Please read this article about Anonymous' takedown of a darknet child pornography site.
Then, we'll discuss it a bit in class today.
Then, read these excerpts from Warren and Brandeis' article on the Right to Privacy (1890) and consider: is privacy a right, like life or liberty? Do you agree with Warren and Brandeis? To what extent did the users of Lolita City renounce their right to privacy?
Then, as usual, please post at least TWO comments to this blog. The first comment should be posted by Saturday night at 11:59 PM, the second by Monday night at 11:59 PM.
Do I agree with Warren and Brandeis?
ReplyDeleteYes. In the article on the Right to Privacy they state:
"That the individual shall have full protection in person and in property is a principle as old as the common law; but it has been found necessary from time to time to define anew the exact nature and extent of such protection. Political, social, and economic changes entail the recognition of new rights, and the common law, in its eternal youth, grows to meet the new demands of society."
I agree with this statement because it suggests that there comes a time when people's right to privacy should be reevaluated. I feel the sooner this happens, the better especially in the context of criminal activity on the internet.
"The design of the law must be to protect those persons with whose affairs the community has no legitimate concern, from being dragged into an undesirable and undesired publicity and to protect all persons, whatsoever; their position or station, from having matters which they may properly prefer to keep private, made public against their will."
..Protect those persons with whose affairs the community has no legitimate concern. We have to take into consideration that Lolita City was not disrupted by government or law enforcement intervention but by a community of concerned individuals. This isn't mob justice or vigilantism. Hackers exposed a ring of criminal child porn peddlers.
Since operation darknet several criminals have been brought to "justice" by law enforcement. Without the intervention of anonymous this would not have happened.
Did Lolita City users renounce their right to privacy because they were involved in criminal activity? No. However, there was enough community outcry that a group of hacker-individuals took it upon themselves to expose the Lolita City users.
I think what anonymous did was both right and ethical. If you take into consideration that ethics is based on a societal standard, and that it was a community of people that exposed the Lolita City users; wouldn't that be inherently ethical?
Well said, I can't really argue with your stance. Why the quotes with the word justice? Are you suggesting that the punishment might fit the crime?
DeleteYeah. I feel like despite their criminal activity that people that have their preferences tend to be disturbed in some way. Maybe, I watch too much SVU.
DeleteI too agree with Warren and Brandeis on their stance on privacy. Mr Orchid pretty much stole the show with his points, but I did feel pretty strongly about one additional portion of the text.
Delete"The common law secures to each individual the right of determining, ordinarily, to what extent his thoughts, sentiments, and emotions shall be communicated to others"
The authors are saying that you control when and to whom you communicate with, but they don't say anything about the medium. Your letter could be opened by a disgruntled postal employee, and your internet communications could be captured by a third party without your knowledge. My point here is that you take at least small risk with almost every communication medium, that your privacy will be violated.
To this end, I believe that Lolita City users gave up their right to privacy. Because they used a communication medium that was not completely private and they were violating the privacy of defenseless minors who do not have the "right to determine" what is communicated to others.
Very nicely stated. What if one of the people who had been doxed was innocent? Is this still right/ethical? Did that person have their right to privacy invaded upon or is this guilt by association?
DeleteNo, there are definitely causalities here. There were certainly varying levels of guilt across the range of perpetrators, and yet they all received the same ruthless punishment. Please don't get me wrong, anyone that assists in the continuance of child pornography sickens me, but when dealing justice, have to look at the levels of guilt involved. Law enforcement does not treat a drug user the same way that they treat a drug dealer. The same should be applied here. Bottom line, I think that the site administrators should have been punished the way that they were. Although the users should have only had their info given to the police and not published.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteProf. L, you bring up an interesting point. I think if an innocent person were doxed in this situation they'd be pretty screwed. However, I'm not sure how an innocent person's info would be involved with Lolita City if they weren't using the site, excluding fraud I suppose.
