Constitutional - Right to Privacy - 1
It is said that we have no Constitutional right to privacy. However, one Amendment in the Constitution referenced in regards to a general right to privacy is the Third Amendment, wherein soldiers are not allowed to station themselves in one's home unless necessary.
The other reference for a right to privacy is in the Fourth Amendment, where one is protected from illegal search and seizure, or only whereby adequate justification and compensation is practiced: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
However, I feel that these, and most other rights provided for in the Constitution, strongly imply a ROOT right of privacy - a right which is fundamental to virtually all other rights.
For example - the requirement that no soldier may station himself (herself) in your home, (#3), which is a kind of precursor to the right to keep and bear arms within one's home or property, (#2), rather strongly implies that a soldier may not compel you out from your home, nor concern himself with matters in your home, or interrogate you regarding information within your home - or, needless to say, within your head - unless given just and probable cause, through a warrant properly issued by a contemplative judge - not some Monsanto shill... (ha)
For, what is the right to free speech, or not to testify against oneself, or the right to be given a trial by one's peers, or the right to equal protection, if one cannot be allowed the PRIVACY to think as one wishes, to sleep as one wishes, and to CREATE or to IMAGINE as one wishes? These things cannot be granted private to individuals, without also granting individuals the right to maintain their information in integrity and in control, protected from infringement by mere imitators, (copyright law), or actual enemies, (OF the state, or AS the state).
To argue that ALL information may be collected, simply because it has become technically possible to do so, is to completely ignore the bigger picture of the integrity of our rights as a-priori, self-evident authorities - we the people from which the government(s) may ONLY derive its powers or its taxes or its information.
That businesses may be allowed this infringement is in itself dangerous enough - how infinitely more dangerous when you have a corporatist government acting through coercion and force for the benefit of a handful of dysfunctional, monster corporations and banks? This was the very Tyranny which sparked the American Revolution, even though the word, "corporatism," had not yet been invented, or applied to the current tyranny. But, speaking of frickin USURPATIONS...
There has been a little 4th-grade-type meme that has been wielded like cheap sex whenever someone tends to resist incursions upon one's rights, especially upon the right to privacy, as through the expectation (demand) that one allow one's genitalia to be scanned or groped (rape), and this is the meme that says, "Well... If you haven't done anything WRONG, then what are you worried about?!" After all, we're all in this terriblism thing together, right? (Such as it has been manufactured).
Well, this juvenile meme is a diversionary tactic - a bully tactic - shifting focus on the assumption that you MAY be guilty. Otherwise - why NOT allow us to remove your shoes? Or your dignity? Or your rights? Because, we came for everyone else - all the other frogs in warm water - and look at how well they have obliged! And now we come for YOU. Why should you not hand over any information we require, if you have done nothing ILLEGAL?
ANYTHING illegal. No evidence of a crime - no matter - we can find some crime - we can create some crime - we can incriminate you with the information we vacuum away, should we not like your face, or what you may be saying politically...
There is a fine line between solicitation and extortion, as there is between extortion and torture. The habit of entrapment has been growing like a cancer until now it consumes even the most innocent - and them, most voraciously. So, the answer to this meme, SHOULD have been, from day ONE: "WHO THE HELL ARE YOU TO BE FUCKING WITH ME?"
Remember: None of us is alone in our self-evident rights. We are joined at the spirit, of our human independence, and so each of us is a valid representative of the rights and dignity of all. And so, we should be outraged at this attempted theft of spirit! Guilty or not, crime or no - these are irrelevant to the even bigger picture of OUR DEMOCRACY and its preservation. The greater the privacy each one of us can hold, the greater the privilege for all. We are the guardians of the Commons.
If you have been up late in lighted rooms, especially on an exciting night, you usually find that it's a bit harder to fall asleep at night, right? If you have been in your room, staring at a bright TV screen or a computer or laptop terminal, it's harder to fall asleep when there are all those squiggles and lines and letters still persisting in your visual field, even when you choose privacy by closing your eyes. And, like the effect of caffeine on the system, too much of the visual may cause us insomnia, and end up making us stressful and vulnerable in the day.
