Koz and Effect

On privacy.

I’ll start off with a quote:

“”As a social good, I think privacy is greatly overrated because privacy basically means concealment. People conceal things in order to fool other people about them. They want to appear healthier than they are, smarter, more honest and so forth.”
-Judge Richard Posner, 7th Court of Appeals.

I saw the aforementioned quote on a cnet site and almost immediately went to find the full quote, as we see all too often how things are taken out of context. (I’d highly recommend watching his full comments; his words were not twisted and he went on to defend them, but he clearly had a specific context in mind.)

The quote was repeated around in many places, and in many ways it parallels Eric Schmidt’s “you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place” statement when questioned on privacy.

In both cases, these people infer scenarios where illegal acts are being committed by people who enjoy privacy. Certainly we could have stopped what bad things they were doing had we been listening to their phones or reading their e-mail.

To those who lose friends or family due to violent acts, this reasoning seems obvious. Surely the sanctity of life matters more than someone reading your e-mail. The policies of the United States following 9/11 followed the reasoning that the threat of retaliation was no longer a sufficient weapon against those who did not fear. No amount of punishment would ever bring dead people back to life, and so removing all threats to life became the modus operandi.

Years go by and the incessant calls to “connect the dots” faded away. Companies like AT&T had their eavesdropping operations exposed, and people reacted with shock and anger at comments like the one above. Why is it privacy suddenly matters again? Hadn’t we settled this issue?

As most people reading probably answered to themselves earlier, privacy is not about hiding one’s ill deeds (though it can be used for such) but also serves as one’s protection. Every one of us was conceived in what could be considered a private act, (I wish I could find who originally pointed that out to me, but I forget the blog author) and many of us carry knowledge in our heads that, in the wrong hands, could be used against us. Privacy is enshrined even in the highest levels of government when every two years, citizens pull a curtain around themselves, protecting their secret ballot against the danger of peer pressure and intimidation.

I have no doubt that if I were to bring these examples up to either of these men, they would agree that the need for privacy in these circumstances is necessary. But it is unmanageable to decide for every possible scenario what should be privacy and what should not. Instead we craft laws, which state in broad terms when privacy should be respected, and when it should not.

As Posner points out, people divulge all sorts of information daily with little care or concern as to what happens to it. The commonality of which technology has affected us has leveled our fears somewhat, we do not feel as exposed divulging our addresses if everyone else on our street has as well. And the data collected by computers and other systems is often vacuumed up into vast databases, and acted upon by algorithms and trending software, it’s focus trained outwards on thousands and millions rather than that of the individual. Think of the likelyhood that someone would focus on one individual in a sea of names, and one can feel complacent.

Improbable is not impossible however, and the same databases that deliver harmless ads in the hands of one can deliver malware or make charges to credit in the hands of another. Individuals can have their careers and lives ruined when privacy is breached. Is it right in these cases to assume that these individuals were doing something they shouldn’t have been?

To assume that privacy means hiding ill deeds forgets that we depend on our privacy every day for threats of predation, intimidation, and quick judgment. And just as we assume “innocence until proven guilty” to protect the unlawful incarceration of individuals, so must we assume one’s right to privacy lest we reveal information that can be used to compromise. It should be treated as no less important than justice itself. While there are many cases where an individual can be cleared after a wrongful sentence, “What has been seen cannot be unseen” so the saying goes.