2 ms·
> Dead people don't need privacy or most other human rights. Dead people obviously don't need the exact same rights as live people, but I guess many (most?) pe
by swores 4y ago
> Dead people don't need privacy or most other human rights.
Dead people obviously don't need the exact same rights as live people, but I guess many (most?) people would rather their most intimate secrets, nude photos, etc etc not get uploaded and publicly shared 5 minutes after death even if we won't be around to witness it ourselves. And if you go to a graveyard and unilaterally start digging up bodies you'd find a lot of relatives (and people generally) not happy on behalf of those dead people.
But I do agree those rights are less important compared to those of the living, if there's a conflict between them.
- chefandy 4y agoFamous people who donate their stuff to archives often disallow access— even to the archivists themselves— for multiple-decades. Dead folks’ possession could have serious privacy implications. PII aside, people might have letters discussing quietly miscarried children, other people’s non-public embarrassing financial mistakes, or any number of other things that would be unethical to expose any other people while it could be consequential. It’s not like everybody they interacted with is dead, too.
- techdragon 4y agoThe census laws in many countries protect access to the actual raw data until at least a few years and usually a few decades after the people in question are dead and sometimes there’s even blanket rules on accessing anything more recent than 75 to a hundred years ago. So even the governments with extensive historical records tend to follow similar rules to the ones you mention about archives access.