It is the same with privacy. As human beings, we are nourished by privacy - we need it - like we need sleep - it is a right, a prerequisite not only to willful and creative living, but to free association and to life itself. There can be no creativity - no economy - without the right to privacy preserved. It takes precedence over whatever moral issues outsiders, or so-said authorities, may have... with whatever information may be lurking in your house or in your head - or in your past.
Subjugate privacy to authority - especially arbitrary review by authority - and private authority is lost.
Take away privacy and, as when sleep is deprived, so is life taken away, soon enough. It is a kind of insidious, "Chinese water torture," to mess with privacy, which degrades the soul and withers the will.
There is no benefit to a common economy through perpetual mining for private informations, when all consumers and actors are made, each day, a little less free. For - out the window goes the freedom of privacy, then where is one awake enough to grasp after the following flight of the right to worship as one wills, or the right to separation of church and state, or the assumed rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?
Without privacy, one is broken and broken into, and out go one's liberties like bank savings or pension funds during a frontal attack of so called, "Austerity," pretending like a false authority to be some awesome MORAL AUTHORITY. Wake up and smell the coffee!
Speaking of invasion of privacy? Ever heard of those creepy things called DRONES? It starts with assumptions, and ends in abuse. "Well, it's all right, because we're only killing, 'the BAD guys.'"
The visual world is not the world of the spirit - where we contemplate moral issues, with that auditory loop in our heads, and our working memories, etc. The spiritual world is where we will, and we ponder, and we strive - we imagine - we CHOOSE. Even an animal must be left alone, to feel free enough before it may CHOOSE to comply with some law or request. How can 'authorities' expect to control millions of people by, bit-by-bit, snatching away this private right to casually deliberate and choose from the majority of the members in the society?! Impossible - and perverse! And antithetical to the Constitution.
Those authorities who would argue that all information is up for grabs, because new technology now brings all information into the VISUAL, "Public Domain," such as DNA, emails, digital pictures, facial recognition, etc., are arguing the wrong point. The question is not of the information per se. The question is of the spiritual source of OWNership. "Well, we can swab for your DNA when we arrest you, for whatever reason, because DNA is JUST LIKE FINGERPRINTS - its in the PUBLIC DNA - just like your FACE - anyone can take a picture of your face in public! Anyone can record you in public!" (With your public CONSENT!).
Well, no. The difference is that one can choose to keep ones face behind a religious, private VEIL. One can even choose to wear gloves. But one canNOT choose to keep one's DNA from shedding, into the so-called, ('visual'), "PUBLIC DOMAIN."
Well - I say - if it is said to belong to this (visual), "Public Domain," then it does NOT belong to the GOVERNMENT. It does NOT belong to some privatising MEGA-CORPS or BANK. It does NOT belong to the police or to public records or to advertisers or to gossippers or enemies of the state!
I say that if it belongs to the PUBLIC DOMAIN, then it belongs to the COMMONS. And as it belongs to the COMMONS, then it belongs to ME IN MY CHOSEN PRIVACY, AS A REPRESENTATIVE OF THAT COMMONS. It belongs not to the visual world.
It belongs to my spirit, as I CHOOSE to exercise my spirit - be I crazy fundamentalist or Humanist or Atheist or CIVIL LIBERTARIAN. My religion may have no god, or a god who flew the coop after the moment of Creation - but I maintain a spirit and a religion which is fundamentally CIVIC, and is the domain of the rights of us all.
So. Some Monsanto wheat drifts into a field, and I eat the wheat from this field - and then the GMO genes make their way into my gut bacteria and also into my own genes. Now Monsanto owns me because it has a copyright on this DNA - of the (visual), "PUBLIC DOMAIN"! I am, theoretically, without my consent - having done nothing wrong - suddenly become the property and slave of Monsanto? All because my deepest privacy was so benignly infiltrated?! Um - I don't think so.
