[4443] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: Why privacy is important? Looking for essays/opinion pieces
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Carl Ellison)
Sat Apr 3 21:12:31 1999
Date: Sat, 03 Apr 1999 16:17:28 -0800
From: Carl Ellison <cme@acm.org>
To: M Taylor <mctylr@privacy.nb.ca>
Cc: cryptography@c2.net
M Taylor wrote:
> In my limited experience of dealing with administrators, they question why
> they should worry about privacy of other people's personal information,
> citing the general rise in data warehousing and the old saying "if you've
> got nothing to hide..."
>
> So I'm looking for pieces which examine why we should consider our privacy
> valuable.
Check out my web page. This is an old debate and I have a number of
papers there on the topic or related ones.
The summary answer is that innocent people have much to hide from netizens,
whether they be crooks, stalkers, crazies or just data miners. Therefore,
the "if you have nothing to hide..." is a false premise and you can
prove anything you want from the right false premise.
- Carl
--
Carl M. Ellison cme@alum.mit.edu http://www.pobox.com/~cme
PGP: E0414C79B5AF36750217BC1A57386478 & 61E2DE7FCB9D7984E9C8048BA63221A2
``Officer, officer, arrest that man! He's whistling a dirty song.''
[Jean Ellison]
