7 ms·

> the Electronic Communications Privacy Act only restricts telecom companies from disclosing data to the government. It doesn't restrict disclosure to other com

by gpvos 8y ago

> the Electronic Communications Privacy Act only restricts telecom companies from disclosing data to the government. It doesn't restrict disclosure to other companies Clearly the US has their priorities completely the wrong way.

RubenSandwich 8y ago
Part of the American mythology is that government involvement is always bad. It's hard for me to know if this developed because of the myths of the America Revolution, that a small colony won it alone and not because of external factors, and how much is due to people preaching small government politics. Regardless a distrust of the government seems to be ingrained in the American psyche IMO.
- stevehawk 8y ago
  Ahaha what? There's no myth that we won it alone. Elementary school texts on the subject lay it out fairly clearly that we did it with the French.
  - lostcolony 8y ago
    There are a worrying number of people in the US who believe in American exceptionalism. When the French are brought up by them, it's generally in the context of "We saved their asses in WWII", not "They were vital in our war of independence".
    - adventured 8y ago
      Trump just spent his formal state visit with Macron repeatedly extolling the role the French played in American independence. Trump addresses almost everything he does to the same audience that elected him (the same people that your premise would imply don't understand how vital France was to US independence). It's blatantly clear that average Americans for two centuries have understood the very important role France played. It is taught in all schools in the US. Just about all nations believe in their own exceptionalism. Ask a person from Scandinavia what the best nations on earth are sometime. You really don't need to ask, they'll start all of their replies with: in Sweden we are bestest. Ask a French person how glorious their culture is. Ask a person from China how extraordinary their nation is and about how it's going to dominate the world in the future. Ask a German who makes the best cars on earth (they'll volunteer that, you know, Americans should make better cars if they want to fix the trade deficit, snark snark, chortle). Ask a Canadian if their country provides for a superior way of life vs the US - they won't hesitate for a second to proclaim that as a matter of fact their way of doing things is superior. Ask a Japanese person, off the record, if they're superior to the Chinese. America's exceptionalism, is that it's the only nation aggressively called out for believing it's exceptional.
      - lostcolony 8y ago
        'Generally'. Also, a severe lack of commentary on those who live in other countries believing in their own exceptionalism. So not sure what you're responding to.
  - RubenSandwich 8y ago
    They may talk slightly about the French help but none talk about The Spanish[1] also England was having trouble recruiting for the unpopular war so much so that about ~1/3 of the British fighting forces were mercenaries[2]. The Revolutionary war was won basically because the British Empire was starting to show it's cracks and other countries jumped at the chance to speed up it's demise. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spain_and_the_American_Revolutionary_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spain_and_the_American_Revolut... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Revolutionary_War#Recruitment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Revolutionary_War#Rec...
    - emodendroket 8y ago
      Until the levee en masse in France pretty much all European armies consisted of mercenaries, criminals, and various other people considered the dregs of society, rather than patriotic citizens devoted to the cause. Also the British Empire lasted significantly longer and a big factor in pulling out was protecting the Caribbean possessions from the French.
    - specialp 8y ago
      There's no doubt that those were factors that aided. As always nothing in world history happened due to a singular factor or cause. But it is not mythology that a lot of brave and enlightened people fought an empire and have become a very successful country. What next? Are we to discount the Allies win over the Axis because well the Third Reich was worn down due to fighting in Russia? I am a US born citizen and criticize our country quite a bit, but it is insulting to say that the uprising here wasn't the main factor in us achieving our independence.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > There's no myth that we won it alone. Yes, there is. > Elementary school texts on the subject lay it out fairly clearly that we did it with the French. Textbooks are a mixed bag, but most I've seen at K-12 levels do mention that the French eventually were involved in some way, but very few give a real idea of the nature, extent (material or temporal), and criticality of French aid. E.g., approximately zero note that France started covertly arming and funding independence-minded Americans before the Declaration of Independence. But even if the textbooks told the whole story, that wouldn't disprove the existence of a popular myth, it would just make it's persistence more remarkable.
  - emodendroket 8y ago
