i'm responding to your statement that an employer should not be stopped by society from spying on his employees, because "the employment is voluntary." The obvious absurdity of your statement is that just because employment is voluntary, not all actions within that employment are voluntary. In other words, without notification, THERE IS NO CONSENT.

That wasn't what I said. The libertarian idea of government is that the government's purpose is to protect individuals from force and fraud. There is clearly no force here and fraud only if the contract protected against this sort of activity. And I was speaking about governments making laws, not society. You're getting all mixed up by thinking I'm saying that the employee is consenting to this. Of course they haven't consented, but why should the employer have to have the consent of the employee?

By that "no force or fraud" claim, an employer should be allowed to monitor the women's bathroom without notifying the employees, and that'd be fine?

That seems morally wrong. It's one things to keep tabs on your employee's locations, it's another to spy on them in the bathroom. Should we employ an army of government agents to make sure their privacy is not breached and to punish those who breach it? Is a boss who's enough of a creep to put a camera in the women's room for kicks going to care that he's breaking the law?

I think this is a bad assumption. Just because I own my house it doesn't mean I can lead you to some booby trap when you come inside. If I let you use my computer, I can't hit a switch that makes it blow up.

The blackberry thing might be a gray area, but if I were an employer I probably wouldn't think that tracking them without telling them was a good way to do business. (Especially since, afaict, you don't really lose a whole lot by saying "hey, just so you know, I can track your whereabouts with that thing.")

If a customer of yours found out you drink "too much" and decided to stop doing business with you, do you think he should face legal consequences?

In your example, the friend is GIVING you a phone. He's then accessing YOUR device and obtaining information from it. Big difference IMO.

jeeze, replace the word 'giving' with 'lending'?


Awesome thread showing how libertarians don't have some singular approach to how the world should work, btw.

So by your reasoning, there should be no such thing as laws which punish people for breaching other peoples privacy. Taso gave an example above where the employer gave his employees a laptop. You should have no problem, legally speaking, with the employer using it to watch and listen in on his employees if he wants right?

There should be no difference here between GPS tracking and video spying if the only law which should be made are protection from force and fraud.

Right to privacy is an extension of right to property. If I own my body I am free to hide my actions from people (inasmuch as those actions don't interfere with others property rights). I think a firm should not be allowed to secretly monitor it's employees but if that monitoring is open, upfront and stipulated clearly in any employment contract (and thus voluntarily agreed to) I have no problem with it.

I don't see why an employer would want to go the secret route anyway. Obviously I'd rather just hire people I can trust to do their jobs but failing that I'd much rather let people know I'm watching them and not have them **** about in the first place than have them **** about and have to catch them out, deal with reprimanding them etc etc.

Ahh the value of a full disclosure clause in an employment contract.

the practice of secretly spying on people is a largely a statist issue.
people should have a right to privacy, exactly where to draw the line i dont know but contracts and precedents will be helpful.

Ahh, the value of never having to work for a large corporation past the age of 24.

Why shouldn't it be allowed?

???

So if I own no property, if I don't have any rights of privacy? Do I have that correct? And this was just a bald assertion on your part, without any backing argument or explanation, correct? Why do you claim the two relate?

And if you don't own your own body, then what ???? And what the heck do you dudes mean by "owning your own body"? Let's see, you dudes agree that, baring the Star-Trek Borg "assimilating" you, that you always have possession of your own body, correct? And that possession is always legitimate, correct? So if your are always necessarily in legitimate physical possession of your own body... what possible, meaningful, or even intelligible distinction are you dudes trying to add by overloading with some legalistic concept of "ownership" here?

What makes you think a boss is going to have either/or thinking here. Most non-Libertarians are not terminally unable to see the world as either/or, even bosses. The boss tells and shows the workers one set of snooping, but has other secret ways. A simple notice that snooping will be done, without details, in the "voluntary" contract makes anything in LibertarianLand all OK, easy game. Once the boss has "got the goods/ enjoyed the show/ got his nut off" watching the secret tapes, easy game to catch the same people off guard in other ways -- or not and continue enjoying the show.

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Are you really going to claim there are more police cameras secretly spying on folks now than there are boss cameras? And what about non-boss perv cameras? Haven't you heard that industrial spying dwarfs "statist" spying IRL? Good luck backing this assertion up...

Consent only applies to those things that require consent. Sexual intercourse clearly requires consent. Anyone is within their rights to use force to defend a human being from being raped. But why should anyone have the right to use force when someone's property isn't aggressed against? Do you believe in intellectual property?

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Allowed is possibly the wrong word, I don't think that anyone should use force to stop it. I do think that the employee would have a case in a private court against an boss that secretly spy on them and used that info to affect them in a negative way.

In AC-lingo, that is the use of force if I'm not mistaken. What use is a court if not backed up with the possibility of the use of force against person or property if there is no mechanism forcing those found guilty to comply with what the court sentences?

I could be way wrong but the way I see it I can't truly be said to own something if I'm not allowed to keep others from interacting with it (if I have that ability).


This seems like an odd thing for a boss to be doing. There are far easier ways of perving on people than taking the time money and effort to set up a business run it for a few years work 18 hour days become successful start to take on workers and then be like "finally I get to see when someone goes to the bathroom!" Only then to lose all that hard work when people realise what kind of a weirdo you are and go work somewhere else.

How is a right to privacy an extension of property rights, and how is it compatible with the NAP? Spying on someone is not aggression against person or property so on what libertarian moral grounds is it permissable to use force against someone who has breached someone else's privacy?

Saying "it's a statist issue" is a co-out. We're talking about private employers here not the state. You can't just handwave away legitimate questions just by saying, "ah that's just a statist issue". There are clearly issues to be addressed here wrt libertarian morality and privacy which have nothing to do with the state and would still exist in ACland. Do try to stay on script.

Well my argument would be that in this case the dudes privacy is an extension of his property so the snooper is trespassing in a sense thereby initiating a force transaction. The private court can then close that force transaction in an appropriate way, ie not shooting the guy in the head.

If you have no right to use force to stop something, then it isn't a form of aggression. Private arbitration only decides on voluntarily agreed contracts. If there is no agreement against this then the court has nothing to do with it.


re: affect them in a negative way. ->

Do you believe you own your job? Do you believe you own your reputation? Do you believe in intellectual property rights?

I guess if nielsio and NIMN are against you on something it's time to think about it some more. I just have a sense that an action you take that you wish to be private should in some way belong to you, however I don't have the wherewithal to fashion that feeling into a coherent logical narrative so either I'm too dumb or one doesn't exist.