On Tue, 23 Aug 2016 22:26:17 -0400 "Robert J. Hansen" <[email protected]> wrote:
> > Some serious questions -- > > 1. Are you a privacy absolutist? Robert, I have a counter-question: Do you think that privacy is a fundamental human right? Also, it seems to me a bit that the discussion following up your post partly confounds two rather different cases: Disabling private communication for all citizens versus not investigating at all if somebody is evidently committing serious crimes. I think this is a false dichotomy. Human rights are, in essence, unconditional. Take, for example, Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights [1]: "Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.". I think this is pretty clear. Of course, is somebody has committed a crime, he can end up in prison, according to the laws. But before that, everyone has the right to walk free. Now take article 12: "No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks." I think this is pretty clear as well, and for me it is obvious that any private digital communication fits the notion of "correspondence" in that article. Of course, if somebody is committing serious crimes, such as murdering people or abusing children, he cannot protect his acts by this rights, for the simple reason that he is already severely harming the rights of others. But the mere *possibility* that some people commit crimes does not form a valid reason to strip all other human beings of their rights. I am not sure what your position is ... Do you agree with this or not? Also, I want to point to three further aspects which might help the discussion: First, if somebody is actually committing a crime such as child abuse or murder, in this digital age he will not leave only traces but a formidable broad dirt track of his activities. It is actually near impossible to hide most activities completely. For example, it is rather difficult to delete digital media completely from any normal computer. For a targeted forensic investigation, almost always there will be enough traces. Actually, we rather have the inverse problem, as existent massive collections of data such as cellphone location data and its combination and fusion with other data can easily be used in extremely invasive ways. It would, for example, be pretty easy to construct a database of politicians or influential business people which probably pursue extramarital affairs from such data. Second, I think it is urgently necessary to understand the right to privacy as a collective protection, just in the same way as the right of secrecy of the ballot. The reason is that privacy is part of the rights that protect a balance of power between the majority of people and state institutions. The right to privacy is important in the collective sphere, as necessary to maintain collective freedom. What is currently happening in Turkey illustrates, I think, the issue well enough. I even think that much of the discussion about digital privacy will have less effect on crime prosecution and is dominantly concerned about negotiating the future of that power balance. (With many sides involved... I think some parties might even resort to troll online forums to influence opinions according to their interests). Thirdly, I would like to point out that the declaration of human rights has a historical context, in that it was intended as a defense against totalitarianism. I think it is a clear alarm signal if these rights are questioned. Johannes [1] http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/index.html _______________________________________________ Gnupg-users mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnupg.org/mailman/listinfo/gnupg-users
