Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Swindle

You may say: But, putting names (or other personal data) on an open area would facilitate swindling !

On that, you are having a straw man argument. We start off with an aim to protect privacy, but the outcome of the proposed action merely prevents a crime. Remember, while privacy could be considered as a basic human right and probably deserves much price and effort for its maintenance, prevention of swindling - a crime but merely one kind out of thousands - is but one of the many items on the agenda of a society.

(I emphasized could be and probably in order to remind me that privacy has not been formally considered as part of human right until 1960s. I am sure if it is such an important piece of our considerations, people should have recognized it during, as Charles Dickens said, the best of the times and the worst of the times in the history.)

The consideration of putting names on public places (for example, posting memo on the student notice board), therefore boils down to the followings:
  • how public the place is;
  • how much information is put up;
  • what kinds of crime could conceivably be induced by making use of the disclosed information;
  • presence of alternative methods to prevent those offences; and
  • benefits of putting up the information in public (which include general scrutiny, honor to or deterrent effects on the involved persons and, lastly, administrative convenience)
I shall not elaborate further.

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