2013

Governments and people around the world are struggling with privacy right now. Here's the basis of my understanding of how it ought to work:

• Private is allowed.
• Public is allowed.
• Access to private by third parties is allowed, but is not required.
• Privacy achieved by encryption over public channels is allowed.
• Third parties publishing private to public is not allowed.
• Third parties forcing disclosure from private to public is not allowed.
• Indexing is allowed.
• If something is public, it remains public, no guaranteed mechanism to erase or make private.
• Private may be made public once all first parties and their children are dead at least 5 years.
• Don't lie.

Paraphrasing. Everyone can do whatever they want, provided it doesn't interfere with others doing whatever they want. You should try to keep your private stuff private, and you should appear to respect the privacy of others.

For example, government would be allowed to collect and index anything public, and reveal those indexes to the public. If it can figure out how to decrypt things sent over public channels it can collect and index that too, but it can't reveal that it has done it, especially not to harrass the people it has done it to. The government is not allowed to force email providers to put in backdoors because privacy is allowed, even via encryption over public channels, and the email providers have a duty not to make public things that are private and they are third party to. And if the email providers did decrypt it for the government, they aren't allowed to say they don't, and the government isn't allowed to require that they say they don't, because that would be lying. The government is not allowed to force individuals to decrypt their messages. If you ask the government whether they're reading your secret messages, they'll say they're trying, but they won't say whether they're succeeding.

A third party revealing private to public is not allowed. If it is done anyhow, then what? I leave that to the courts. My best guess is it would have a mandatory fine, and the fine may vary depending on what is revealed. So even if the government reveals a terrorist attack is about to happen, and the would-be terrorists are jailed or executed, the government will still pay a fine to the would-be terrorists for revealing it. Or maybe the would-be terrorist's sentence is reduced by the amount of that fine.

Some more scenarios:

• People going to the bathroom
• People having sex
• People picking their nose while driving
• Telephone calls
• Web browsing
• Facebook
• Publishing anonymously
• Trade secrets
• Government interfering with public communication protocols to make them breakable

This doesn't address patents, copyrights, and trademarks.