    Probably a bigger myth is that farmers hid out in trees and picked off stuffy Englishmen foolishly clinging to warfare in lines (so why was von Steuben important, then?), which only comes close to describing reality in places like Kentucky where a bunch of partisans were participating in what we might today call guerilla warfare. But even in that case it was less picking off soldiers and more killing your loyalist or patriot neighbors. Warfare in lines was completely logical given the weapons available at the time.
  - delecti 8y ago
    Even if it were factually accurate that we won it alone, the story of the revolutionary war has still taken on mythic status in our society. The revolutionary war is just as much a mythic story as many religious stories.
- prklmn 8y ago
  Another part of the American mystique is that every politician is for sale via legal bribery where companies donate to their campaigns and get them to do mostly whatever the company wants, totally contrary to the interests of the public.
  - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
    And somehow people trust those bribing companies more than the politicians?
    - erikpukinskis 8y ago
      They do, some folks. The idea is companies, caring only about their own revenue, are purer of heart than politicians who are interested primarily in their own social status. ... that a kind of bulk morality emerges from many individuals all working to maximize a single product’s sales.
      - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
        Some say "bulk morality", I say "immoral, unrelenting, greed". Not exactly a benevolent goal.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
- malvosenior 8y ago
  You leave out another option: Americans distrust government because we see it fail us every day. Corruption, police brutality, inefficiency, politician sleaze baggery... In general corporations provide a much higher quality service than the government in the US.
  - chillingeffect 8y ago
    You make a good point about the government, but I don't agree it extends to corporations. Corporations do much of the dirty work of the government. Defense contractors and mining concerns operate hand-in-hand with the government, training police, researching weapons, running prisons, crunching data. Look at the story of this article: it's corporations doing the dirty work the government isn't technically allowed to do. Furthermore corporations only submit to greatly reduced requirements for attending to those with special needs, like in wheelchairs, deaf, etc. There are some valuable services provided to them, like closed captioning, but only under passioned support from idealists and with profit incentive. If we left it all to corporations, only the most able-bodied and well-off people would run the country for the most able-bodied and well-off, forming tight-knit circles to maintain their power and never perceiving the world as a place for living, only protecting power.
    - aerotwelve 8y ago
      > ...There are some valuable services provided to them, like closed captioning, but only under passioned support from idealists and with profit incentive. It's worth noting that video closed captioning had to be mandated by law (Telecommunications Act of 1996) before it became universal[1]. Some broadcasters were ahead of the curve & implemented it prior to the legislation, but it was rarely comprehensive. Of course, this just underscores your point that disabled consumers were not a large enough group to have their needs met by market forces alone. [1] https://www.fcc.gov/general/telecommunications-act-1996-and-people-disabilities https://www.fcc.gov/general/telecommunications-act-1996-and-...
  - SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
    It always boggles my mind how 1/2 the people that realize and complain about those things go on to recommend more government and that only they should have effective guns.
- brightball 8y ago
  Small government just means localized government. At a more local level, people have much more influence and ability to change problems that they see. At a more federal level, policy is imposed without localities having much/any influence. That centralization and imposition of policy that half the country opposes is the reason for the political divide that we see today. If the same policies that we argue about so much were implemented at a state level, people would have the ability vote with their feet. That doesn’t mean some legislation shouldn’t be federal, but there is a reason that the intention was for federal policy to be overwhelmingly agreed upon rather than forced in along party lines.
  - Clubber 8y ago
    This is a good summary. The US was designed similar to the EU; each "state" is autonomous, but some things are shared, like currency, etc. Allowing frictionless movement between states is also paramount (and explicitly defined). The logic being, if a state starts to get out of control, you can just move to another state. This allows states to experiment with various laws specific to the population. Most of this was undone with the Civil War. As abhorrent as it was, the federal government had no legal power to ban slavery outside a constitutional amendment. The 13th-15th amendments actually banned slavery after the war, not the Emancipation Proclamation. Today, the federal government bans whatever it pleases and uses the commerce clause to skirt the constitution. Take the drug war for example. Because a group of drugs was federally banned, states were powerless to do anything about it. I think most people would agree that federally banning all drugs ended up being a terrible idea and ruined many lives and families over the course of it's execution. It continues to do so today. If the constitution was actually followed, each state can determine which drugs it would allow. As far as I know, Colorado hasn't devolved into a cesspool of depravity since it legalized pot. Imagine all the hell that could have been avoided if states were allowed to decide which drugs to ban rather than the federal government. Of course a strong federal government has some plusses as well. It was hotly debated during the country's inception, but the ultimate compromise all the states agreed to is what we got.
