On Wed, Jul 11, 2001 at 07:47:38PM -0400, Mike Lorrey wrote:
> It is a subset of self ownership, the most basic of all rights.
Here in Europe, privacy is not commonly regarded as a right. On the other
hand integrity (another of those fuzzy terms like human dignity) is
regarded as a right, and might for all practical purposes replace privacy
in the discussion.
As I see it, integrity is the ability to determine for oneself what
information to let in and out from oneself and to determine what one does
with it. I show integrity when I decide for myself whether to be swayed or
not by the opinions of others rather than just accept or allow myself to be
coerced into accepting them. My right to integrity means I can refrain from
revealing my thoughts or medical information, or demand ownership of such
information forcing e.g. a doctor not to reveal it to a third party.
This seems to fit in quite well with the idea of having an inviolable
information sphere at some distance from the self, although it is not
obvious *where* it should lie - is it just my self-owned body and its
internal information that is protected, or does my exoself also have this
protection against "information theft" (OK, there the IP questions get
involved too. Ouch).
Nick Szabo's talk touched on this, suggesting that for uploads privacy ==
freedom; I would say that at least for infomorphs integrity == freedom.
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