If the allegations thus far aired in the media have substance, then I agree with Mirko that the criminality of those involved is the most important issue, and not the ethics or otherwise of deliberately breaching the privacy of others.

But rather than focusing on the antics of a few stupid young men who allegedly feel they need to take drugs in order to have a good night out, perhaps society and Mirko should first concentrate on the actions of those who allegedly sought to profit from the medical evidence of such stupidity?

You see, apparently unlike Mirko, I haven’t forgotten that dishonestly appropriating goods belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it is an act of “theft by finding” – since appropriation includes any assumption of the rights of an owner – and theft is punishable by a term of imprisonment for 10 years.

Further, purchasing goods known to have been stolen constitutes the offence of “handling” and the penalty is imprisonment for 15 years. Then there are matters of conspiracy, incitement, abetting and being an accessory to be considered. No doubt just such issues are amongst those currently being considered by Victoria Police.

Oh... And for those who are wondering, I suggest that it’s not until your own privacy has been utterly and irreparably breached that you really get to understand how important it is. It’s much more than a matter of ethics. It’s downright criminal!

Kaz

Transperency vs Privacy. A cross-road in humanity. Unfortunately I am forced to agree; "The right to privacy is illusory. There is no rational basis for its existence. And what's more, it actually diminishes our individual and collective wellbeing."

I find the privacy issues have a double edged sword. The administrive and political processes advocating it's use are selective and damaging in many cases to those it is suppose to protect.

I agree too that; "medical problems are no more worthy of confidentiality than economic or social problems.".

If we are to SOLVE PROBLEMS we need the "whole" story. Hence this is a NO WRONG DOOR POLICY. ie: Privacy as we know it is proving demonstrably unhealthy as a Western obsession based on inward-looking selfish traits (fear to disclose) and especially "in the absence of genuine concerns regarding their wellbeing". How worried do you reckon disadvantaged people vunerable either here or in the in under-developed countries (who are wanting for the necessities of life) are about their right to privacy?

Trust in the administrive and political process appears something of the issue here if we are to face the issues of transperency.

A No Wrong Door policy is something we require urgently to inter-connect services (reduce the burden to 'run round a citizen') but it leads to other issues of how the information and the ID card premise converges onto our OPENESS and FREEDOM as citizens.

However, the longer we avoid affronting these issues, the longer it will take to help heal the political balance of issues that inflame the core of what our modern and ever changing foundations of democracry is about.

We Need to Probelm solve. We need to expose the issues hidden so we can better understand them.

http://www.miacat.com/
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Desipis and miacat agree with Bagaric that the right to privacy is over-rated.

They won’t mind then if I steal their letters, tap their phones, camp on their front veranda and organise a RTIF implant so I can track their movements?

Miacat says, “Privacy as we know it is proving demonstrably unhealthy as a Western obsession based on inward-looking selfish traits”, while Desipis thinks his/her right “…to judge someone for myself on the sum of all their actions, rather than the convenient few they choose to disclose, is greater than their right to be free from judgment of those actions.”

On that reasoning it’s OK for me to put a camera in their bedrooms to judge their lovemaking techniques – and to publish selected pictures on the net?

kaz3g wisely remarked, “…it’s not until your own privacy has been utterly and irreparably breached that you really get to understand how important it is.”

Medical files are just one aspect of privacy. Democracies need rules for the handling of all personal information - its collection, its storage, its security, its use and disclosure to others and its eventual destruction when it’s no longer needed for the purposes it was collected for.

We also need rules about security of our mail and other forms of personal communication. We need to set limits on others intruding into our personal territory and we need rules to protect ourselves against intrusive invasion of our bodies. (Bagaric thinks torture is OK as is indefinite detention; but again, on those topics, he’s lost his moral compass.)

The right to privacy is not in opposition to the right to information. The trick is to know when the right to privacy should give way to a genuinely competing right. Clearly, a right to privacy needs to be weighed against the public’s right to know about things of legitimate public concern. The right question is not ‘What are you hiding?’ but ‘Is there a legitimate public need to know about you?’

The debate is not "security versus privacy." The real choice is “liberty versus control”.

'liberty vs control' is exacty what this about.

Put another way, it is an issue of Power vs Control!

Everytime something so called "private" goes unrecorded; ie: a rape, sexual abuse, a medical condition, certain economic or social records particulary where a conflict of interest occurs... we are at odds with ourselves to reslove because we are blinded from the "whole" representing the real transperency of diverse facts.

It is through the negletful framework of data collecting and relevant statistics that this one sided authoritive paradigm of mis-leading-information starts.

Certain people in "control" of private knowledge have the power and law to project their versions of assumptions and beliefs... while the subjects (needing full representation) themselves are more often burdened to the expense of systemic and populist abuse, that which is concealed, as a subject is demeaned to a level risking in an effort re-address through her/his "capacity" to expose a projective "burden of proof".

WAKE UP. What is it you hide. I think it has more to do with factors of trust in the human and political process and for this reason the denial is to not try to understand that their are many aperspective sides to this debate.

http://www.miacat.com/
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Its a 'nonsense' to suggest that anyone owes me anything, for any reason that serves their self interest, their vanity their indulgence.

The idea that someone owes me and my cohorts of that nebulous soup know as 'society' this or that standard of behaviour because l am looking at them is pure vanity, built on hypocracy. Just because they put themselves in front of an electronic device like a camera is redundant. However, in the vein of rationalising the redundant (as OLO contributors are so fond of doing)... everyone is in the public domain these daze. There are cameras every where and everyone is looking, so everyone owes whatever anyone looking says so.

Maybe folks should hold themselves accountable to their own standards instead of entertaining fanciful delusions about how others should be what we wont be, namely perfect.

Then again... perfect people say and do nothing.

ps.

A 'right' is neither natural, nor absolute. Its not like the sun in the sky. Is a product of what people can get for themselves and paradoxically impose upon others.

You have a right to what you can get.

And l have the right to ignore what you impose upon me as you right, like invasion of privacy and personal information.

On a much deeper level, things like privacy and confidentiality go to the fundamentals of consciousness and the nature of your spirit. Its hardly surprising that few value privacy in a world devoid of respect for the integrity of an individuals consciousness/spirit.

Taken to its logically absurdist end... one will eventually have no right to the privacy and confidentiality of their own thoughts. Afterall, bad thoughts lead to bad actions, thus following the authors perversions of consciousness, we all have a right to know what is on a persons mind as it may avoid unfavourable outcomes.

Vote One... the thought police.

Careful what you wish for, you may have to live in a world where you are subject to the intepretive whims of those who will use your foolishness against you.

l have nothing to hide... so why do you look?