The logical extension of these arguments for the unlimitted collection of visually-accessible data is not only absolutely insane - it is profane in its essence. And, of course, CORPORATIONS ARE NOT PEOPLE!
Why? Because the so-anointed field of the visual - including property and money - these are matters of QUANTITY. They are irrelevant to the HIGHER matters of spiritual rights, or QUALITY, as in every individual's sacred right to privacy. There can be no integrity - no proud, fighting people - without this right defended. With this right defended, there falls away FEAR - and so, there falls away terriblism, and the great national security behemoth, once called TYRANNY, blithely accumulating around it, like a tumour where oxygen has been deprived. Like a after a few good nights' sleep, the body politic, and the economy, regain their health. Arise!
"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759
There is only so far that visual 'evidence' can go. Eventually, it becomes evident that those who control the images are the ones who control the power. Then we would leave it for Generals and Presidents and BANKSTERS to make our judgment calls for us - when 300 million of us should have been making these judgments and these choices IN THE PRIVACY OF OUR OWN, HOMES? SAFE AND SOUND? SAVED AND ENLIGHTENED?! We are the eminator of the light which guides our public sphere. We are the pineal gland of the social conscience. (huh?!)
The U.S. Constitution and its first amendments was a package deal. Politically, neither the former or latter could have passed without the political sway and insistence of a variety of agents on behalf of a variety of states. The former defined the LIMITATION of powers of the Federal Government. The latter delineated civil PROTECTIONS from potentially abusive powers of the Federal Government, or states advancing such abuses. So, some concepts were left incompletely defined, and were left to the contemplation and decisions of future generations to work out. Slavery was a prime example of one such issue to be worked out. However, anything within the first amendments came part-and-parcel along with the full authority of the Constitution in the main.
And, the most important of these amendments was amendment NUMBER ONE: Wherein it is stated that no law shall be enacted regarding the establishment of a religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, (public or private). Notice how the individual practice of religion flows from the need for a separation of church and state? That, even then, mean that neither government nor religion had a right to be meddling IN YOUR BED, nor in the beds of each other. Even then, it meant that what you morally, religiously chose to do in the privacy of your own home, whether that be called, "Sodomy," in the public, visual realm, was entirely your right. There could be no cops or dogs or drone peeping in your windows or sniffing around your atmosphere, to concoct some trap by which to snare you. For, even further back in those days of Salem witch hunts, they fully understood the profound dangers of vile, contagious GOSSIP, and its attendant bullies and attention-seekers.
Then, notice how, flowing from these religious rights, there easilly arises the mention of the RIGHT TO PEACEABLY ASSEMBLE, or to FREE-ASSOCIATE (in public or private!); and then: THE RIGHT TO FREE SPEECH, and then (#4): THE RIGHT TO BE PROTECTED FROM ILLEGAL SEARCH AND SEIZURE! It is all because these rights are universally entangled, as is privacy with spirit. Therefore, the right to have one's religion protected from the power of the state(s), or whatever corporations it may be representing, is intricately entwined with the right to think and be as one wishes, in one's own chosen privacy.
It was assumed, back then, that should someone approach you, seeking to invade your privacy, you would have EVERY RIGHT to counter them with, "My religion provides that I may not enter into that temporal, juvenile game with you." - (Just as much as you would be allowed to use a gun to defend your life from a home invader).
Give to Caesar only what is Caesar's, and keep what is not.
And so, as a matter of religious conviction, in your court, the convo never gets to the point where the interloper is now squawking, "Well, if you haven't done anything WRONG, then what are you AFRAID of? Nyeh!!!"
The whole point of the Constitution is this: MORAL CHOICE BELONGS TO YOU AND YOU ALONE.
There are those who are allowed to opt out of war, by religious conviction.
