A Blog-like Entity

14 dec 06

What is your opinion on the "right to privacy" is it real, can it be achieved and is it important?

i'm not sure it's appropriate, useful, descriptive, or enlightening to think of whatever-this-is as a "right". someone might want privacy, and then try to get it, but if they're entitled to it, then who's entitling them? do you really want the government restricting information?

i'm not too keen on the notion of rights. i guess these are the same things as laws, eh? because rights have to be enforced, just like laws. and when you're talking about a universal declaration of rights, then you start to get into team america, world police. or, maybe just amnesty international whining and sending out those sad little postcards with the candle and barbed wire graphic on it. i'm horrible.

i, myself, enjoy privacy (not having a bunch of people around all the time), so i'm going to spend a lot of time by myself in my room. oh, but i guess that's not really what you were thinking of -- "right to privacy" usually means that you want to prevent companies from getting ahold of information on you, and then using it to sell you things, or justify refusing to sell you things (like health insurance).

information will propagate itself, and it doesn't make a special case when people's feelings are involved. you may have read the quote from the CEO of sun microsystems:

you have no privacy. get over it. - scott mcnealy

i hear identity theft is a problem, so that's something. but i don't know what a bunch of companies and public record keepers can do to prevent that -- seems to me that it's up to the citizenry to shred their bank statements.

i've run into problems of this ilk, of course. when i was in college, i printed all sorts of things about myself on the web that any normal (read: hiring) person wouldn't like to hear, regardless of whether or not they affected my duty to perform a given job. so, a few years later i realized that this was not good and embarked on a long process of taking my name in its befouled form off the web. i think i've been pretty successful (try googling my name). this thing, this "blog", is almost a bastion of pure expression. but it certainly doesn't enjoy the same freedom as a diary, where i'd really go to town. yow. you should see that thing.

well actually, it doesn't exist, although i've written a few "diary entries" just for kicks, and quite literally had to stop writing because it creeped me out too much. i was probably trying to overdo it, though, and honestly this here what you're reading is more like the "real me" (if there really is such a thing) than the sort of radical evil bloodlust that i can spew if i get myself into the right frame of mind (even though i know damn well a few of you would really get off on reading it).

but as far as "right to privacy", it was my own responsibility not to post all of those stories on how i sodomized dead pidgeons in central america back in 2001. i think maybe i'm not understanding the issue that well, or am not really suited to answer the question (what else is new?). or maybe i just don't care that much. hey, it happens.

getting back to how i posted a bunch of jpgs of my bifurcated penis on USENET in 1999: i very recently (yesterday) talked to someone who's starting to run into the same problem. now that he's done with college, he's going to start looking for work. it dawned on him that if an employer were given the choice of hiring an applicant who's blogging about cleveland steamers vs. an equally-qualified one who's not blogging about cleveland steamers (or not blogging at all), then that employer is going to go for the latter. so, last night he was researching ways to expedite the destruction of google's cache.

it's my prediction that this is going to turn out to be a sociocultural phenomenon: students in college going wild with self-expression, and posting anything and everything they want on the internet, with their full names proudly emblazoned all over their creations. then, shortly before or after graduation, the kids desperately try to scrub the e-walls clean before their resumes get around to t. row price or whatever batallion of tightasses they're trying to get on board with. there was a slashdot article on this, but i never read it.

he and i also talked a bit about the necessity of laws to protect people who post things on the internet about their bifurcated sodomizing pidgeon steamers. specifically, laws forbidding an employer to take information of this nature into consideration when hiring, since it does not affect job performance, except in silly cases like "pidgeon farmer".

basically, gathered "disparaging" web information on a prospective employee should have the same status as an illegal interview question (asking about the applicant's age, ethnic background, etc). obviously it can't be made illegal to search the web for any information on applicants, because an employer might seek and find some information that is indeed very relevant. and of course, while searching for relevent info the pidgeon incident comes up, and it's hard to ignore this when making a hiring decision. so, laws like these would be tenuous, but it'd be nice to have them on the books and sternly explained to hiring managers. who knows if they'd do any good.