Privacy

Internet privacy (and computer privacy in general) and becoming more and more integrated with our privacy ideals outside the digital world. With the increasing number of our financial, professional and social interactions taking place by digital means it is also becoming increasingly common to hear about how the obscurity provided by the medium can be exploited or misused.

The anonymity of the internet is, on one hand, heralded as a great equalizer, bypasses concerns about gender, race and other ways in which individuals discriminate in the real world…on the other hand, this anonymity can be abused by individuals who wish to avoid the consequences of their actions.

new rights

Some time ago, modern digital media, specifically that of the internet, moved swiftly and silently past our definitions of individual intellectual rights and the old definitions that we apply to creators of artistic or intellectual work.

Some seek to create new laws governing the new media using the old definitions. This will not work. In the past information properties were subject to a certain specific form of infrastructure and produced a specific substantial good. Printing presses printed books, painting was produced on canvas. Today virtually every American is a publisher, artist and journalist (albeit, obviously of varying standards.)

Information is no longer subject to the constraints of actual physical labor to produce it, besides typing and moving a mouse. This has rapidly increased it spread and use.

If books are available in public libraries for public use then should they be available digitally as well? Where is the line drawn between what is seen as 'mainstream' and 'ethical' journalism and the masses of bloggers? Do trademarks apply tradenames apply in the international world wide web?

I certainly don't pretend to have any answers but I know that there are many decent questions that we have to address before we can legislate rights on the Internet.

When thinking about Public Goods and the role of the government as perhaps stewards of information I have been thinking about the justification for withholding information from the public.

On one hand, some may argue that making certain information available to the public may endanger lives. There is no doubt that intelligence and the information gathered is the most precious military advantage in the new world of decentralized threats and armed opponents without even a country much less a persistent headquarters or consistent leadership. The ability to know more than the enemy is the only thing that might be said to separate the well-equipped and well-trained militaries of large 1st world countries from the emerging dangers. Some would argue that unless the governments are allowed to keep what they have learned to themselves they will lose this last important advantage.

However, I am personally of the opinion that the moment a government starts to withhold vital information about its policy decisions from the electorate even the semblance of a democratic government breaks down. If the public is not aware of the actions of the government how can it decide when they are not in accordance with its own priorities?

All good governments who seek to distribute power vigorously employ a system of checks and balances. In the case of democracies, by far the most important of these balances is struck between an informed electorate and an elected legislature and executive. When essential information is withheld from the public this balance is disastrously skewed.