When I was 10 or 11, the 16-year-old boy next door would sit pressed up against the fence between our properties, listening to my friends and me talk. During backyard campouts our conversations often turned to sex, as we shared misinformation and bad jokes in hopes of understanding that mysterious adult something we were beginning to feel in our bodies.<\/p>\n
Though we whispered, evidently we didn’t whisper quietly enough because Roger would sit there on the other side of the fence for hours, doing we did not know what, though it involved occasional grunts and groans. Even when we were talking more innocuous little-girl talk, there was Roger with his ear pressed against the splintery redwood.<\/p>\n
Everybody, including our parents I’m sure, knew Roger was lurking and listening (though Roger himself was apparently under the impression he was being super-stealthy).<\/p>\n
No one ever called the police or confronted Roger or his parents because everybody understood that — creepy though his hobby was — he was within his legal rights.<\/p>\n
As it turned out, there were other, related reasons somebody should<\/i> have called the cops on Roger. But the little girls involved in those incidents said not a word to any adult for fear of either not being believed or being believed but also being blamed.<\/p>\n
His fence-hugging, though perfectly legal and not actionable in a free country, was a sign of the darker things.<\/p>\n
In Roger’s case, the fates took care of the matter shortly thereafter by delivering him a debilitating autoimmune disease, no outside punishment needed. It was one of the few times in all my years that I’ve actually witnessed such satisfying karmic payback. Maybe the disease was caused by redwood toxins from all those splinters his ears must have been pierced with. Who knows? But my adolescent self found it sweet<\/i>.<\/p>\n
—–<\/p>\n
Yesterday’s post about Google Street View<\/a> creeping and peeping and gathering heaven knows what data on my otherwise obscure road raised some interesting discussion about whether or not a right to privacy exists.<\/p>\n Some people I respect took the position that there are no such things as privacy rights because (I condense and paraphrase) enforcing such rights would require prior restraint on others for non-violent activities.<\/p>\n Other people I respect took the position that all this poking and prodding into our lives by everybody from Google to the NSA (but I repeat myself), from Doubleclick to the TSA is disgusting, invasive, anti-freedom, nearly impossible to combat, and just plain rude<\/i> (thanks, Pat). Oh yes, privacy is<\/i> a right, they said. And one that … erm, Hannibal Lecter would have known how to enforce<\/a>.<\/p>\n As usual, I’m glad to leave theories up in the ivory tower. All I know is that being left the hell alone is an essential of freedom and that anybody — or any corporate body — that feels driven to snoop, poke, prod, eavesdrop, and get an earful of electronic splinters by inserting him, her, or itself into the lives of harmless others is as creepy as Roger-over-the-fence.<\/p>\n And like Roger, these professional peepers and creepers may be within their legal rights, but they are nevertheless up to no damn good, and the public aspect of their snoopery is just the annoying-but-bland face on something deeper, darker, and truly evil.<\/p>\n —–<\/p>\n One thing — not the only thing, but one very big thing — that makes our forced participation in Google Street View, NSA wiretapping, etc. evil is the drastic imbalance of power between the snoopers and the snoopees, the creepers and we the people who are being creeped upon and creeped out.<\/p>\n A few random examples:<\/p>\n * The NSA snoops on anybody it wants without consequences, but try snooping on the NSA and see what you get (I’m talking to you, Mssrs Snowden and Greenwald<\/a>).<\/p>\n * We’re watched by surveillance cameras on every street corner, but try filming a cop with your cellphone camera and whoo, boy!<\/p>\n * Business executives and government officials demand our social security numbers, home addresses, and other sensitive information as the price of dealing with them. But do they give us their<\/i> personal information in return? Hardly. People have been prosecuted for getting that.<\/p>\n * Google grabs any information it wishes (and is technologically capable of gathering) from us without our consent or an offer to share the profits it makes off us. But how much information does Google “allow” us to have about it<\/i>?<\/p>\n