Re: privacy/openness

From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@datamann.com)
Date: Mon Jul 16 2001 - 09:00:11 MDT


Anders Sandberg wrote:
>
> On Wed, Jul 11, 2001 at 07:47:38PM -0400, Mike Lorrey wrote:
> > It is a subset of self ownership, the most basic of all rights.
>
> Here in Europe, privacy is not commonly regarded as a right. On the other
> hand integrity (another of those fuzzy terms like human dignity) is
> regarded as a right, and might for all practical purposes replace privacy
> in the discussion.

I'm not surprised. With its feudalistic and socialistic heritage, self
ownership itself is not considered to be more important than the
'rights' of society as a whole in europe.

>
> As I see it, integrity is the ability to determine for oneself what
> information to let in and out from oneself and to determine what one does
> with it. I show integrity when I decide for myself whether to be swayed or
> not by the opinions of others rather than just accept or allow myself to be
> coerced into accepting them. My right to integrity means I can refrain from
> revealing my thoughts or medical information, or demand ownership of such
> information forcing e.g. a doctor not to reveal it to a third party.
>
> This seems to fit in quite well with the idea of having an inviolable
> information sphere at some distance from the self, although it is not
> obvious *where* it should lie - is it just my self-owned body and its
> internal information that is protected, or does my exoself also have this
> protection against "information theft" (OK, there the IP questions get
> involved too. Ouch).

Integrity here is considered to represent your honesty/trustworthiness,
though I see what you mean, however this 'integrity' concept you put
forth is simply referring to the integrity of one's privacy. Since your
integrity is a matter of your expression and behavior, it is also innate
as your freedom of choice and personal ownership. Changing terms doesn't
change the phenomenon. It's still about privacy.

>
> Nick Szabo's talk touched on this, suggesting that for uploads privacy ==
> freedom; I would say that at least for infomorphs integrity == freedom.

Integrity is a characteristic of a right. You can have integrity about
many different things, it only refers to essentially the strength and
permeability of some thing.



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri Oct 12 2001 - 14:39:48 MDT