From: Dale Thorn <dthorn@gte.net>
Date: Mon, 17 Feb 1997 19:30:05 -0800 (PST)
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Constitution and a Right to Privacy
Message-ID: <199702180330.TAA21698@toad.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Timothy C. May wrote:
> >> Some legal scholars are claiming that there is no provision in the
> >> Constitution guaranteeing anonymity of purchases, and, indeed, a growing
> >> number of purchases can no longer be anonymous--guns, explosives, chemicals
> >> of various sorts, etc. How long before _all_ transactions must be recorded,
> >> True Names revealed, etc.?
[snip]
> The issue hit when abortion advocates argued that a "woman's right to
> privacy" allowed abortions. However, none of the enumerated rights made
> this obvious. Bork has opined that no right to privacy can be inferred from
> the Constitution. (And I always thought the "woman's right to privacy"
> argument for abortion was flaky. Accepting such an argument, wouldn't
> infanticide be equally protected by a woman's right to privacy?)

A perfect invitation for rational argument.  You obviously refer to
the privacy/right to destroy your own personal property, which you
pretty much have in the U.S., Constitution or no.  So the issue
above is whether the unborn baby is personal property (in the sense
that I can chop off my hair or even my ear if I want to), or the
child is personal property.  The child issue has been settled
effectively for many years now, but the controversy remains on the
unborn.

At least some of this privacy discussion would be better presented
from another angle - how deep would the feds want to probe into the
common folks' lives, what techniques would be employed, how would
the serious folks get around those things, and where would the
greatest (and most serious) amount of actions converge to flare up
in the public consciousness (media, internet, etc.)?