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

On 2026-07-14, D  Ray <d@ray> wrote:
>
> Scott Hoge <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>> On 2026-07-14, Schlomo Goldberg
>> <[email protected]> wrote:
>>> 
>>> 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.

Points for effort.

>> 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.

A conceptual distinction should be made between two senses of
"taking away the right to privacy":

1. Removing the /universal/ right to privacy, or
2. Implementing a correspondingly /universal/ right to know.

To clarify, the sense I intend is (1). A correspondingly
/universal/ right to know would be a straw man.

Such a universal right to know -- or, as you rhetorically
describe it, "sticking a camera in everyone's butt" -- does not
necessarily inhere in an ideal society, particularly if it
/limits physical freedom/, which I already guarded against in my
original claim. Literally sticking a camera in everyone's butt
would limit the physical freedom to walk with correct, upright
posture.

>> "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.

The problem of privacy isn't limited to citizens who "commit
crimes." It extends to anyone /collectively involved/ in
potential socioeconomic misfortune, including the "lazy liberals"
that conservatives scream about, liberals who are /supposedly/
lazy, but may in fact have reasons justifying their actions.

>> 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.

What you're describing is /perfect conformity/. Which, if a poor
little boy in a wheelchair were born, would require tossing him
into the fire.

-- Scott Hoge