Right to Privacy

Boo Hoo! The Patriot Act wasn't killed in Congress this week, but anyone out there who thinks they might stop spying on us if it's illegal should reconsider. The only place you have a right to privacy is in court. You can take someone to court for outing a secret or uncovering an embarrassing habit, or you can claim that evidence isn't valid to prosecute because it was private (even if it's true). But the police are still going to spy on you. They may be more brazen about it if it's legal and say "What are you going to do about it?", but my guess is that's what they'd say regardless.

What are you going to do about it? How about create a religion around it. We already have a religion where Santa watches over us all the time and if we're good or bad we either get treats, or coal in the next life. Well, here's a real Santa watching over us all the time. He knows if you've been good or bad. He knows what porn you like and where you get your drugs. He knows if you're cheating on your spouse, or if you're just stealing cable or copying CD/DVDs. And mostly he just sits back and collects it all in a giant database. All praise NSA the all knowing God of WWW. W? Where have I seen that letter before. Hmmm.

But really, it's like any law. There's a law against murder, but how many murders were there last week? Answer: More than the average week during the Clinton administration. You like murder, vote Republican. Check the statistics. So the law is there to protect the individual's right after the fact. If you murder me, then I (or my proxy) can take you to court and in criminal cases you could go to jail, and in civil cases you could give me (or my proxy) some money (hopefully my proxy wasn't in on it). It doesn't prevent the act, but hopefully it discourages it. But even that is not the reason we love "justice". Justice is a balance of good against the bad and in the case of capital punishment, a balance of more bad against the bad.

The right to privacy is one of our fundamental rights, but don't think your neighbor is not peeping in your window, or the police aren't listening to your phone calls, because it ain't gonna stop that. So be good because they are watching and we all know the only reason to be good is not to get caught being bad.

Peace!