Re: Are Flock cameras next? Supreme Court rules against police using sprawling cell phone location data

On 2026-07-14, Schlomo Goldberg <[email protected]>
wrote:
>
> Scott Hoge <[email protected]> writes:
>>
>> Enough with this "right to privacy."
>
> We seal envelopes not because the letter contains a conspiracy,
> but because the contents belong exclusively to the sender and
> the receiver.

That argument appears to be question-begging. Why do we seal the
envelope? For one, to keep the paper from falling out. But you
say, additionally, that it's because of /exclusive ownership/,
not merely of /physical/ property (the letter itself) but of
/intellectual/ property (what's /written in/ the letter).

The claim of /intellectual/ property just reduces again to the
claim of a right to privacy -- thereby begging the question of
why such a right to privacy exists.

If someone opened the letter, read the contents, put it back in,
and sealed it, the harm wouldn't so much be in the intercipient's
knowledge of the letter as it would be in the tattered, crumpled
envelope that had to be resealed, which would give the letter an
ugly appearance.

> The "nothing to hide" argument is pure corporate/state
> propaganda. Privacy isn't about hiding a crime; it's about
> deciding who gets access to your life. It's a boundary of
> power, not a shield of guilt.

"Access to one's life," "power," and "guilt" are, at best,
incomplete concepts. The concept of /guilt/, additionally, has
signification only within a system of /retributive/ justice
(where the "guilty man" is stomped on by a bigger, more
attractive male for the amusement of the public) and may
disappear, and disappear entirely, in a system of /restorative/
justice (where instead we just solve the problem).

You say, "Privacy isn't about hiding a crime." Here, "about" is
an obfuscating term. Privacy /enables/ hiding a crime. It also
/disables/ the obtainment of information that is potentially
useful in the socioeconomic problem-solving process (such as who
starves from lack of food, where, and why).

"Power," and the boundary thereof, inheres not only in the
possessor of private information, but in those who have the power
to know. Removing the right to privacy grants you the power to
know who "accessed your life" in his commission of a crime
against you.

That doesn't mean we should just stick a camera in everyone's
bathrooms on day one. It just means that in an /ideal/ society,
we would have nothing to fear and nothing to hide. No discovered
misfortune or act would be "humiliating" or "embarrassing"; we
would just candidly know about each other.

-- Scott Hoge