Opting for privacy should have the same religious authority, by practice, if not by law.
* - (More relevant links are on their way).
The other reference for a right to privacy is in the Fourth Amendment, where one is protected from illegal search and seizure, or only whereby adequate justification and compensation is practiced: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
However, I feel that these, and most other rights provided for in the Constitution, strongly imply a ROOT right of privacy - a right which is fundamental to virtually all other rights.
For example - the requirement that no soldier may station himself (herself) in your home, (#3), which is a kind of precursor to the right to keep and bear arms within one's home or property, (#2), rather strongly implies that a soldier may not compel you out from your home, nor concern himself with matters in your home, or interrogate you regarding information within your home - or, needless to say, within your head - unless given just and probable cause, through a warrant properly issued by a contemplative judge - not some Monsanto shill... (ha)
For, what is the right to free speech, or not to testify against oneself, or the right to be given a trial by one's peers, or the right to equal protection, if one cannot be allowed the PRIVACY to think as one wishes, to sleep as one wishes, and to CREATE or to IMAGINE as one wishes? These things cannot be granted private to individuals, without also granting individuals the right to maintain their information in integrity and in control, protected from infringement by mere imitators, (copyright law), or actual enemies, (OF the state, or AS the state).
To argue that ALL information may be collected, simply because it has become technically possible to do so, is to completely ignore the bigger picture of the integrity of our rights as a-priori, self-evident authorities - we the people from which the government(s) may ONLY derive its powers or its taxes or its information.
That businesses may be allowed this infringement is in itself dangerous enough - how infinitely more dangerous when you have a corporatist government acting through coercion and force for the benefit of a handful of dysfunctional, monster corporations and banks? This was the very Tyranny which sparked the American Revolution, even though the word, "corporatism," had not yet been invented, or applied to the current tyranny. But, speaking of frickin USURPATIONS...
There has been a little 4th-grade-type meme that has been wielded like cheap sex whenever someone tends to resist incursions upon one's rights, especially upon the right to privacy, as through the expectation (demand) that one allow one's genitalia to be scanned or groped (rape), and this is the meme that says, "Well... If you haven't done anything WRONG, then what are you worried about?!" After all, we're all in this terriblism thing together, right? (Such as it has been manufactured).
Well, this juvenile meme is a diversionary tactic - a bully tactic - shifting focus on the assumption that you MAY be guilty. Otherwise - why NOT allow us to remove your shoes? Or your dignity? Or your rights? Because, we came for everyone else - all the other frogs in warm water - and look at how well they have obliged! And now we come for YOU. Why should you not hand over any information we require, if you have done nothing ILLEGAL?
ANYTHING illegal. No evidence of a crime - no matter - we can find some crime - we can create some crime - we can incriminate you with the information we vacuum away, should we not like your face, or what you may be saying politically...
There is a fine line between solicitation and extortion, as there is between extortion and torture. The habit of entrapment has been growing like a cancer until now it consumes even the most innocent - and them, most voraciously. So, the answer to this meme, SHOULD have been, from day ONE: "WHO THE HELL ARE YOU TO BE FUCKING WITH ME?"
Remember: None of us is alone in our self-evident rights. We are joined at the spirit, of our human independence, and so each of us is a valid representative of the rights and dignity of all. And so, we should be outraged at this attempted theft of spirit! Guilty or not, crime or no - these are irrelevant to the even bigger picture of OUR DEMOCRACY and its preservation. The greater the privacy each one of us can hold, the greater the privilege for all. We are the guardians of the Commons.
If you have been up late in lighted rooms, especially on an exciting night, you usually find that it's a bit harder to fall asleep at night, right? If you have been in your room, staring at a bright TV screen or a computer or laptop terminal, it's harder to fall asleep when there are all those squiggles and lines and letters still persisting in your visual field, even when you choose privacy by closing your eyes. And, like the effect of caffeine on the system, too much of the visual may cause us insomnia, and end up making us stressful and vulnerable in the day.
