrusive, suspicionless surveillance. For example, encroachments on individual privacy undermine democratic institutions by chilling free speech. When citizens–especially those espousing unpopular viewpoints–are aware that the intimate details of their personal lives are pervasively monitored by government, or even that they could be singled out for discriminatory treatment by government officials as a result of their First Amendment expressive activities, they are less likely to freely express their dissident views. ↗

— John W. Whitehead

#constitution #constitutional-rights #first-amendment #fourth-amendment #free-speech

In our time, the symbol of state intrusion into the private life is the mandatory urine test. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#drugs #liberty #privacy #urinalysis #war-on-drugs

I never Tweet about my daughter. Never. I just want to be respectful of her privacy. My job as a mom is to know when to open my mouth and when not to. ↗

— Padma Lakshmi

#daughter #her #i #job #just

I suddenly remembered that Murray Gell-Mann and I were supposed to give talks at that conference on the present situation of high-energy physics. My talk was set for the plenary session, so I asked the guide, "Sir, where would the talks for the plenary session of the conference be?" "Back in that room that we just came through." "Oh!" I said in delight. "Then I'm gonna give a speech in that room!" The guide looked down at my dirty pants and my sloppy shirt. I realized how dumb that remark must have sounded to him, but it was genuine surprise and delight on my part. We went along a little bit farther, and the guide said, "This is a lounge for the various delegates, where they often hold informal discussions." They were some small, square windows in the doors to the lounge that you could look through, so people looked in. There were a few men sitting there talking. I looked through the windows and saw Igor Tamm, a physicist from Russia that I know. "Oh!" I said. "I know that guy!" and I started through the door. The guide screamed, "No, no! Don't go in there!" By this time he was sure he had a maniac on his hands, but he couldn't chase me because he wasn't allowed to o through the door himself! ↗

— Richard P. Feynman

#humor-inspirational #humourous-situations #insanity #judgemental #personal-privacy

Intellectual property, more than ever, is a line drawn around information, which asserts that despite having been set loose in the world - and having, inevitably, been created out of an individual's relationship with the world - that information retains some connection with its author that allows that person some control over how it is replicated and used. In other words, the claim that lies beneath the notion of intellectual property is similar or identical to the one that underpins notions of privacy. It seems to me that the two are inseparable, because they are fundamentally aspects of the same issue, the need we have to be able to do something by convention that is impossible by force: the need to ringfence certain information. I believe that the most important unexamined notion - for policymakers and agitators both - in these debates is that they are one: you can't persuade people on the one hand to abandon intellectual property (a decision which, incidentally, would mean an even more massive upheaval in the way the world runs than we've seen so far since 1990) and hope to keep them interested in privacy. You can't trash privacy and hope to retain a sense of respect for IP. ↗

— Nick Harkaway

#government #intellectual-property #ip #privacy #truth

We must carefully consider card security solutions, such as adding photographs or machine-readable electronic strips, so to prevent further breaches of individual privacy that could result from changes to the design of Social Security Cards. ↗

— Ron Lewis

#breaches #card #cards #carefully #changes

You already have zero privacy - get over it. ↗

— Scott McNealy

#get #over #over it #privacy #you

In exchange for power, influence, command and a place in history, a president gives up the bulk of his privacy. ↗

— Roger Mudd

#command #exchange #gives #his #history

The words that a father speaks to his children in the privacy of home are not heard by the world, but, as in whispering galleries, they are clearly heard at the end, and by posterity. ↗

— Jean Paul

#clearly #end #father #galleries #heard

Big Brother in the form of an increasingly powerful government and in an increasingly powerful private sector will pile the records high with reasons why privacy should give way to national security, to law and order [...] and the like. ↗

— William O. Douglas

#corporate-culture #corporations #encroachment #freedom #government