Tuesday, 03.18.08
Please Tase Me, Bro
Photo by Flickr user Doviende under a Creative Commons license
The Reinvention of Privacy
March 2001
Business and technology used to be considered enemies of privacy, Toby Lester writes. Not anymore.
The Market for Privacy
24 February 2008
Jim Manzi says modern commerce is a bigger threat to privacy than government spies.
Massey's gratuitous tasing shows the bright side of our Orwellian future: the video popped up on YouTube, and when the public outcry began, Utah paid out quick.
The left is starting to notice that ubiquitous surveillance cuts both ways. Citing privacy concerns, the ACLU opposes video surveillance in public places, but it has also begun distributing camcorders to citizens in a St. Louis neighborhood to monitor alleged police abuses. Barack Obama touts an Illinois law that requires police to videotape interrogations in murder cases. Cell-phone video portends a future where bystanders record police behavior everywhere, protecting good cops from false complaints and making it harder for bad cops to misbehave.
So who opposes YouTube transparency? Mostly cops uneasy about legions looking over their shoulders as they work, the same as any cubicle worker. The difference is that cops have seized cameras from nosy onlookers, sometimes even arresting them -- displays of coercive power that underscore why we're owed more privacy than they are. Most galling are jurisdictions that misuse privacy laws on people like Brian T. Kelly, the Pennsylvania man charged with a felony wiretap violation for switching on a camcorder during a traffic stop. Prosecutors later dropped the charges, depriving civil libertarians of a test case.
That might not be so bad, since action by legislators is preferable to action by judges anyway. Glenn Reynolds rightly calls for federal legislation guaranteeing the people's right to videotape law enforcement in public. Barring that, state legislators are compelled to act, for among their duties is oversight of law enforcement. Adequate safeguards against police abuse are near impossible given the stakes, but outsourcing oversight to a cell-phone wielding citizenry could prove the biggest check against misbehavior since Miranda.
Big Brother is watchingJames Vlahos on the rise of the surveillance society and its costs. |
Watching Big BrotherGlenn Reynolds writes that if the government can keep an eye on citizens in public places we ought to be able to look back. |
Off the recordDaniel Solove looks at the dark side of privacy laws. |
Saved by an MP3This New York Times story dramatizes how recording technology is changing the relationship between suspects and police. |
The interrogation roomThe Village Voice prints a transcript of the interrogation surreptitiously recorded by a suspect and denied by the police officer. |
