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>People need to start thinking about information systems as property, in the same way that your house is your property, and your car is your property. In this c

>People need to start thinking about information systems as property, in the same way that your house is your property, and your car is your property. In this case, the information system is government property, which for some reason many people believe gives us special license to take whatever we want from it. You've skipped over a chunk of logic there which I feel bears closer scrutiny. The house and the car are owned by people, who feel emotional distress when their privacy is invaded. Governments do not feel emotional distress ever. It's also hard to argue that governments are harmed by invasions of privacy the same way an individual might be, because governments wield much power in the form of monopolization of force and have more control over how information they dislike is used. See the British parliaments ban on using parliamentary footage for comedy purposes. The point is, while I'm not saying government information systems should be a free-for-all, I am personally of the opinion that the larger an organization gets, the less right it has to privacy. I don't agree with your logical leap of "people deserve privacy -> governments are basically people -> governments deserve privacy". Governments don't have a right to privacy the way people do.

whateveracct 8y ago
This isn't a privacy issue it's a property issue. Just because the government is big doesn't mean it can't own (digital) property.
- Sir_Substance 8y ago
  >Just because the government is big doesn't mean it can't own (digital) property. The topic of whether there's any meaning to the concept of owning digital property when anything digital is a post-scarcity asset that costs essentially nothing to duplicate is something that society still hasn't really agreed upon.
  - whateveracct 8y ago
    But we're talking about proprietary government information here. Just because it's digital doesn't mean that it can't be criminal to access it via unauthorized channels. It isn't a matter of "oh you still have your copy" - I'd be surprised if anyone actually thinks that because something is a string of bits it means that there can't be an illegal way of obtaining those bits.
    - Sir_Substance 8y ago
      >But we're talking about proprietary government information here. Just because it's digital doesn't mean that it can't be criminal to access it via unauthorized channels. Right. We're debating whether that might be an ok thing to do under some circumstances. The government that is protesting criminal access to it's records is the government that gets to set what is or is not criminal, which is a clear conflict of interest. If that government was morally praiseworthy, we might be willing to assume it is capable of rising above this conflict of interest. However, the government in question has, in it's recent history, knowingly opened fire on children with gunships and then attempted to cover it up, so I personally am of the opinion that it doesn't have a track record that would imply it is capable of rising above that conflict of interest. Hence, I'm not very interested in what US law says on this matter, but I would be inclined to hear what the UN has to say on the matter.
    - sneak 8y ago
      Is the government entitled in any way to “proprietary information” that is then treated like property? We (some of us) allow corporations to treat proprietary information as intellectual property with the same legal protections as physical property because it benefits society to protect the revenue streams of eg hollywood so that they will continue producing new movies at a profit. But it is a specific hack to protect revenue streams of businesses to incentivize them to produce new and valuable information. We never agreed to the same protections for the state, or even that such is good or necessary. I am not sure how treating a video bitstream of war crimes (produced with hardware purchased with my tax money) as “property” that does not belong to me (a member of the group who paid for its production) benefits society. I am not sure how punishing someone who furnished me with a copy of that bitstream as someone who “stole” benefits society or encourages production of new or innovative or valuable information. Recall, that is the whole basis for the concept of “intellectual property” - a metaphor for businesses to profit from spending time and money producing new bitstreams, by shoehorning it into old physical property protection systems. The state is not a business and their prosperity is not an explicit goal of our society. All it does it protect the state, who has demonstrated over and over again its willingness to break the law, perpetrate violence, and lie to everyone about all of it. That is not a legal interpretation of “property” that we agreed to.
belltaco 8y ago
This is a red herring because of the context. Wikileaks regularly dumped sensitive information like names of local informants in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan without redacting it, getting them killed in some cases.

whateveracct 8y ago

This isn't a privacy issue it's a property issue. Just because the government is big doesn't mean it can't own (digital) property.

Sir_Substance 8y ago
>Just because the government is big doesn't mean it can't own (digital) property. The topic of whether there's any meaning to the concept of owning digital property when anything digital is a post-scarcity asset that costs essentially nothing to duplicate is something that society still hasn't really agreed upon.
- whateveracct 8y ago
  But we're talking about proprietary government information here. Just because it's digital doesn't mean that it can't be criminal to access it via unauthorized channels. It isn't a matter of "oh you still have your copy" - I'd be surprised if anyone actually thinks that because something is a string of bits it means that there can't be an illegal way of obtaining those bits.
  - Sir_Substance 8y ago
    >But we're talking about proprietary government information here. Just because it's digital doesn't mean that it can't be criminal to access it via unauthorized channels. Right. We're debating whether that might be an ok thing to do under some circumstances. The government that is protesting criminal access to it's records is the government that gets to set what is or is not criminal, which is a clear conflict of interest. If that government was morally praiseworthy, we might be willing to assume it is capable of rising above this conflict of interest. However, the government in question has, in it's recent history, knowingly opened fire on children with gunships and then attempted to cover it up, so I personally am of the opinion that it doesn't have a track record that would imply it is capable of rising above that conflict of interest. Hence, I'm not very interested in what US law says on this matter, but I would be inclined to hear what the UN has to say on the matter.
  - sneak 8y ago
    Is the government entitled in any way to “proprietary information” that is then treated like property? We (some of us) allow corporations to treat proprietary information as intellectual property with the same legal protections as physical property because it benefits society to protect the revenue streams of eg hollywood so that they will continue producing new movies at a profit. But it is a specific hack to protect revenue streams of businesses to incentivize them to produce new and valuable information. We never agreed to the same protections for the state, or even that such is good or necessary. I am not sure how treating a video bitstream of war crimes (produced with hardware purchased with my tax money) as “property” that does not belong to me (a member of the group who paid for its production) benefits society. I am not sure how punishing someone who furnished me with a copy of that bitstream as someone who “stole” benefits society or encourages production of new or innovative or valuable information. Recall, that is the whole basis for the concept of “intellectual property” - a metaphor for businesses to profit from spending time and money producing new bitstreams, by shoehorning it into old physical property protection systems. The state is not a business and their prosperity is not an explicit goal of our society. All it does it protect the state, who has demonstrated over and over again its willingness to break the law, perpetrate violence, and lie to everyone about all of it. That is not a legal interpretation of “property” that we agreed to.

belltaco 8y ago

This is a red herring because of the context. Wikileaks regularly dumped sensitive information like names of local informants in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan without redacting it, getting them killed in some cases.