But is it right to let companies track users simply because the users say it's ok?
To put it another way: I think the EU would be right to consider it's citizens not as adults that are able to make decisions on integrity or privacy.
Yes. Are we not free individuals capable of consent?
> I think the EU would be right to consider it's citizens not as adults that are able to make decisions on integrity or privacy.
I find this paternalistic, authoritarian attitude to be immoral. Sad to see the ideas of the Enlightenment, of Locke and the founding fathers, so casually discarded.
What remains to be decided here is whether the collection of data by "surveillance capitalists" is corrosive enough to society to be forbidden or restricted as well.
> The individual is not held sacrosanct,
By you perhaps, but those are the principles of the Enlightenment and modern western society and have served us far better than collectivism.
> especially when he/she acts against the group.
Right, sharing my data with another individual or company isn't "acting against the group" or even involving the group.
> What remains to be decided here is whether the collection of data by "surveillance capitalists" is corrosive enough to society to be forbidden or restricted as well.
Not if you respect individual, natural rights. Furthermore, scientific/medical research, traffic prediction, spam detection, self-driving all are arising out of voluntary submission of data by free individuals. I don't see any sense in hindering innocent, positive efforts out of a desire for retribution against "surveillance capitalists" based on the "guilty until proven innocent" model of preemptive regulation. Thankfully the principles of individual, natural rights have been codified into the US Constitution to a large degree.
Nor was the individual held to be above the rule of law in Enlightenment thought. The law was thought to be made by individuals acting collectively (a departure from having a single individual, i.e. monarch, doing it), so if anything the Enlightenment introduced the "collectivism" by pushing lawmaking down into a demographic that was much more populous. What do you think voting in a constitutional convention is? Individuals collectivizing! Just like Soviet farmers!!!!! Oh no!
Correct. And had individual rights been upheld we could have avoided the costly lessons and lives destroyed by those rights-trampling laws.
> Nor was the individual held to be above the rule of law in Enlightenment thought.
The theory of natural rights, which was central to the Enlightenment, held that the laws and governments were formed only to secure individual rights and could not be made to supersede them. A constitutional convention is voting on how to best uphold and respect those rights, not overrule them.
If we're making tedious lists, don't forget the US state of Nevada. But my point wasn't about prostitution and I wasn't trying to change the subject to prostitution; apparently you find the topic too distracting. What about crack? Not a word about crack?
In England it's illegal to
induce someone to become a prostitute
solicit in a public place
kerb crawl
run a brothel
earn money from someone else being a prostitute
have sex with someone who's been forced into prostitution even if you didn't know
have sex with someone who's been trafficed, even if you didn't know (and trafficing includes being transported around England, not just into England).
So, yes, two people exhanging money for sex is legal, but actually carrying out that arrangement is difficult.