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Right to Privacy a Fundamental Right, Says Indian Supreme Court

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Re: Right to Privacy a Fundamental Right, Says Indian Supreme Court

#111

Post by sn41 »

vkrm wrote: post #11

I'll wait for the full text of the judgements before celebrating. The ruling apparently consists of 6 judgements and should be available shortly. Hope this reins in the Aadhaar monster without leaving any wiggle room for the government to exploit. edit: The judgement is now available here: http://supremecourtofindia.nic.in/pdf/LU/ALL%20WP(C)%20No.49...

What a fantastic document. Quotes from John Stuart Mill, precedents from India, UK, US, South Africa, Canada, and the European charter. Looks like a very scholarly judgment, worthy of study, worth every one of the 597 pages!!

Re: Right to Privacy a Fundamental Right, Says Indian Supreme Court

#112

Post by matt4077 »

dalbasal wrote: post #54

A lot of conversations about expanding rights, end up with a distinction between positive and negative rights. A right to water, is different to free speech. For everyone to have a right to water, someone needs to provide the water or be held accountable for not providing it. A default, state culprit needs to be designated. Privacy though, privacy is like speech or equality before the law or presumption of innocence.…

The definition of something as a right doesn't imply that it is absolute. Incarceration, for example, almost certainly infringes on most rights you can think of (assembly, property, association, speech, privacy, pursuit of happiness). Yet it's routinely practiced.

So, no: personal rights don't have to come with costs to be meaningful. Example: "You have the right to peacefully assemble and protest for your beliefs. Yeah, no, not in my living room." Religious liberties, as another example, also seem to be doing just fine, even though it seriously cramps my style that people apparently belief virgin sacrifices are no longer included in that freedom.

Re: Right to Privacy a Fundamental Right, Says Indian Supreme Court

#113

Post by matt4077 »

sametmax wrote: post #88
TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The right to free speech, conscience, affiliation , assembly and other political freedoms mean we need to tolerate and protect the proverbial nazis’ rights to try and spread their politics. I'm not convinced I know how I feel about this. I want to believe this is a false dichotomy. Can we have limits in polite society ? I keep thinking of the paradox of tolerance [1], which states, in brief, that if a society is to…

The limit is action. Words are not important. But a lot of words are mixed with actions: harassments, segregation, etc. Those should be clearly identified so that free speech don't protect them.

If freedom of speech is important, speech must have the power to have real consequences. If something has real consequences, those can be either bad, good, or neutral.

If all consequences of speech were neutral or positive, we could make the world a better place by connecting a source of randomness with a text-to-speech synthesiser. But that's absurd.

Therefore, speech has the ability to harm. The distinction between "words" and "actions" is meaningless, as is already obvious from your inclusion of harassment in your list of actions. Because harassment is also just speech.

Re: Right to Privacy a Fundamental Right, Says Indian Supreme Court

#114

Post by DarkKomunalec »

dalbasal wrote: post #54

A lot of conversations about expanding rights, end up with a distinction between positive and negative rights. A right to water, is different to free speech. For everyone to have a right to water, someone needs to provide the water or be held accountable for not providing it. A default, state culprit needs to be designated. Privacy though, privacy is like speech or equality before the law or presumption of innocence.…

> A right to water, is different to free speech.

Not entirely. Consider the case of water privatization, where there's a real risk of extortionate pricing of what used to be a common good. If carefully written, right to water laws can ensure that such resources are used for the benefit of the people, instead of being just another market good that gets slowly monopolized.

Edit: In other words, you may already have the right to free speech, while water must be provided, but both can be denied.

Re: Right to Privacy a Fundamental Right, Says Indian Supreme Court

#115

Post by matt4077 »

noufalibrahim wrote: post #95
sametmax wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The limit is action. Words are not important. But a lot of words are mixed with actions: harassments, segregation, etc. Those should be clearly identified so that free speech don't protect them.

This is tricky. I think a workable solution is to create zones where free speech is unrestricted and where new ideas can be incubated. They themselves would have some restrictions (e.g. you can't physically hurt the person you lost a debate to) but would, by and large, be free speech zones. The idea was described in this speech https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJktQiZRa5A The rest of society can have different rules w…

Yeah, that's an incredibly stupid idea–and I say that as a big fan of reasonable limits on free speech.

