Horror Worlds

            This post is a summary of three articles. The first was published with the title above in 2010 at http://www.economist.com/node/17388328. The second was published at ww.scu.edu/ethics/focus-areas/internet-ethics/resources/why-we-care-about-privacy/. The third was published at http://www.salon.com/2012/08/05/privacy_why_it_matters_much_more_than_you_think/

            The concern that technology will slowly but surely undermine human freedom is shared by quite a few mainstream thinkers. As this special report has argued, smart systems will improve efficiency. Yet if those systems seriously impinge on people's freedom, many people will balk. The protests against smart meters in Bakerfield and elsewhere may be only the start. Smart systems are rekindling old fears. Top of the list are loss of privacy and goverment surveillance. Internet users have only recently begun to realise that every single thing they do online leaves a digital trace. With smart systems the same thing will increasingly apply to the offline world, Google's Street View is only the beginning. Even the defenders of a smarter planet admit as much. "Some citizens have expressed discomfort at living in not a safer society, but in a 'surveillance society'," said Sam Palmisano, the boss of IBM, in a speech earlier this year. He cited a newspaper article recounting that there are now 32 closed-circuit cameras within 200 yards of the London flat in which George Orwell wrote his book "1984". Mr. Palmisano would be in the wrong job, however, he had not gone on to say that such concerns have to be rethought and to stress the economic and social benefits of smart systems. On the other hand smart systems are also undeniably useful as an instrument of control. Singapore has made an impressive job smartening up its physical infrastructure, but its network of security cameras could also be used for enforcing rules more objectionable than a ban on chewing gum. Similarly, the operations centres for local governments in China being built by Cisco, IBM and others beg the question whether their only purpose is to make these cities smarter. Other deep fears brought on by smart systems is that machines could be hacked, spin out of control and even take over the world, as they did in the film "The Matrix".  And there is a more subtle danger too: that people will come to rely too much on smart systems, Because humans can not cope with the huge amounts of data produced by machines, the machines themselves will increasingly make the decisions, cautions Frank Schirrmacher of the German daily in his recent book. A further worry is that smart technology will ultimately lead to greater inequality. Paul Saffo, a noted Silicon Valley technology forecaster, expects ubiquitous sensors to give a huge boost to productivity, at the expense of human monitors. "We are likely to see more jobless recoveries," he says. Whether computers will indeed to eliminate more jobs than they create remains to be seen. But smart systems certainly represent a conceptual change. So far IT has been used to automate and optimise processes within firms and other organizations as well as the dealings between them. Still, technology progress is not some force of nature that can not be guided. "We can and we should exercise control, by democratic consensus, " says Mr. Gelernter. Yet for a consensus to be reached, there must be openness. The biggest risk is that smart systems becomes black boxes, closed even to citizens who have skills to understand them. Smart systems will make the world more transparent only if they themselves are transparent.

