What Privacy Is For (2012)
papers.ssrn.com
papers.ssrn.com
The issue with privacy, and the reason it has such an image problem, is that society can be split up into 3 groups:
* People who believe authority figures are fundamentally acting in good faith (large majority).
* People who believe authority figures are acting in bad faith (substantial minority)
* People who want to deploy authority to make others do what they want.
Group 3 want privacy to have an image problem, and they are persistent in their attacks.
Privacy is a tool for the second group to convince the first to coordinate with them. The first group won't accept arguments that authority figures might potentially act in bad faith. Therefore, the argument must be made that people have fundamental rights to privacy that a good faith authority figure will not want to infringe.
It is a matter of taste what people want to believe the % breakdown of society is into those 3 groups, but try going in to a discussion arguing that authorities might in the future act in bad faith. It is remarkably difficult to carry a debate with that frame despite substantial evidence.
They'll most likely think you're exaggerating and maybe a little bit of a conspiracy theorist. Most people really do trust the government to act in good faith, even if you see them badmouthing various politicians.
On the other hand, some people value privacy for different reasons. Some people value privacy for its own sake since they are not seeking, nor do they desire, attention. Others are uncomfortable with intrusions upon their life, not because of others explicitly exerting power over them but because it interferes with their sense of autonomy.
Here's a simple and observable human trait: knowing you're being watched changes your behavior. How you behave in private is different to how you behave when you know someone might be watching.
Our access to privacy is normative of our patterns of thought and way of seeing the world. The lack of privacy might not seem important in individual cases but the cumulative effect is a weakening of our ability to think without boundaries.
Reducing the possible scope of discussion around this issue to one of political/economic control I think fails to see a whole set of other important aspects here. Of course power and control are important issues too - just not the only issues. Privacy has always been an aspect of human societies - loosing it has the potential to change more than just our political and economic lives.
Privacy is about thoughts. It is impossible to fully know the mind of another person. Without that knowledge, a person's thoughts can never be fully put into context. If all thoughts were made public, all human beings would look like monsters or mentally ill to each other. This is why privacy is necessary.
So its not just about protecting people's thought, its also about protecting peoples thoughts from being fiddled with by fools too dumb to fully understand how dumb they are.
Which is why privacy is about power and claiming our own territory for our thoughts. It's also about testing different ideas out before they're made public so that the ideas have been mulled over properly in a safe space, un-judged by the masses.
No, not always.
Insisting on there being no cameras in your bathroom has nothing to do with thoughts. It's barely even to do with information: you'd be unlikely to really learn anything consequential from those cameras. It's still a matter of basic privacy.
It is the natural state of existence, where there is a boundary between your experience and that of others. It is the primary and most natural freedom, and the people who use language and force to deprive you of it only do it because they want you to to work for them - instead of them. Privacy is not defended by words, because words themselves presume an external authority to prevail upon and get permission from. Privacy itself is freedom and it is only exercised by action.
I actually worked in privacy for a decade or more, consulting to government organizations about how to preserve their legitimacy when they collect data on people. I've discovered there are a fair number of bureaucratic nihilists who think ends justify means, and see the idea of privacy as being anti-progress, but mainly just anti-them. Wow do they get mad when you ask them do comply with the law.
(SSRN absolutely refuses to give up the goods.)