Creating "free speech zones" seems like a surefire way to start telling everyone to "take it to the free speech zone" and stop annoying "normal people" with your ideas. It's like the wet dream of these people that have started calling citizens consumers, even in a political context, and advocate the criminal prosecution of peaceful protesters when they don't all stay on the sidewalks.

FWIW, I first remember hearing the term in the context of the Beijing Olympics, which should tell you everything you need to know about that idea.

Re: Right to Privacy a Fundamental Right, Says Indian Supreme Court

#116

Post by moduspol »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #79
dalbasal wrote: post #54

A lot of conversations about expanding rights, end up with a distinction between positive and negative rights. A right to water, is different to free speech. For everyone to have a right to water, someone needs to provide the water or be held accountable for not providing it. A default, state culprit needs to be designated. Privacy though, privacy is like speech or equality before the law or presumption of innocence.…

> The right to free speech, conscience, affiliation , assembly and other political freedoms mean we need to tolerate and protect the proverbial nazis’ rights to try and spread their politics. I'm not convinced I know how I feel about this. I want to believe this is a false dichotomy. Can we have limits in polite society ? I keep thinking of the paradox of tolerance [1], which states, in brief, that if a society is to…

Are we really to the point where Nazi ideologies are spreading like wildfire, to the point that their "intolerance" will be seized by our "tolerance?"

To me it seems like the opposite is happening. Nazi ideologies are marginalized and meaningless, yet propped up like some huge threat to us... like they might take over. And this is being used as justification for limiting free speech, in a hyper-politically correct society where even micro-aggressions could be categorized as "hate speech."

Perhaps we could just recognize and acknowledge that, while reprehensible, it's not like Nazi believers are anything more than a rounding error in normal society. And then move on with our days.

Re: Right to Privacy a Fundamental Right, Says Indian Supreme Court

#118

Post by joering2 »

I'm not sure if I read it here, but there was a great example given on how to answer people with approach of "if you are not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to hide".

Using this logic, just recently I somewhat won an argument with my fiancee. She always believes that I'm hiding something on my phone because she doesn't have PIN to it and because I'm unwilling to give it to her, she assumes the worst.

Therefore I made a bet. I asked her what is she doing in bathroom? She answered she does what everyone else's is doing: #1, #2 or showering. I replied you must be doing something wrong or maybe illegal, since you always not only close the door, but you lock it as well! We had short argument back and forth about obviously how it is not about hiding something, but rather about enjoying your own time in privacy, and I think she kind of got it.

We have a bet in place for 3 months now that when she leaves the door wide open while in bathroom, I will give her code to my cellphone. So far I haven't had the need to give it out just yet :)

Re: Right to Privacy a Fundamental Right, Says Indian Supreme Court

#119

Post by jawns »

I was a bit surprised by the fact that all of the judges' opinions, which are embedded in the article, were in English.

But it turns out that English is the official language of the Indian Supreme Court, and the court has even gone so far as to rule that it need not provide a Hindi translation of its rulings:

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation...

It seems kind of bizarre to me that as an American English speaker half way across the world, I'm in a better position to read and comprehend the Indian Supreme Court's rulings than a great number of non-English-speaking Indians.

Re: Right to Privacy a Fundamental Right, Says Indian Supreme Court

#120

Post by helloindia »

srean wrote: post #61
modi15 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Biometric is just stronger identity. This can be done in a weaker way using Passport/PAN card. Does Right to Privacy mean that the govt. cannot identify individuals ? How does it then provide differential services ?

Thats moot unless every significant access point has a means and financial viability to verify the biometrics. Even with such existing 'weaker' identities we are nowhere close to the quality of service that such 'weak' identies can support. Lets address the problem and not divert the issue with "shiny tech... look a squirrel". I would be more sympathetic if we are already in the ballpark of the quality of service tha…

Right to privacy here mean, govt cannot force citizens to give up their biometric for simple things like creation of bank accounts. Till now, PAN card was the only identification needed.
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