It is the same with privacy. As human beings, we are nourished by privacy - we need it - like we need sleep - it is a right, a prerequisite not only to willful and creative living, but to free association and to life itself. There can be no creativity - no economy - without the right to privacy preserved. It takes precedence over whatever moral issues outsiders, or so-said authorities, may have... with whatever information may be lurking in your house or in your head - or in your past.
Subjugate privacy to authority - especially arbitrary review by authority - and private authority is lost.
Take away privacy and, as when sleep is deprived, so is life taken away, soon enough. It is a kind of insidious, "Chinese water torture," to mess with privacy, which degrades the soul and withers the will.
There is no benefit to a common economy through perpetual mining for private informations, when all consumers and actors are made, each day, a little less free. For - out the window goes the freedom of privacy, then where is one awake enough to grasp after the following flight of the right to worship as one wills, or the right to separation of church and state, or the assumed rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?
Without privacy, one is broken and broken into, and out go one's liberties like bank savings or pension funds during a frontal attack of so called, "Austerity," pretending like a false authority to be some awesome MORAL AUTHORITY. Wake up and smell the coffee!
Speaking of invasion of privacy? Ever heard of those creepy things called DRONES? It starts with assumptions, and ends in abuse. "Well, it's all right, because we're only killing, 'the BAD guys.'"
The visual world is not the world of the spirit - where we contemplate moral issues, with that auditory loop in our heads, and our working memories, etc. The spiritual world is where we will, and we ponder, and we strive - we imagine - we CHOOSE. Even an animal must be left alone, to feel free enough before it may CHOOSE to comply with some law or request. How can 'authorities' expect to control millions of people by, bit-by-bit, snatching away this private right to casually deliberate and choose from the majority of the members in the society?! Impossible - and perverse! And antithetical to the Constitution.
Those authorities who would argue that all information is up for grabs, because new technology now brings all information into the VISUAL, "Public Domain," such as DNA, emails, digital pictures, facial recognition, etc., are arguing the wrong point. The question is not of the information per se. The question is of the spiritual source of OWNership. "Well, we can swab for your DNA when we arrest you, for whatever reason, because DNA is JUST LIKE FINGERPRINTS - its in the PUBLIC DNA - just like your FACE - anyone can take a picture of your face in public! Anyone can record you in public!" (With your public CONSENT!).
Well, no. The difference is that one can choose to keep ones face behind a religious, private VEIL. One can even choose to wear gloves. But one canNOT choose to keep one's DNA from shedding, into the so-called, ('visual'), "PUBLIC DOMAIN."
Well - I say - if it is said to belong to this (visual), "Public Domain," then it does NOT belong to the GOVERNMENT. It does NOT belong to some privatising MEGA-CORPS or BANK. It does NOT belong to the police or to public records or to advertisers or to gossippers or enemies of the state!
I say that if it belongs to the PUBLIC DOMAIN, then it belongs to the COMMONS. And as it belongs to the COMMONS, then it belongs to ME IN MY CHOSEN PRIVACY, AS A REPRESENTATIVE OF THAT COMMONS. It belongs not to the visual world.
It belongs to my spirit, as I CHOOSE to exercise my spirit - be I crazy fundamentalist or Humanist or Atheist or CIVIL LIBERTARIAN. My religion may have no god, or a god who flew the coop after the moment of Creation - but I maintain a spirit and a religion which is fundamentally CIVIC, and is the domain of the rights of us all.
So. Some Monsanto wheat drifts into a field, and I eat the wheat from this field - and then the GMO genes make their way into my gut bacteria and also into my own genes. Now Monsanto owns me because it has a copyright on this DNA - of the (visual), "PUBLIC DOMAIN"! I am, theoretically, without my consent - having done nothing wrong - suddenly become the property and slave of Monsanto? All because my deepest privacy was so benignly infiltrated?! Um - I don't think so.