- rectang 8y ago
  It's reasonable and wise to distrust government. What is unreasonable is American blind faith in private industry. This tracking is a great example of the threat posed by industry to individual citizens.
- dredmorbius 8y ago
  The term "big business" preceded "big government", and has been far more prevalent. Big government arose as a response to and check on big business. https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=big+business%2Cbig+government&case_insensitive=on&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t4%3B%2Cbig%20business%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Bbig%20business%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BBig%20Business%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BBig%20business%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BBIG%20BUSINESS%3B%2Cc0%3B.t4%3B%2Cbig%20government%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Bbig%20government%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BBig%20Government%3B%2Cc0%3B%3Bbig%20Government%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BBig%20government%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BBIG%20GOVERNMENT%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=big+business%2...
stevehawk 8y ago
Why? Releasing the data to the government creates Big Brother. I thought we were all against that?
- josefresco 8y ago
  Two big brothers: Government and Corporate - lately, in some cases, these brothers have merged.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - ahartmetz 8y ago
    There is this old theory about that: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_monopoly_capitalism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_monopoly_capitalism The Marxist as well as the libertarian theories about it probably contain a few valuable insights and a few terrible ideas for fixing the situation, as usual for radical political theories.
- eeZah7Ux 8y ago
  Contrasted to Palantir, Facebook, cambridge analytica and private firms working for NSA? Ironically, governments are somewhat still under democratic control... somewhat. Corporations are completely authoritarian, and by design.
- izacus 8y ago
  Now you've created a corporate Big Brother, who is hell bent on pure profits and doesn't even have to answer to you in the elections. Is that better?
  - stevehawk 8y ago
    Yes? Government Big Brother can put me in jail just because a cell phone record said I was near a crime while being committed. Corporate Big Brother can only make money from me.
random_moonwalk 8y ago
What would stop the government from just getting this stuff from a third-party who has purchased it?
- tome 8y ago
  Probably the same above-named act.
  - itchyjunk 8y ago
    But that act says it's telecoms that can't sell it to the government. Doesn't the government purchase data from other 3rd party entities anyways?
    - tome 8y ago
      I've never read the act but such a hole would be so gaping that it would even embarrass congress and telecoms lobbyists. I can't possibly imagine that they didn't close it. EDIT: Maybe I was too optimistic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17082213 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17082213
- move-on-by 8y ago
  Nothing, that's one reason why these companies exist. Its corporate surveillance
tinus_hn 8y ago
The clever part is that the government in turn is allowed to purchase data from the other companies.
- codedokode 8y ago
  Also, if a government employee does a lookup in their spare time as a private person out of curiosity, it is ok? Or if they ask their friend to do the lookup?
dwighttk 8y ago
I'd say only half the wrong way.
kevin_b_er 8y ago
To corporations, you have no inalienable rights. They're just more things to be bought and sold.
- dredmorbius 8y ago
  Actually, not true by the defnition of inalienable right: something of which you may be deprived, but no other person may gain. It is possible to take from you real or chattel property, funds, papers, etc., and give them to another. Your life (though no longer your organs and tissues), your liberty, your happiness, not so. Those are inalienable in that they cannot exist seperate frome you.
  - dredmorbius 8y ago
    Definition of inalienable: That cannot be transferred to another or others: inalienable rights. https://www.thefreedictionary.com/inalienable https://www.thefreedictionary.com/inalienable Not subject to sale or transfer; inseparable. That which is inalienable cannot be bought, sold, or transferred from one individual to another. The personal rights to life and liberty guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States are inalienable. Similarly, various types of property are inalienable, such as rivers, streams, and highways. https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Inalienable+rights https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Inalienable+r...

