I think the difference of opinion between the two of us centers around Dana's assertion that "when [the city dweller] realizes that [the government] want more than to enter his home but his soul, it hardly matters—he ceded it to the multitudes long ago." I think that this misstates what happens. I do not give my soul in a conversation, a trip to the grocery store, an argument on the street or searching for alternate means of contraception. It is wrested from me when the data are put together in a dossier and conclusions reached about who I am. The taking of the soul is not about privacy or anonymity, but about the harm of data aggregation (or is it about all three?).

Data aggregation can be done in either the city or the country. It is easier to lose yourself by accident in the (or our hypothetical) country, where everyone knows who you are and there is a clear, space-drawn line between public and private. This is what we have, for the purposes of this conversation, been calling privacy-if you cross that line, you risk losing control of your soul. But in the city, it must be taken from you, collected systematically from places you shop, by people following you or from microphones in convenient places. This is what we have been calling anonymity, and it is a much more blurry line. Both of these concepts protect your soul. Dana and I agree here too (see her second paragraph in response, above), what I think we disagree about is the consequences.

I do not think that the city dweller thinks that she has opened herself to the harm because she is more observed than she was when she lived in the country. I do not believe it any more than I believe that by tearing up my diary (if i kept one) into 1,000,000 pieces and scattering them to the wind, I could expect someone to know what I wrote about on the day before my wedding.

-- JustinColannino - 18 Feb 2009