I agree, I guess, that (in general) people shouldn't systematically covertly monitor others (aka stalking), but I think one important yardstick here is the effort that is put in to this. I think technology changes things here, because it makes it much easier to find information. Whereas in the past, looking into someone's background could involve weeks trawling libraries, etc., for old school yearbooks, police notices in newspapers, etc., now you can type their details into Google, Facebook, etc., and (maybe) find quite a lot of stuff quite quickly. This means that doing a background check is no longer something that can necessarily be described as 'calculated'/'premeditated', etc., but may simply be done on a whim, without too much consideration.

Yup, but again, I think when you can have a reasonable expectation of privacy depends in part on how difficult it would be for someone to listen in (or whatever). If it were so easy that someone might do it without giving it much consideration, then I would question whether you can really have a reasonable expectation of privacy. (OTOH, using tracking devices etc. involves tampering with other people's property, so I think it's wrong for this reason, even if it's not too difficult to do.)

Yeah, I think you've hit the nail on the head. My feeling is that technology has very much changed what we can reasonably expect to be private. e.g. I'm not sure that if you send unencrypted e-mail you can really reasonably expect it to be private. We might feel that it ought to be, but that's not the same as expecting that it will be. If nothing else, I think outlawing a lot of things that are trivial to do is likely to be a bit pointless, because people will probably still do them anyway.

This is one of a few things that I find incongruous about pirate party ideas. Here we have a group of people who are tech savvy, and well understand how easy it would be for a government to monitor e-mail, and yet claim that they expect unencrypted e-mail to be just as secure as physical mail. Really? You're surprised that unencrypted e-mail is insecure? You never saw that one coming?

The pirate parties recognise that information technology radically changes what is appropriate for copyright law. In part this is because copying used to be an incredibly expensive, time-consuming activity, and now it's trivial to do, so copyright law now outlaws things that are trivial to do. Because of this, copyright law that was once reasonable has become a farce. Yet there is an inexplicable belief that information technology will have no effect on what we can reasonably expect to be private.

Surely, if we really care about people's privacy, we ought to actually do something about it--If you don't want the neighbour looking in your bedroom window, you put up curtains.

To put it another way:

I think we probably all agree that privacy invasion is wrong, but I think there's a big jump from saying that something is wrong to saying that we should make it illegal. I think probably most of us would also agree that marital infidelity is wrong, but I think fewer would immediately conclude from this that marital infidelity should be illegal. We need to consider not just whether something is wrong, but also whether the effort of enforcing societal punishment for it would make a worthwhile improvement. In other words, is the law going to work?

My objection is that, although this is all very good on principle, it's not going to work.

Are there any plans to move this to a vote yet? Actually, what are the PC's plans?

If someone can look into my bedroom from the street or a neighbouring property then this is correct but I should not have to protect myself from flying drone cameras or people taking mail from my letter box and reading it.

In the same way I expect people to read my public Facebook posts but not my emails. That is the equivalent to putting up curtains. Having to use encryption is like having to tape metal foil to the window panes.

However good manners takes care of the privacy issues between people, for example, it is politeness to look away as someone taps in a PIN at an ATM or a supermarket card reader. Issues of privacy for the individual are mostly privacy from snooping by government and corporations. In these cases it is a fundamental right.

Andrew

It's all very well to say it's a fundamental right, and I'm not disagreeing with you, but in practice this hasn't stopped governments from violating it. Making it illegal has already failed. Governments have already acted illegally to violate people's privacy. If we get encryption adopted, then we essentially solve the problem once and for all. Governments will not read our e-mail because they will not be able to read our e-mail. Surely that would be better than insisting, on principle, that we have a right to privacy of unencrypted e-mail, knowing that it's not going to happen?

Other pirate parties have a broad variety of policies in the area of electronic privacy, that I've attempted to outline above (linked). We've got the provisional policy in the wiki of equating the intercepting of electronic messages with intercepting physical mail (which clearly counts as core policy), which needs to be put to the vote, and I'd like to put the encouragement of cryptography to the vote also (this has the support of 2 other parties--we need to decide exactly how many other parties have to support a policy in order for it to qualify as 'core policy'). I guess we should also announce to members that they need to choose (or suggest) any other policy measures on electronic privacy that they would like to vote on at this time.

+1 on this.

I think the policy should be that government should never make new law in an area where they could instead encourage or promote more permanent technical measures.

Encouraging the wider use of encrypted email is one example.

The current discussion of 'cookie laws' is another. I would much prefer that the government spends their time pointing out to people the 'no third party cookies', 'no persistent cookies' and 'erase history' options that already exists in most browsers. They can then use (or extend) whatever laws already exists for deceptive practises to cover only the more deceptive use of cookies.

My thoughts exactly--better to solve the problem than legislate against it. I think if we could get school/polytech/university computers set up with good security, then it would become second nature for the next generation. For most people right now, security is 'too hard', but it needn't be that way. It wasn't too long ago that for most people anything to do with computers was 'too hard', and that's rapidly changing. Give people the opportunity to learn, and it won't be 'too hard' any more.

+1. agree. Like using keylogger, it may bring the the issue of invasion of privacy

This sounds like a simple case of enforcing private property rights

a) if flying drones are however in the airspace above your property then they are in your property and they ought to be kicked out!
b) if people are reading mail from your letterbox then they're breaching your private property rights which is your letterbox by entering it without permission

a) I am not sure you own the airspace above your property but what if the drone is above a neighbouring property of the street? For example a neighbour wishes to make an aerial survey of their property then taking a picture of your property is reasonably unavoidable. Photons do not care about property boundaries.
b) agreed

There has to be a concept of "a right to expect privacy". For example, you can expect privacy in a fenced back yard but not in a garden adjoining a public street. Similarly private communications like letters, emails, phone calls can expect privacy but not a post card or a forum post. A grey area are things like PIN's entered at ATM's. It would be hard to make it an offence to watch someone entering a PIN but using any data gained to steal money should.

It should not necessarily be forbidden to gain data but to misuse it. To take photos from a place where the public has access and publish them should be allowed. To trespass and do the same should not. However private property that allows public access should not be able insist on privacy e.g. to forbid photography.

Andrew