              Privacy is important for a number of reasons. People can be harmed or debilitated if there is no restriction on the public's access to and use of personal information. Other reasons are more fundamental, touching the essence of human personhood. Reverence for the human person as an end in itself and as an autonomous being requires respect for personal privacy. To lose control of one's personal information is in some measure to lose control of one's life and one's dignity. There are many ways a person can be harmed by the revelation of sensitive personal information. Medical records, interviews, financial records, welfare records, sites visited on the internet and a variety of other sources hold many intimate details of a person's life. The revelation of such informaton can leave the subjects vulnerable to many abuses. The information can be misused, or even used for malicious purposes. The insensitive behavior of others can cause the person serious distress and embarrassment. Privacy protection is necessary to safeguard against abuses. Privacy is also needed in the ordinary conduct of human affairs, to facilitate social interchange. Privacy is an essential prerequisite for forming relationships. The degree of intimacy in a relationship is determined in part by how much personal information is revealed. What one tells one's spouse is quite different from what one would discuss with one's employer. If they were always under observation, they could not enjoy the degree of intimacy that a marriage should have. Charles Fried puts it more broadly. Privacy, he writes, is "necessary to relations of the most fundamental sort: respect, love, friendship and trust...without privacy they are simply inconceivable." The analysis suggest a deeper and more fundamental issue: personal freedom. As Deborah Johnson has observed, "To recognize an individual as an autonomous being, an end in himself, entails letting that individual live his life as he chooses. Of course, there are limits to this, but one of the critical ways that an individual controls his life is by choosing with whom he will have relationships and what kind of relationships these will be. Information mediates relationships. Thus when one can not control who has information about one, one loses considerable autonomy". Even if the person never found out about their prying, the person has lost some of his freedom. The person did not want them to have access to his personal life, but they seized it anyway. Autonomy is part of the broader issue of human dignity, that is, the obligation to treat people not merely as means, to be bought and sold and used, but as valuable and worthy of respect in themselves. Personal information is an extension of the person. To have access to that information is to have access to the person in a particularly intimate way. When some person information is taken and sold, it is as if some part of the person has been alienated and turned into a commodity. In that way the person is treated merely as a thing, a means to be used for some other end. Privacy is even more necessary as a safeguard of freedom in the relationships between individuals and groups. Surveillance is powerful instrument of social control. Under these circumstances they findd it better simply to conform. This is the situation characterized in George Orwell's book 1984, where the pervasive surveillance of "Big Brother" was enough to keep most citizens under rigid control. The ability to develop one's unique individuality is especially important in a democracy, which values and depends on creativity, noncorformism and the free interchange of diverse ideas. That is where a democracy gets its vitality. Just as a social balance favoring surveillance over privacy is a functional necessity for totalitarian systems, so a balance that ensures strong citadels of individual privacy and limits surveillance is a prerequisite for democratic societies. Even apparently harmless gossip, when widely and persistently circulated, is potent for evil. It belittles by inverting the relative importance of things, thus dwarfing the thoughts and aspirations of a people. When personal gossip attains the dignity of print, and crowds the space available for matters of real interest to the community, what wonder that the ignorant and thoughtless mistake its relative importance. Triviality destroy at once robustness of thought and delicacy of feeling. No enthusiasm can flourish, no generous impulse can survive under its blighting influence. For Warren, privacy was a means of protecting the freedom of the virtuous to maintain their values against the corrupting influence of the mass media that catered to people's basest instincts. Although the degrading effect of the mass media is still a problem, there is another serious threat to freedom comes from governments and other large institutions.  For example, Ignazio Silone, in his book Bread and Wine, described the use of surveillance in Fascist Italy in this way: On this degradation of man into a frightened animal, who quivers with fear and hates his neighbor in his fear, and watches him, betrays him, sells him, and then lives in fear of discovery, the dictatorship is based. The real organization on which the system in this country is based is the secret manipulation of fear. While totalitarian regimes may not seem as powerful or as sinister as they did 50 years ago, surveillance is still used in many places as an instrument of oppression. When we speak of privacy, particularly as a right, we focus on the individual. The individual must be shielded from the prying curiosity of others and from discrimination. The individual's autonomy and control over his or her person must be preserved. The individual must be protected from intimidation and coercion. 

               The greatest threat to privacy is a pervasive, shrugging indifference. Many (though not all) citizens are willing to give up a certain amount of their personal information to obtain credit cards, rent movies, post phootos and look at web pages. After all, if you are not doing anything wrong, what do you have to hide? Garret Keizer's book "Privacy" encourages its readers to reframe how they think of privacy before it is too late. Read it to jolt your imagination into new territory, and to understand why the privacy that many of us sacrifice so readily ought to be held more dear. Keizer aims to show that privacy, and respect for privacy, are core humanist values that should be enshrined in the heart of any society aspiring to social justice. He argues this against two distinct points of view that treat privacy as unimportant. The first, and by far the most common regards privacy as a relatively minor right that can  and often should cede in favor of commerce or security. But there is another type of skepticism towards privacy rights, who dismiss it as a bourgeoise concern. There is an abundance of thought in  the book "Privacy". Keizer has a way of turning lazy notions inside out to exhibit their fallacies. To the tech moguls who seems to think we ought to blithely hand over our personal information, he retorts, "were privacy not a good thing, the wealthier among us would not enjoy more of it than the less wealthy do." Mark Zuckerberg does not live in a fishbowl. Keizer's observations on the embattled privacy of the poor, the distinctions between privacy and loneliness and the essential link between the degradation of life and disrespect for the sanctuary of private life will serve readers of all political flavors. I am convinced by Keizer's argument that a society that does not value our personal privacy can not plausibly claim to value our humanity. This may be a far bigger conundrum than one book can solve, but "Privacy" is a step in the right direction.