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by effie
3686 days ago
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> Why does google (or my neighbor, for that matter) have the right to fly drones with surveillance equipment but the government does not? This may be inaccurate, but I remember somebody explained to me that only people have rights, governments only have power that is to be restricted. Some groups like ACLU may see their purpose in strengthening people with more rights, rather than strengthening of governments with less restrictions. |
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I agree, but another person exercising his/her right could violate my rights. Ideally rights are defined so they aren't in conflict, but in reality that isn't easily accomplished with many of the things we classify as rights today.
If an individual has a right to privacy another individual has a right to freely fly his/her drone over people's houses with a camera, those rights could come in conflict. Thus, it isn't so simple as "ACLU may see their purpose in strengthening people with more rights". We need to answer which rights, and at what possible expense to other rights.
This is reminiscent of the recent religious liberty vs gay rights fight in the US. As with most of the HN community, I am a supporter of gay rights and don't believe firms should be able to discriminate based on sexual preference. Nonetheless, I think George Will makes some interesting points about conflicting rights in this article[1]:
The case is from back in 2012 when a photographer refused to photograph a same sex wedding ceremony. Going beyond the standard argument of freedom of religion vs right to be free from corporate and government discrimination based on sexual preference, he uses a compelled speech argument:
>Eugene Volokh of the UCLA School of Law thinks that Huguenin can also make a “compelled speech argument”: She cannot be coerced into creating expressive works, such as photographs, that express something she is uncomfortable expressing. Courts have repeatedly held that freedom of speech and the freedom not to speak are “complementary components of the broader concept of ‘individual freedom of mind.’ ...https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-f-will-the-ta...
Given the recent Apple v FBI fight and their possible use of a 'compelled speech argument' to prevent their engineers from writing code they disagreed with, many of us agree that an individual should retain their freedom of speech (and right to be free from compelled speech). This puts me personally in a tricky philosophical predicament because I don't believe the government should be able to compel speech when it is code related to privacy but I do believe the government can compel speech when it is an artistic cake maker making a same sex wedding cake.
I reconcile this contradiction by realizing that we have created a complex web of somewhat conflicting rights, and we need to help find the boundaries, based in large part, on what is best for society.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-f-will-the-ta...