DeletePrivacy is a right given to citizens, as equally as life or liberty. In "Right to Privacy", Warren and Brandeis make statements to this effect multiple times, the very first of which reads "Recent inventions and business methods call attention to the next step which must be taken for the protection of the person, and for securing to the individual what Judge Cooley calls the right 'to be let alone.'" They conclude in the very same paragraph with, "The intensity and complexity of life, attendant upon advancing civilization, have rendered necessary some retreat from the world, and man, under the refining influence of culture, has become more sensitive to publicity, so that solitude and privacy have become more essential to the individual; but modern enterprise and invention have, through invasions upon his privacy, subjected him to mental pain and distress, far greater than could be inflicted by mere bodily injury", further strengthening the point of view that the right to privacy was a necessary and fundamental right afforded to citizens, although the implementation of this right needed to be amended to accomodate changing times and advancement in technologies.
ReplyDeleteI could not agree more with these statements. Due to the rapid rate of evolution of mankind and its technologies, and to the higher cognitive abilities of Homo sapiens, there will inevitably come a point where defining anew, redefining, refining or changing implementations of laws to adequately offer protection to citizens will need to happen, of which the right to privacy is a perfect example of this. ("... but it has been found necessary from time to time to define anew the exact nature and extent of such protection. Political, social, and economic changes entail the recognition of new rights, and the common law, in its eternal youth, grows to meet the new demands of society.") Without some kind of right to privacy, there would eventually come a point where there would become issues with encroachment on personal space, personal boundaries, personal ideas (such as thoughts), and quite possibly, the actual person of an individual.
This leads us to the second question: To what extent did the users of Lolita City renounce their right to privacy? Once again, by application of the words of Warren and Brandeis, the users of Lolita City entirely renounced their right to privacy. Warren and Brandeis stated, "The right to privacy does not prohibit any publication of matter which is of public or general interest…The design of the law must be to protect those persons with whose affairs the community has no legitimate concern, from being dragged into an undesirable and undesired publicity and to protect all persons, whatsoever; their position or station, from having matters which they may properly prefer to keep private, made public against their will." The key to this lies explicitly in the part that says "persons with whose affairs the community has no legitimate concerns." The clear and present danger presented to children by child pornography is an affair in which the community has a legitimate concern, and as such, revokes the right to privacy that would normally be offered to citizens in general. Therefore, the actions of Anonymous were in no way a breach or invasion of any right to privacy, as no privacy is afforded to a citizen under these circumstances.
In my opinion, privacy is a liberty afforded to you by circumstance. Or rather, a luxury afforded to you buy the manor in which you live. Brandeis seems to sum up his opinion with "The right to privacy does not prohibit any publication of matter which is of public or general interest" He clearly lays it out here that he thinks technically no one is entitled to their full privacy. He dances around the gray area of whether people do or do not deserve their personal privacy, but I feel that he doesn't believe people do. Therefore I can only assume that Brandeis would support the attack on Lolita City, because not only does he not support the personal privacy of individuals, but he would have the moral high ground in saying that Lolita City definitely did not deserve their personal privacy.
ReplyDeleteI disagree with the opinion that privacy is a liberty afforded to you by circumstance, although I do agree that privacy is granted to you under certain circumstances. I also like the statement "The right to privacy does not prohibit any publication of matter which is of public or general interest" which specifically implies that privacy is granted to you, but not under the circumstances that the matter is of public or general interest. Although you came about your conclusion in a different matter, I am generally in consensus with the results of your interpretation. :-)
ReplyDeleteThe act of anonymous bringing down the website of darknet child porn site was a great idea. We always tend to forget that what goes around comes around,
ReplyDeleteAn eye for an aye, a tooth for a tooth. The notion that for every wrong done there should be a compensating measure of justice, derived from the code of Hammurabi, King of Babylon. You go your way and offend those minors, i surely will not care about your rights for privacy, because you did not care about the privacy of the minors in the first place.
It does not matter whether they consented to the porn acts, but as long as they are minors, then who so ever does that is absolutely wrong morally and character wise.
i exonerate anonymous, thumbs up.