[tungstenfurnace]

I want privacy because

(1) I break laws I don't know about (2) I do things which might be misinterpreted as breaking the law or as being immoral (3) I do things which are considered immoral by most people, but which are not illegal.

For these reasons, I cannot act autonomously or creatively without privacy.

[jacquesm]

The biggest reason why privacy matters is because there are always going to be crimes committed so there will always be people that have nothing to do with the crime caught in the dragnet around the crime scene. Coincidences do happen and if you happen to be around the area of two murders you'll have a very hard time to explain that away, whereas in a society with good privacy you would never even appear on the radar.

So even if you haven't broken the law or done something that could be misconstrued as such you are still at risk.

All this lack of privacy does is increase the size of the haystack while keeping the number of needles constant.

But hay looks a lot like needles and plenty of 'hay' will end up being prosecuted for stuff the needles get away with.

Less privacy means more solved crimes, but it also means many more false positives.

The 'if you've got nothing to hide why do you want privacy' crowd seems to be completely oblivious to this, until they end up being hauled in to the station for something they had nothing to do with themselves. That's when reality kicks in and suddenly they switch sides (but by then it's obviously too late).

We live in a society that is predicated on fear, fear of crime, of terror and so on. And most of us are willing to trade their freedom for security all too easily.

If you want absolute security, you should realize that that is only possible in a society that has more in common with a prison than with a park.

Robert Heinlein wrote a whole bunch of books around this theme, if you like SF and you haven't read those book yet I suggest you do so, there is some really good stuff in there.

[computator]

> Coincidences do happen and if you happen to be around the area of two murders you'll have a very hard time to explain that away, whereas in a society with good privacy you would never even appear on the radar.

I have the perfect real-life example of exactly that situation:

Portland-area lawyer Brandon Mayfield was arrested in May 2004 because his fingerprint matched one found on a bag of detonators near the train station in Madrid in the March 11 2004 bombing, which killed 191 people. But Spanish authorities said the fingerprints belonged to another man, an Algerian. A US federal court later threw out the case against Mayfield, and the FBI expressed regret for the "fingerprint-identification error". As a former Army officer, Mayfield's fingerprints would be on file with the government. A law enforcement official said the fingerprints were not on file because of any crime or as part of the government's terrorism databases.

The lawyer is lucky that the Spanish found the actual bomber. There are probably many such cases where the absence of privacy caused horrible damage to innocent people.

[s_tec]

I like Robert Heinlein, but I don't recall any of his books touching these topics. Can you give some specific recommendations for my reading list?

[jacquesm]

Farnhams Freehold, Friday and a bunch of others that I can't quite catch the title of right now (my books are in storage in a warehouse nearby, I'll have a look when I get there again).

The one I'm thinking of (but not sure what the title is) features a park that is a reclaimed stretch of highway where people are free to do as they please in a society teeming with surveilance. The park is supervised by cops eyes, floating cameras that double as little weapons platforms.

A tinkerer brings them down and chaos ensues.

Nice insight in the human mind in there, and how thin the veneer of civilization is.

[prodigal_erik]

That last one is Niven's "Cloak of Anarchy", and he has it online at http://www.larryniven.org/stories/cloak_of_anarchy.shtml.

[jacquesm]

Ah, yes, you're absolutely right.

That's why I couldn't find the title :)

thanks!

It must be 15 years since I last read those and it was in pretty quick succession while quite ill.

[bjelkeman-again]

You need a database of your books. :)

[jacquesm]

I have most of it in my head but that needs periodic refresh :)

[eru]

You can make your statement stronger by weakening the conditions:

"(3) I do things which are considered immoral by _some_ people, but which are not illegal."