One thing law students learn in law school is that by far and away the most cases that chip away at constitutional protections are drug cases. The war on drugs has done more to eliminate constitutional privacy protections than any other government program. And now of course "the terrorists" seem to be the next justification for final, complete, mass surveillance.
- all information collected for a preceding fixed period (say 3 years', or maybe all of it) be made available for public inspection forever.
By "all" I mean just that - ALL information. Everything collected about everybody: presidents, prime ministers, senators & congressmen, corporations, churches, public and private institutions, trusts, public and private officials, their secretaries, clerks, bartenders and hired courtesans,etc - all of us would have our private information revealed.
This would cause an upheaval in the politics of the nation but would also provide a bonanza of invaluable information for society to review going forward. Do you want to know how corporate leaders break the law? Just look at the data and gather statistics. Are our politicians making illegal deals? Ditto. And of course, is my wife hiding something from me?
Allow prosecutions to proceed and the revealed information to be submitted as evidence. We might have to set up special courts and do triage to handle the influx of lawsuits and criminal arrests but we could at least get some of the rats out of the barn. Whether we burn the barn down or not is society's choice (doesn't seem we have a very good barn right now anyway - reminds me a bit of Animal House).
The more I think about it, the more I come to the conclusion that privacy, as we currently know it, is a short lived phenomenon due to increased anonymity of large masses of people without the corresponding technology to accurately track information coming from them. The hundred person village of the past had little anonymity. The teeming metropoli of the future will have little as well. Privacy is information, and information moves towards more access, not less. As much as it pains me to admit it, there are parallels between privacy/surveillance and patents, copyrights and DRM, but the the roles are often reversed.
That not to say it's all bad, there are some possible upsides to a world with less privacy. For example, with the lack of any expectation of privacy for vast swaths of the average day, we may see a shift to people aligning their beliefs and actions, and that may be made easier by a shift in some of the less tolerant beliefs. This would by no means be a guaranteed, it would take work.
In the end though, I think whether privacy is somehow protected or not, one of the most important things we can do is make sure we are informed of, and inform the public of, what's likely and what's possible to have intercepted by surveillance. No matter the outcome, that's useful information for everyone to have, so they can act accordingly.
I imagine a post-privacy society is one where people necessarily either are much more tolerant of disparate opinions, or clump together more to like-minded people in enclaves of homogeneity. Possibly a little of both.
To some degree, privacy is important because people judge bases on social norms. If that is lessened, so it the benefit of privacy (not necessarily to the same degree).
Inequality is only a temporary phenomenon because information collection, storage, and processing is too expensive to be costless to the average person. That will not always be the case.
IFF loss of privacy is taken as a given (a postulate of my original comment), then socially contructed laws can at best hope to stall the loss of privacy. Whether a law is written on the books about something is irrelevant if it's impossible to enforce.
While this makes for a great piece of speculative fiction; I think you underestimate the violence that the powers that be are willing to deploy to defend the present arrangement.
I don't believe we can escape it. Surveillance technology becomes cheaper everyday, in the long term tiny automated drones with cameras will be cheaper than a steak from a real cow. Even if you limit the government's power, there will be private surveillance everywhere. Even if you stop companies in your country from making them, some other country will.
Our only hope is to better align our laws with our beliefs. Removing victimless crimes like drug laws will redirect this mass surveillance machine toward violent criminals. Full transparency in the government will prevent government officials from using the surveillance for personal gain or to harm political opponents.
I don't think it is possible. It is not just the gov, it is also private and public companies. Forget snooping for a second - let us just consider the public data. Once it is out there, who knows how many organizations have it? And even if we did, how are we going to force them to destroy it and not continue collecting more data? Most people give their data willingly either out of laziness or ignorance. If I have 15 different "store cards" in my wallet and let those stores happily track every single item I buy, willingly, who is to blame?
If this is the natural progression of "information wants to be free", then it's probably worthwhile for us to figure out methods to live within this new reality. I'm not saying we shouldn't still fight it, but there should be a backup plan, in case it is futile.
Most people give their data willingly because they get something worthwhile in exchange. The store cards exist because people trade tracking of their purchase data for discounted prices. Nobody is to blame because there is nothing to blame anyone for.
Nobody is to blame because there is nothing to blame anyone for.
Suppose I have a store card for a grocery store chain. If this grocery store sells my data to a health insurance company and the insurance company increases my premium based on my food purchasing habits, do you think it is fair? I am under the reasonable assumption that my purchase history is for the grocery chain only and in return for that data, I get some discounts on my purchases.
There was a case a while ago where a forum sold their users posts to a drug company. The forum members didn't expect that. Do you think it is fair?
In both examples above, the companies are most likely acting legally (After all, who reads 20 pages of legal crap before signing up for a forum) That doesn't mean it is the right thing to do.
Insurers adjusting policies to accurately reflect risk is fantastic. They already do it now with haphazard accuracy - I get a partial rebate on any farm share or gym membership, and smoking cessation programs are on their dime completely.
It is like a child giving me a shiny rock because they like the pie I made better. Am I not to blame because I understand the value of the diamond better than the child and use the information asymmetry to my advantage?
Your example only makes sense to you because you assume that the child could sell the diamond for enough money to buy the pie from you (or from someone else who has just as good of a pie) and have some left over. In the actual situation under discussion, there is no such option.
If that's not the case and you really would only part with the pie for that high of a price, and no other pie will do for the child, then what is there to complain about? How much do you think it costs to buy a pie made by, say, Gordon Ramsay? Feel free to replace with someone who is actually a good chef and not just a famous one if I made a poor choice.