by gpvos 8y ago

RubenSandwich 8y ago

Part of the American mythology is that government involvement is always bad. It's hard for me to know if this developed because of the myths of the America Revolution, that a small colony won it alone and not because of external factors, and how much is due to people preaching small government politics. Regardless a distrust of the government seems to be ingrained in the American psyche IMO.

stevehawk 8y ago
Ahaha what? There's no myth that we won it alone. Elementary school texts on the subject lay it out fairly clearly that we did it with the French.
- lostcolony 8y ago
  There are a worrying number of people in the US who believe in American exceptionalism. When the French are brought up by them, it's generally in the context of "We saved their asses in WWII", not "They were vital in our war of independence".
  - adventured 8y ago
    Trump just spent his formal state visit with Macron repeatedly extolling the role the French played in American independence. Trump addresses almost everything he does to the same audience that elected him (the same people that your premise would imply don't understand how vital France was to US independence). It's blatantly clear that average Americans for two centuries have understood the very important role France played. It is taught in all schools in the US. Just about all nations believe in their own exceptionalism. Ask a person from Scandinavia what the best nations on earth are sometime. You really don't need to ask, they'll start all of their replies with: in Sweden we are bestest. Ask a French person how glorious their culture is. Ask a person from China how extraordinary their nation is and about how it's going to dominate the world in the future. Ask a German who makes the best cars on earth (they'll volunteer that, you know, Americans should make better cars if they want to fix the trade deficit, snark snark, chortle). Ask a Canadian if their country provides for a superior way of life vs the US - they won't hesitate for a second to proclaim that as a matter of fact their way of doing things is superior. Ask a Japanese person, off the record, if they're superior to the Chinese. America's exceptionalism, is that it's the only nation aggressively called out for believing it's exceptional.
    - lostcolony 8y ago
      'Generally'. Also, a severe lack of commentary on those who live in other countries believing in their own exceptionalism. So not sure what you're responding to.
- RubenSandwich 8y ago
  They may talk slightly about the French help but none talk about The Spanish[1] also England was having trouble recruiting for the unpopular war so much so that about ~1/3 of the British fighting forces were mercenaries[2]. The Revolutionary war was won basically because the British Empire was starting to show it's cracks and other countries jumped at the chance to speed up it's demise. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spain_and_the_American_Revolutionary_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spain_and_the_American_Revolut... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Revolutionary_War#Recruitment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Revolutionary_War#Rec...
  - emodendroket 8y ago
    Until the levee en masse in France pretty much all European armies consisted of mercenaries, criminals, and various other people considered the dregs of society, rather than patriotic citizens devoted to the cause. Also the British Empire lasted significantly longer and a big factor in pulling out was protecting the Caribbean possessions from the French.
  - specialp 8y ago
    There's no doubt that those were factors that aided. As always nothing in world history happened due to a singular factor or cause. But it is not mythology that a lot of brave and enlightened people fought an empire and have become a very successful country. What next? Are we to discount the Allies win over the Axis because well the Third Reich was worn down due to fighting in Russia? I am a US born citizen and criticize our country quite a bit, but it is insulting to say that the uprising here wasn't the main factor in us achieving our independence.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > There's no myth that we won it alone. Yes, there is. > Elementary school texts on the subject lay it out fairly clearly that we did it with the French. Textbooks are a mixed bag, but most I've seen at K-12 levels do mention that the French eventually were involved in some way, but very few give a real idea of the nature, extent (material or temporal), and criticality of French aid. E.g., approximately zero note that France started covertly arming and funding independence-minded Americans before the Declaration of Independence. But even if the textbooks told the whole story, that wouldn't disprove the existence of a popular myth, it would just make it's persistence more remarkable.
- emodendroket 8y ago
  Probably a bigger myth is that farmers hid out in trees and picked off stuffy Englishmen foolishly clinging to warfare in lines (so why was von Steuben important, then?), which only comes close to describing reality in places like Kentucky where a bunch of partisans were participating in what we might today call guerilla warfare. But even in that case it was less picking off soldiers and more killing your loyalist or patriot neighbors. Warfare in lines was completely logical given the weapons available at the time.
- delecti 8y ago
  Even if it were factually accurate that we won it alone, the story of the revolutionary war has still taken on mythic status in our society. The revolutionary war is just as much a mythic story as many religious stories.
prklmn 8y ago
Another part of the American mystique is that every politician is for sale via legal bribery where companies donate to their campaigns and get them to do mostly whatever the company wants, totally contrary to the interests of the public.
- SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
  And somehow people trust those bribing companies more than the politicians?
  - erikpukinskis 8y ago