The logical extension of these arguments for the unlimitted collection of visually-accessible data is not only absolutely insane - it is profane in its essence. And, of course, CORPORATIONS ARE NOT PEOPLE!
Why? Because the so-anointed field of the visual - including property and money - these are matters of QUANTITY. They are irrelevant to the HIGHER matters of spiritual rights, or QUALITY, as in every individual's sacred right to privacy. There can be no integrity - no proud, fighting people - without this right defended. With this right defended, there falls away FEAR - and so, there falls away terriblism, and the great national security behemoth, once called TYRANNY, blithely accumulating around it, like a tumour where oxygen has been deprived. Like a after a few good nights' sleep, the body politic, and the economy, regain their health. Arise!
"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759
There is only so far that visual 'evidence' can go. Eventually, it becomes evident that those who control the images are the ones who control the power. Then we would leave it for Generals and Presidents and BANKSTERS to make our judgment calls for us - when 300 million of us should have been making these judgments and these choices IN THE PRIVACY OF OUR OWN, HOMES? SAFE AND SOUND? SAVED AND ENLIGHTENED?! We are the eminator of the light which guides our public sphere. We are the pineal gland of the social conscience. (huh?!)
The U.S. Constitution and its first amendments was a package deal. Politically, neither the former or latter could have passed without the political sway and insistence of a variety of agents on behalf of a variety of states. The former defined the LIMITATION of powers of the Federal Government. The latter delineated civil PROTECTIONS from potentially abusive powers of the Federal Government, or states advancing such abuses. So, some concepts were left incompletely defined, and were left to the contemplation and decisions of future generations to work out. Slavery was a prime example of one such issue to be worked out. However, anything within the first amendments came part-and-parcel along with the full authority of the Constitution in the main.
And, the most important of these amendments was amendment NUMBER ONE: Wherein it is stated that no law shall be enacted regarding the establishment of a religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, (public or private). Notice how the individual practice of religion flows from the need for a separation of church and state? That, even then, mean that neither government nor religion had a right to be meddling IN YOUR BED, nor in the beds of each other. Even then, it meant that what you morally, religiously chose to do in the privacy of your own home, whether that be called, "Sodomy," in the public, visual realm, was entirely your right. There could be no cops or dogs or drone peeping in your windows or sniffing around your atmosphere, to concoct some trap by which to snare you. For, even further back in those days of Salem witch hunts, they fully understood the profound dangers of vile, contagious GOSSIP, and its attendant bullies and attention-seekers.
Then, notice how, flowing from these religious rights, there easilly arises the mention of the RIGHT TO PEACEABLY ASSEMBLE, or to FREE-ASSOCIATE (in public or private!); and then: THE RIGHT TO FREE SPEECH, and then (#4): THE RIGHT TO BE PROTECTED FROM ILLEGAL SEARCH AND SEIZURE! It is all because these rights are universally entangled, as is privacy with spirit. Therefore, the right to have one's religion protected from the power of the state(s), or whatever corporations it may be representing, is intricately entwined with the right to think and be as one wishes, in one's own chosen privacy.
It was assumed, back then, that should someone approach you, seeking to invade your privacy, you would have EVERY RIGHT to counter them with, "My religion provides that I may not enter into that temporal, juvenile game with you." - (Just as much as you would be allowed to use a gun to defend your life from a home invader).
Give to Caesar only what is Caesar's, and keep what is not.
And so, as a matter of religious conviction, in your court, the convo never gets to the point where the interloper is now squawking, "Well, if you haven't done anything WRONG, then what are you AFRAID of? Nyeh!!!"
The whole point of the Constitution is this: MORAL CHOICE BELONGS TO YOU AND YOU ALONE.
There are those who are allowed to opt out of war, by religious conviction.
Opting for privacy should have the same religious authority, by practice, if not by law.
* - (More relevant links are on their way).