FC: Salon email on privacy and society (#1); DVD depositions closed

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

I just got back from NYC and the DVD hearing. Briefly Judge Kaplan in part 
denied and in part granted our motion to intervene; I'll have an article up 
on wired.com in the morning. Kaplan then split the difference by denying 
the press access to depositions but ordering the (possibly redacted) 
transcripts and videotapes be released promptly. John Young and I did 
Emmanuel Goldstein's Off the Hook radio show afterward, then I jumped on a 
train.

Also, Eugene Volokh and I are grilling The New Republic's Jeff Rosen in a 
Salon debate over privacy that will last all week. Jeff has a new book out 
called "The Unwanted Gaze: The Destruction of Privacy in America." We're 
emailing each other in rotation. Here's an excerpt -- you can find the 
complete exchange at Salon's site.

-Declan


http://slate.msn.com/code/BookClub/BookClub.asp?Show=6/6/00&idMessage=5450&idBio=174

   From: Declan McCullagh
   To: Jeffrey Rosen and Eugene Volokh
   Subject: Fighting Technology With Technology
   Posted: Tuesday, June 6, 2000, at 1:38 p.m. PT

   Jeff, I naturally enjoyed your well-written book. I think it's wise to
   argue, as you do in your concluding chapter, for "the superiority of
   norms over law in protecting privacy, except in extreme cases."

   [...]

   But I don't see social norms as sufficiently reliable ways to protect
   privacy or other freedoms, particularly when we're talking about
   minorities. Ask anyone--at least until relatively recently--who was an
   out-of-the-closet gay man living outside a major city. Ask teen-age
   computer geeks who are ostracized in their high schools. Ask religious
   minorities, including Jews, who have for centuries been discriminated
   against. Ask folks living in some areas of America today. "I know an
   adult couple who were chased out of one rural community (Parowan) for
   the unforgivable sin on not being Mormon. I think by now they've left
   the state," a Utah resident recently wrote me.

   That's why I think there's a third option--beyond laws and social
   norms--that's a better solution: Technology.

   The beauty of technological solutions that protect privacy and
   anonymity is that they do not rely on the idiosyncratic views of
   Supreme Court justices or on mercurial shifts in public opinion. The
   combination of two large prime numbers to produce an encryption key
   that can scramble your conversation is straightforward algebra. It's a
   solution that relies on the unchangeable rules of mathematics, not the
   whims of society. Congress can't repeal the laws of addition and
   multiplication.

   And I trust mathematical laws much more than I trust the probity of
   Kenneth Starr or the views of a frequently intolerant social majority.

   Best,
   Declan

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