Papers, bitte

[msmemory_archive]

Eish. They've started checking IDs on the Green Line. Apparently, if you are innocent, you are not supposed to mind.

Comments

Privacy and inconvenience

[rickthefightguy.livejournal.com]

To respond to Jane's original note, it is hard to say. Obviously some innocent people do mind. I am innocent, and I don't mind. In fact, I would rather have my ID checked while on the train than while at the turnstile (where there is one) - it would keep me from being delayed, although it might slow down my reading for a moment. On the other hand, the new loud and clear announcements of what stop we are approaching are more annoying in that way.

However, I don't have a big privacy bug. I am not convinced privacy is actually a societal advantage. Certainly privacy is one of the most valuable tools of criminals, and only marginally valuable to the law-abiding. There are lots of cases where checking my _insert checked chracteristic here_ is not an invasion of privacy that I care about. For example, when a policeman checks my speed with his radar gun, I do not complain that I am being treated like a 'potential speeder'. When they check my FOID when I buy blanks in the city, I am glad they are doing it. My local grocery store keeps track of what I buy using my discount card, and that is a good thing, because I get coupons and deals on the stuff I actually _want_, which is why they want to know in the first place.

The big place where privacy is an advantage is in a society where non-criminal activity is punished either by culture or authority. So, for example, if I were gay, I might want to keep that private if I was going to suffer for it (or Jewish, for that matter). But I think privacy is still a loss there. Since most of us can hide stuff like that to an extent, the hypocrites who punish it while doing it can get away with it. I suspect that a lot of lawmakers, _who are secretly gay_ would vote _for_ a law against gay marriage. If everyone knew, they would not be as likely to, which would be good for them and good for us. On the other hand, if I completely trusted the government and society not to punish me for anything I did that wasn't illegal, I would be happy to have cameras in every street and parking lot. I don't, really, but I don't know how much of that is paranoia. If we really did away with privacy, I would get more advantage out of knowing the government's secrets than they would get out of knowing mine. And we would both benefit far more than criminals would, while suffering far less.

Re: Privacy and inconvenience

[herooftheage.livejournal.com]

My objection is not the problem of privacy, per say, but at the extension of police powers, and the requirement that I have to be able to prove who I am at a moment's notice. It is basically a question of where I want to draw the line - and keeping the police as limited as possible is an easier place to draw it than granting them more power - simply because power exists to be used, and if the police have it, they'll use it.

There's a good bit in one of the SPQR books where the protagonist gets asked why Rome doesn't have a police force, and he incredulously wants to know who in their right mind would give someone their own publicly sanctioned private army right in the middle of the city. Now one might think that wouldn't apply here, but remember that Massachusetts is a state where the A.G. indicted John Silbur the day after he lost a gubenatorial election, so far as I can tell, simply for losing it.

Btw, we are close to coming to having cameras on every street corner and every parking lot - it is just that most of them are still privately owned. I do think privacy in the 21st century is a myth - but I still want to limit the government's access to the information.