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

Scott Hoge <[email protected]> writes:

> 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.

I'm not quite sure what you're trying to say here.

>> 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)

Wild imagination you have.

> and may
> disappear, and disappear entirely, in a system of /restorative/
> justice (where instead we just solve the problem).

And that "solving", of course, won't involve stomping by "a bigger, more
attractive male"?

> 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).

You can try just asking people if they're starving. Or you think they
won't tell you due to privacy?

> "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, it does not. I don't remeber Flock providing public access to their
cameras, even though they services are already paid for by "public
servants" such as law enforcement.

> 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.

Amazing. Is there something else about "ideal society" you would like to
share with the world?