    They do, some folks. The idea is companies, caring only about their own revenue, are purer of heart than politicians who are interested primarily in their own social status. ... that a kind of bulk morality emerges from many individuals all working to maximize a single product’s sales.
    - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
      Some say "bulk morality", I say "immoral, unrelenting, greed". Not exactly a benevolent goal.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
malvosenior 8y ago
You leave out another option: Americans distrust government because we see it fail us every day. Corruption, police brutality, inefficiency, politician sleaze baggery... In general corporations provide a much higher quality service than the government in the US.
- chillingeffect 8y ago
  You make a good point about the government, but I don't agree it extends to corporations. Corporations do much of the dirty work of the government. Defense contractors and mining concerns operate hand-in-hand with the government, training police, researching weapons, running prisons, crunching data. Look at the story of this article: it's corporations doing the dirty work the government isn't technically allowed to do. Furthermore corporations only submit to greatly reduced requirements for attending to those with special needs, like in wheelchairs, deaf, etc. There are some valuable services provided to them, like closed captioning, but only under passioned support from idealists and with profit incentive. If we left it all to corporations, only the most able-bodied and well-off people would run the country for the most able-bodied and well-off, forming tight-knit circles to maintain their power and never perceiving the world as a place for living, only protecting power.
  - aerotwelve 8y ago
    > ...There are some valuable services provided to them, like closed captioning, but only under passioned support from idealists and with profit incentive. It's worth noting that video closed captioning had to be mandated by law (Telecommunications Act of 1996) before it became universal[1]. Some broadcasters were ahead of the curve & implemented it prior to the legislation, but it was rarely comprehensive. Of course, this just underscores your point that disabled consumers were not a large enough group to have their needs met by market forces alone. [1] https://www.fcc.gov/general/telecommunications-act-1996-and-people-disabilities https://www.fcc.gov/general/telecommunications-act-1996-and-...
- SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
  It always boggles my mind how 1/2 the people that realize and complain about those things go on to recommend more government and that only they should have effective guns.
brightball 8y ago
Small government just means localized government. At a more local level, people have much more influence and ability to change problems that they see. At a more federal level, policy is imposed without localities having much/any influence. That centralization and imposition of policy that half the country opposes is the reason for the political divide that we see today. If the same policies that we argue about so much were implemented at a state level, people would have the ability vote with their feet. That doesn’t mean some legislation shouldn’t be federal, but there is a reason that the intention was for federal policy to be overwhelmingly agreed upon rather than forced in along party lines.
- Clubber 8y ago
  This is a good summary. The US was designed similar to the EU; each "state" is autonomous, but some things are shared, like currency, etc. Allowing frictionless movement between states is also paramount (and explicitly defined). The logic being, if a state starts to get out of control, you can just move to another state. This allows states to experiment with various laws specific to the population. Most of this was undone with the Civil War. As abhorrent as it was, the federal government had no legal power to ban slavery outside a constitutional amendment. The 13th-15th amendments actually banned slavery after the war, not the Emancipation Proclamation. Today, the federal government bans whatever it pleases and uses the commerce clause to skirt the constitution. Take the drug war for example. Because a group of drugs was federally banned, states were powerless to do anything about it. I think most people would agree that federally banning all drugs ended up being a terrible idea and ruined many lives and families over the course of it's execution. It continues to do so today. If the constitution was actually followed, each state can determine which drugs it would allow. As far as I know, Colorado hasn't devolved into a cesspool of depravity since it legalized pot. Imagine all the hell that could have been avoided if states were allowed to decide which drugs to ban rather than the federal government. Of course a strong federal government has some plusses as well. It was hotly debated during the country's inception, but the ultimate compromise all the states agreed to is what we got.
rectang 8y ago
It's reasonable and wise to distrust government. What is unreasonable is American blind faith in private industry. This tracking is a great example of the threat posed by industry to individual citizens.
dredmorbius 8y ago
The term "big business" preceded "big government", and has been far more prevalent. Big government arose as a response to and check on big business. https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=big+business%2Cbig+government&case_insensitive=on&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t4%3B%2Cbig%20business%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Bbig%20business%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BBig%20Business%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BBig%20business%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BBIG%20BUSINESS%3B%2Cc0%3B.t4%3B%2Cbig%20government%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Bbig%20government%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BBig%20Government%3B%2Cc0%3B%3Bbig%20Government%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BBig%20government%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BBIG%20GOVERNMENT%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=big+business%2...

