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

Scott Hoge <[email protected]> wrote:
> 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.

Because none of your business, that’s why.

> 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).

Pretty sure there is way to find out who starves from lack of food and
where without sticking a camera in everyone’s butt.

> "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.

No, people already should have power to know “who accessed their life”. If
it’s private citizen, then he’s committing a crime, and should be
prosecuted by a state. If it’s not private citizen, then there nothing
“private” about their actions, thus there is no expectations of “privacy”.
That’s why things like FOIA requests exist.

> 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.

No, in “ideal society” people wouldn’t feel the need to “know about each
other” because they would be living among other people just like
themselves. You describing not “ideal society”, you describing anti-utopia,
such as Zamyatin’s “We” where people live in glass houses.