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The
bedrock of civil liberties
The world’s
leading experts are still unable to agree on a single definition of privacy despite
decades of academic debate. One pioneer in the field, Alan Westin of the U.S., described
privacy as “part philosophy, some semantics, and much pure passion.” On that point,
at least, everyone agrees.
The recognition of privacy is nevertheless deeply rooted in history. The Bible makes
numerous references to it. Jewish law has long recognized the concept of freedom
from being watched. There were also protections in Classical Greece and ancient China.
The Hippocratic Oath, dating from 300 BC, demands the confidentiality of doctor-patient
relationships. Western countries have had protections for hundreds of years by, for
example, applying rules to arrest peeping Toms or eavesdroppers. In the early 19th
century, parliamentarian William Pitt famously wrote, “The poorest man may in his
cottage bid defiance to all the force of the Crown. It may be frail; its roof may
shake; the wind may blow through it; the storms may enter; the rain may enter—but
the King of England cannot enter; all his forces dare not cross the threshold of
the ruined tenement.”
Indeed privacy is neither a modern nor a western concept. While the idea of privacy
as a fundamental human right still raises eyebrows in many developing countries,
the concept is familiar to the citizens of those cultures. At a societal and government
level, privacy may be viewed with some suspicion, and yet at a personal level, everyone
draws a curtain around certain aspects of family and private life.
In some respects, privacy is similar to freedom: the less you have of it, the easier
it is to recognize. Like the concept of freedom, privacy means different things to
different cultures. In France, it equates most closely to liberty. In America, it
is an inseparable component of individual freedoms—particularly freedom from intrusion
by federal government. Many European countries interpret privacy as the protection
of personal data.
For numerous Anglo-Saxon and French authors, the right to privacy entails respect
for “private life”: the right to live, as far as one wishes, protected from publicity
and to develop fulfilling relationships.
“In one sense, all human rights are aspects of the right to privacy,” as Fernando
Volio Jimenez, a champion of democracy from Costa Rica, once observed. Privacy protection
is one way of drawing the line on how far society can intrude into your affairs.
In that context, privacy is a question of power—your own as well as that of the government,
your family, employer and neighbour. It can even be a benchmark to indicate how much
autonomy a nation should have in the emerging international order.
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© Jean Lecointre, Paris
The picturesque streets
of Edinburgh (Scotland) are currently playing host to an extraordinary episode in
the ancient struggle between individual privacy and state power. Here, at the headquarters
of the Lothian and Borders Police, the DNA of the local population is being systematically
archived.
For the past two years, every person arrested or detained by Edinburgh police has
been forced to take a DNA test. The offences that warrant this practice are not confined
to the obvious categories of murder, rape and burglary, but also to traffic offences,
shoplifting, and public order transgressions such as breach of the peace.
The collection and storage of DNA must surely rank as one of the most intimate invasions
of the person, and yet the policy appears to have secured substantial public support.
A recent opinion poll suggests that nearly three-quarters of the local population
would be willing to give up their DNA in the “pursuit of a crime.”
The UK Home Office and other government agencies have also been excited by the potential
of DNA testing. Recent Child Support Agency legislation requires all alleged runaway
fathers to submit to a DNA test. Failure to do so is tantamount in law to an admission
of guilt.
The current mania for DNA testing is merely a symptom of a much broader trend throughout
the world. In the past, surveillance was based on the targeting of specific individuals
or groups. In recent years, governments and private sector organizations have moved
to incorporate it into almost every aspect of our finances, communication and lifestyle.
While paying lip service to privacy, they argue that surveillance is necessary to
maintain law and order and to promote economic efficiency. The rationale is often
self-serving, and somewhat bogus, but a substantial number of people have nevertheless
been persuaded that the surrender of privacy is the price we must pay for a better
and safer society.
The result is that many countries are becoming surveillance societies. There has
probably never been a time in history when so much information has been amassed on
the population-at-large. Details of the average economically active adult in the
developed world are located in around 400 major databases—enough processed data to
compile a formidable reference book for each person.