stevehawk 8y ago

Why? Releasing the data to the government creates Big Brother. I thought we were all against that?

josefresco 8y ago
Two big brothers: Government and Corporate - lately, in some cases, these brothers have merged.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- ahartmetz 8y ago
  There is this old theory about that: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_monopoly_capitalism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_monopoly_capitalism The Marxist as well as the libertarian theories about it probably contain a few valuable insights and a few terrible ideas for fixing the situation, as usual for radical political theories.
eeZah7Ux 8y ago
Contrasted to Palantir, Facebook, cambridge analytica and private firms working for NSA? Ironically, governments are somewhat still under democratic control... somewhat. Corporations are completely authoritarian, and by design.
izacus 8y ago
Now you've created a corporate Big Brother, who is hell bent on pure profits and doesn't even have to answer to you in the elections. Is that better?
- stevehawk 8y ago
  Yes? Government Big Brother can put me in jail just because a cell phone record said I was near a crime while being committed. Corporate Big Brother can only make money from me.

random_moonwalk 8y ago

What would stop the government from just getting this stuff from a third-party who has purchased it?

tome 8y ago
Probably the same above-named act.
- itchyjunk 8y ago
  But that act says it's telecoms that can't sell it to the government. Doesn't the government purchase data from other 3rd party entities anyways?
  - tome 8y ago
    I've never read the act but such a hole would be so gaping that it would even embarrass congress and telecoms lobbyists. I can't possibly imagine that they didn't close it. EDIT: Maybe I was too optimistic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17082213 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17082213
move-on-by 8y ago
Nothing, that's one reason why these companies exist. Its corporate surveillance

tinus_hn 8y ago

The clever part is that the government in turn is allowed to purchase data from the other companies.

codedokode 8y ago
Also, if a government employee does a lookup in their spare time as a private person out of curiosity, it is ok? Or if they ask their friend to do the lookup?

dwighttk 8y ago

I'd say only half the wrong way.

kevin_b_er 8y ago

To corporations, you have no inalienable rights. They're just more things to be bought and sold.

dredmorbius 8y ago
Actually, not true by the defnition of inalienable right: something of which you may be deprived, but no other person may gain. It is possible to take from you real or chattel property, funds, papers, etc., and give them to another. Your life (though no longer your organs and tissues), your liberty, your happiness, not so. Those are inalienable in that they cannot exist seperate frome you.
- dredmorbius 8y ago
  Definition of inalienable: That cannot be transferred to another or others: inalienable rights. https://www.thefreedictionary.com/inalienable https://www.thefreedictionary.com/inalienable Not subject to sale or transfer; inseparable. That which is inalienable cannot be bought, sold, or transferred from one individual to another. The personal rights to life and liberty guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States are inalienable. Similarly, various types of property are inalienable, such as rivers, streams, and highways. https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Inalienable+rights https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Inalienable+r...