Not my view of privacy. If I had an
arrest record, and that record was public information, I would expect
many would not make a 'sensible evaluation' without training at a
good law school. On the other hand, no matter how lawfully I live my
life, advertisers and the people who peovide targeting information
will demand the “right” to intrude on my life, monitor my
activities, and build a permanent (if questionable) dossier. What
would the founding fathers have thought of that?
Judge Richard A. Posner of the U.S.
Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit is also a senior lecturer
with the University of Chicago Law School. He has an OpEd in the New
York Daily News called “Privacy is Overrated.” Here are
just two snippets:
[Mayor Bloomberg]
wants concerns with privacy to take second place to concerns with
security.
I strongly agree,
though I’m not sure that the Constitution will have to be
reinterpreted in order to enable the shift of emphasis that he (and
I) favor. Neither the word “privacy” nor even the concept
appears anywhere in the Constitution, and the current Supreme Court
is highly sensitive, as it should be, to security needs. The Court
can and doubtless will adjust the balance between privacy and
security to reflect the increase in long-run threats to the lives of
Americans.
There
is a tendency to exaggerate the social value of privacy.
and
Privacy-protecting
laws are paternalistic; they are based on a skepticism regarding
whether people can make sensible evaluations of an arrest record or
other private facts that enter the public domain.
Still, a good deal
of privacy just facilitates the personal counterpart of the false
advertising of goods and services, and by doing so, reduces the
well-being of society as a whole.
Read his entire commentary on NY
Daily News.
[From the article:
We don’t want our arrest record to be
made public; our medical history to be made public; our peccadilloes
to be made public; and so on. We want to present sanitized versions
of ourselves to the world.
…
I do not argue that all concealment is bad. There is nothing wrong
with concealing wealth in order to avoid being targeted by thieves or
concealing embarrassing personal facts, such as a deformity or being
related to a notorious criminal, that would not cause a rational
person to shun us but might complicate our social and business
relations.
(Related)
April 28, 2013
US
News: IRS tracks your digital footprint
"The Internal
Revenue Service is collecting a lot more than taxes this year --
it's also acquiring a huge volume of personal information on
taxpayers' digital activities, from eBay auctions to Facebook posts
and, for the first time ever, credit card and e-payment transaction
records, as it expands its search for tax cheats to
places it's never gone before.
[There is a presumption that everyone cheats Bob] The
IRS, under heavy pressure to help Washington out of its budget
quagmire by chasing down an estimated $300 billion in revenue lost to
evasions and errors each year, will start using "robo-audits"
of tax forms and third-party data the IRS hopes will help close this
so-called "tax gap." But the agency reveals little about
how it will employ its vast, new network scanning powers. Tax
lawyers and watchdogs are concerned about the sweeping changes being
implemented with little public discussion or clear guidelines, and
Congressional staff sources say the IRS use of "big data"
will be a key issue when the next IRS chief comes to the Senate for
approval. Acting commissioner Steven T. Miller replaced Douglas
Shulman last November."
(Related) But the crooks have rights!
Fox6 puts a human face on the problems
of identity theft, with a focus on how the IRS has not notified
people whose identity information (Social Security number) was
misused. Frustratingly, the IRS was saying it
couldn’t disclose such information because of the privacy rights of
the identity thieves. A law passed to remedy some of the
problem has been only partially helpful as the IRS still has not done
a good job of alerting people when their SSN is being misused.
Read one couple’s story on Fox6.
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