The example was to show someone taking advantage of information asymmetry. You are now just arguing the analogy. Do you believe it is acceptable to take advantage of information asymmetry when getting goods or services from someone (including children)?
I don't believe it is acceptable for there to be information asymmetry in the first place. Arguing about what to do when it's there is about as fruitful as arguing about how hard you should be allowed to beat your slaves.
I don't see how one could prevent information asymmetry. With current technology, there is no way for a 10 year old to know all that a 30 year old knows.
To me it is like asking should we allow animals to kill each other. Not only can we not really stop it, even if we could it would kill any carnivores.
It's kind of funny when you think about DDR and the Stasi; the other super-power ran the other into the ground, and now that power is performing mass surveillance in place of the Stasi...
It's interesting to note "money laundering" wasn't a crime until 1985. Before then you could legally move your own money around without notifying the government.
So many people have gotten fired from their job (and had careers/jobs ruined) over private communications that got leaked to the Internet in the last couple of years. Nobody even mentions the fact that their privacy was violated. They only care about the private conversation that got leaked (and of course, how the person needs to be punished).
Anything you write on the Internet, even if it's just your personal beliefs, will come back to haunt you in the future no matter how innocent it seems like at the time. If it offends someone (and pretty much anything you write will offend someone), there is a chance you could have your livelihood taken away from you.
I'm more concerned with this than any government surveillance.
I'm fine with legalizing drugs. I'm not fine with the inability of me, as a business owner, to be able to fire someone for coming into my place of business under the influence. This is exactly what the CA proposed law wanted to allow a few years back.
While other's have brought up how ethanol in the style of (or sometimes literally) a very-high-proof vodka is used to treat methanol and ethylene glycol (antifreeze) poisoning, it is unlikely that these uses be seen outside of a hospital or other emergency medical facility.
A better question is someone who is under the influence of something that is commonly prescribed, such as opioid painkillers[1], antihistamines[2], or various psychiatric medication[3]. People are prescribed those medications for many different reasons all the time. The ability to drive or operate dangerous devices can be impacted as bad as ethanol, and many will impact attention or social interaction in various ways. It is difficult to compared these to marijuana, but it is obvious that some have much stronger reactions to these drugs.
Just like with drunk driving, the problem here is the focus on any particular drug instead of focusing on behaviors. It is similar to default-allow in computer security; trying to enumerate bad things[4] that might allow for bad behavior, the real solution is to change how the problem is framed.
Citizens concerned about safety on public roads are not actually interested in how much ethanol someone has had to drink. What matters is if someone has the necessary reflexes, fine motor skills, and situational awareness to drive safely. Ethanol consumption correlates with these problems, with a lot of variability. Instead of the breathalyzer, we should be testing the features that actually matter. This might suggest that some people cannot drive even when they are sober... which is kind of the point.
If someone shows up to work under the influence, you should evaluate if they are causing any sort of actual problem, and fire them for that. On the other hand, if they are on something but they do their job properly, then why complain?
[1] can cause to cause extreme sleepiness, dizziness, and/or nausea in some people
[2] many antihistamines - such as diphenhydramine ("Benadryl") which is over-the-counter - are well-known to be powerful deliriants. In many people normal doses can impact driving as bad as ethanol and make coherent conversation difficult.
[3] the problem here are to numerous to list. The popular antipsychotics can have almost any type of side effect you can think of, antidepressants can have unpredictable effect, and anxiolytics can cause drowsiness as bad as the opioids.
Always liked the fact that Franklin initially published the quote:"Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor Liberty to purchase power." under a pseudonym. Now the fact that he published it in a work that essentially was meant as satire of his age's hipsters does make his intended meaning somewhat suspect...
Depends on the details of the prescription and how affected they are.
I wouldn't expect the needed doses to be very high? Then it wouldn't be an issue in the same way it shouldn't be a problem to have a single drink before work and a BAC of .02
If the prescription unavoidably interferes with work competence then I'm not sure where things go other than "complicated".
Does it effect their job? Will it make them a danger to others while being under the influence (a good example would be in a warehouse handling packages, equipment, etc)? If so, yes.
The issue is that many business owners will be held liable for the actions of a person under the influence while at work because they allowed it to happen.
There needs to be a balance between employee and employer rights or complete tort reform to make the person under the influence completely responsible for their actions.
Let me propose that, for any category of job, we may create a test which is a) safe to perform and b) indicates if the worker is able to do that job.
You can therefore check, without prejudice, if a worker is capable of doing that job, without invasive inquiries about their bodies and private life. And should. And should be legally barred from otherwise testing employee competence.
In civilized countries they are then temporarily given different assignments which they are able to perform more satisfactorily, or they go talk to their GP and are given part-time or full time paid sick leave.
So then why can't the same be done for someone under the effects of a drug prescribed by a doctor?
If you can fire someone for taking a drug to fix some ailment that they never choose to have due to the impact on their performance, then it would make sense that one could fire someone for choosing to become pregnant once it impacts their performance. Both or neither.
> So then why can't the same be done for someone under the effects of a drug prescribed by a doctor?
It is -- reasonable accommodation for temporary disability and mandatory medical leave for medical conditions (including those resulting from the requirements of treating some other condition) that can't be accommodated are typical requirements in civilized countries.
This chain was in response to the person saying they should be able to fire someone for use of medically prescribe marijuana. I was asking for someone who agrees with that viewpoint to denote the difference.
I am thinking of removing anti-discrimination laws completely (not just to create exceptions) and allowing regulators (such as anti-trust) to impose anti-discrimination conditions on specific companies instead. The idea is that most of the time we would let the market deal with discrimination instead of using the relatively expensive legal system.
