Fourteen Reasons Privacy Matters

                This post is a summary of the article published in  October 2013 with the incomplete title above at   https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1004&context=libfacpub

                This article attempts to expand understanding by reviewing scholarly literature on privacy from a wide variety of disciplines, including anthropology, law, philosophy, psychology and sociology. Addressing the question of whether privacy is a value that spans cultures, the article traces a number of major themes, enumerating a host of individual, interpersonal, and societal goods that are made possible by privacy. The volume of literature on privacy is immense. This review does not claim to be comprehensive or evaluative, and it naturally struggle with the difficulty of summarizing deep and complex arguments in mere sentences  and paragraphs. Privacy is a fundamental, moral right ro which people are entitled, rather than simply a legal right or a right that can be explicated in terms of other rights such as property, or life. The Professor of law Daniel Solove identifies six general types of definition of privacy: 1) the right to be alone.  2) the ability to limit access to the self by others.  3) secrecy or concealment of certain mattera.  4) the ability to control information about oneself.  5) the protection of one's ´personhood, individuality and dignity. 6) control over one' intimate relationship. Alan Westin claims that needs for individual and group privacy and resulting norms are present in virtually every society, and he cites a host of anthropological studies documenting the various ways societies  achieve privacy. Westin also cites studies of animal behavior and social organization that suggest that human and animals share basic mechanisms for claiming privacy. He says "the animal's struggle to achieve privacy and participation provides one of the basic processes of animal life. In this sense, the quest for privacy is not restricted to man alone, but arises in the biological and social processes of all life." Barry Scwartz makes the case that even small children have the privacy impulse. In his exploration of the basis for human rights concepts such as the individual self, autonomy, and privacy. Larry Nucci examines a number of recent studies and finds that "areas of personal choice and discretion are maintained by individuals across a range of cultures, personal is not an invemtion of Western culture, but a psychological necessity for the establishment of the social self." Following are fourteen reasons privacy matters, drawn from a multidisciplinary reading of scholarly literature and organized into three broad sections: I ) benefits to the individual, II ) benefits to personal relationships, III ) benefits to society.  Benefits to the Individual. 1) Privacy protects from overreach of social interactions and provides opportunity for relaxation and concentration. - privacy protect us from "social overreaching" and gives individuals social freedom by limiting the control that others have over their lives. 2) Privacy affirms self-ownership - Privacy is a fundamental right that enables people to think of their existence as their own and protect the individual's interest in becoming, being, and remaining a person." Stanley Benn says the reason we allow people privacy is not to give them a better chance to be autonomous; rather, autonomous persons are worthy of respect and entitled to be unobserved. He argues that even "secret waching", is wrong, because it deliberately deceives a person about his world. Charles Fried describes that privacy serves not to protect things we will share only with friends but to protect certain thoughts from the whole world.  3) Privacy prevents intrinsic loss of freedom of choice - Privacy is not just a means of protecting freedom, it is itself constitutive of freedom in a number of important ways. The wrong is in replacing personal anonymity by notoriety, in turning a private life into a public spectable.  4) Privacy allows freedom from self-censorship and anticipatory conformity and allows people to explore. Jeffrey Reiman talks about the chilling effect on speech and action that occurs when people believe they are or may be under scrutiny and may be subject to punishment or denial of benefits and opportunities. In addition of lost liberty, many of the above writers express concern about the resulting diminishemnt of people as unique, autonomous individuals with human dignity.  5) Privacy helps prevent sorting of people into categories that can lead to lost opportunities and deeper inequalities. many scholars are concerned that the gathering of data about individuals and the sorting of people into categories can lead to a discriminatory process that sorts individuals on the basis of their estimated value or worth and reaches into every aspect of individuals' lives. Social scientists identifies several problems related to this data collection and sorting. And when used as a basic tool in decison making, mistakes and misidentification can lead to injustices.  6) Privacy prevents being misjudged out of context - Jeffrey Rosen writes about gossip and suggest that "the privacy of the backstage protect us from the unfairness of being misjudged by strangers who do not have time to put our informal speech and conduct into a broader context."  7) Privacy provides a physical space in which an individual can control the artifacts that support the narrative of her/his life - Iris Young observes that much of the theoretical discussion of privacy focuses on the mental aspects, and failing to notice sufficiently the material bases of privacy.  8) Privacy preserves the chance to make a fresh start - Viktor Schonberger note that the commitment of vast amounts of information to digital memory, along with the end of the need to dispose of older data for reasons of space, have made it less likely that people will forget past bahavior. This significant societal shift concerns Schonberger because digital memory create a temporal rather than a spatial version of the panopticon and transfer power from the surveilled to the surveyors.  Benefits to Personal Relationships.  9) Privacy allows individuals to be authentic and to play appropriate roles in various contexts - Rosen responds to the view by claiming that those who defend transparency are confusing secrecy with privacy, when secrecy is a small dimension of privacy. He says, "even those who claim that society would be better if people were less embarrassed about discussing their sexual activites in public, still manage to feel annoyed and invaded when they are solicited by telemarketers during the dinner. Rosen also observes that defenders of transparency seem to hold a simplistic view of human personality as unitary and integrated. James Rachels arguing that varying behavior with different people is not accidental; it is in part what defines different social relationships. This is why privacy is valuable in ordinary situations. 10) Privacy support intimacy and the building of relationships - a number of writers have examined the value of privacy in building and managing intimate relationships. Relationships shielded by privacy give people the opportunity to share confidences. Charles Fried claims that respect, love, friendship, and trust require privacy for their existence. According to him, intimacy is the sharing of information selectively, in a context in which one has the right not to share with everyone or with anyone. It is privacy that confers this right and creates "the moral capital we spend in friendship and love." Monitoring of people is problematic because it deprives people of the exclusivity of their sharing and makes it impossible to give the gift of intimacy.  Benefits to Society.  11) Privacy supports the common good - Solove recognizes the work of other scholars who have noted that privacy problems extend beyond harms to particular individuals, can affect the nature of society, and can impede individual activites that contribute to the social good. Privacy has a social value, because while it protects the individual, it does so for the sake of society. Solove also observes the breeches of confidentiality involve violations of trust, not only individual emotional distress, and he claims that "there is a strong value in ensuring that promises are kept."  12) Privacy protects from power imbalance between individuals and government/organizations - civil rights, freedom of expression, the possibility of taking part in political discussions free from fear of negative reactiobs, are some of the fields where a changed information balance may produce adverse impacts. Information tech will contribute not only to the centralization of social control but also to its intensification. Solove discuss concerns about due process and power imbalances related to surveillance and data gathering. He emphasize that the issue is not whether individuals have something to hide, rather the issue is about the way people are treated by the government and organizations. They affect the power relationship between people and institutions and create a sense of helplessness and powerlessness.  13) Privacy supports democracy, political activity, and service - As discussed earlier, surveillance and lack of privacy can have a chilling effect on free speech, free associations and other rights that are essential for democracy. This chilling effects also harm by reducing the number and variety of viewpoints expressed and the degree of freedom people have to engage in political activity.  14) Privacy provides space in society for disagreement - privacy protects a space for legitimately different views from the constant burden of justifying  their differences.