It is common wisdom that the power, capacity and speed of information technology
are accelerating rapidly. The extent of privacy invasion—or certainly the potential
to invade privacy—increases correspondingly. But it is not merely the increased capacity
and decreasing cost of information technology that creates threats to privacy. Globalization
of systems such as the Internet removes geographical limitations (and legal protections)
to data flows. Modern information systems are increasingly compatible and can exchange
and process different forms of data. Meanwhile multimedia, which fuses many forms
of transmission and expression of data and images, creates vast difficulties for
legislators wishing to protect personal privacy.
An example: the company UK InfoDisc has produced a CD-ROM that merges the electoral
roll data with the telephone book and geo-demographic data. So now the most basic
and innocent information about you can be entered into the disc, revealing all manner
of facts. Your telephone number leads instantly to your address. Your name leads
automatically to your occupation and age. It goes without saying that the finance
and credit industry, private investigators, newspapers, marketing companies and police
all make extensive use of the product.
These issues are important because the growing informational bond between citizen
and state (and of course the private sector) is nibbling away at human autonomy.
As decision-making by institutions becomes automated, the factors that affect our
lives are made on the basis of an increasing mass of intimate personal data. The
risk of statelessness or discrimination correspondingly intensifies.
In developing countries, the threat is magnified. The perfect identification of individuals
can have fatal consequences. Governments of developing nations rely on first world
countries to supply them with equipment for digital wiretapping, tracking and deciphering
data along with scanners, bugs and computer intercept systems. The transfer of surveillance
technology from first to third world (sometimes known as the repression trade) is
now a lucrative sideline for the arms industry. While information technology companies
routinely promote their products as a means of achieving social reform, the human
rights community increasingly defines them as a means of social and political control.
In this environment, the struggle to strike a balance between individual autonomy
and state power is more complex than ever. Not surprisingly, no other fundamental
right in the public policy arena has generated such turbulence and controversy as
privacy. While the international community has reached a baseline consensus on torture,
discrimination and racial hatred, privacy is viewed by many governments and corporations
as the bogeyman of human rights. While opinion polls consistently indicate that people
care about privacy, public opposition even to the most blatant intrusion is sporadic.
In the United States, the fingerprinting of welfare recipients has proceeded with
scarcely a murmur of discontent, while in Australia, attempts by the federal government
to introduce a national identity card sparked the biggest public protest in recent
memory. And yet while Australian legislation forcing banks to report suspicious transactions
passed without notice, similar legislation in the U.S. provoked more than a quarter
of a million written complaints. In Germany and Australia, proposals to introduce
digital phone services sparked widespread privacy concerns. Identical technology
in Britain was introduced with little or no discussion.
The most dangerous enemy of privacy, however, is the well-meaning individual who
argues “I have nothing to hide, so I have nothing to fear.” Nothing could be further
from the truth. Everyone has a sphere of private life which must be protected from
intrusion. Few people could honestly claim that their life—their family details,
financial affairs and health history—is an open book. Even if this were so, their
happy position should not provide a rationale for the invasion of other people’s
lives.
But the argument for privacy goes well beyond the integrity and autonomy of each
individual. Privacy is the fundamental test of a free society’s strength. The right
to privacy is the right to protect ourselves against intrusion by the outside world.
It is the measure we use to set limits on the demands made upon us. It is the right
we invoke to defend our personal freedom, our autonomy and our identity. It is the
basis upon which we assess the balance of power between ourselves and the world around
us.
Privacy is also the natural partner of freedom of expression. They are equal and
compatible rights. More so, both have evolved in the modern context as a synergy.
As the world embraces the information society and our lives go increasingly on-line,
the forces that promote censorship also diminish privacy—and vice versa.
It will become apparent in the coming years that these two rights will form the Great
Pillars of any free society.
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You
see, that’s the problem with terrorists—they have no respect for your private life.
Arnold
Schwarzenegger, Austrian-American actor, in “True Lies” (1947-)
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