Private Parts
I recently made a trip to a local gun club. As one might imagine, a gun club is not a hot bed of liberal sentiment.
While I was in the club office, the range warden was holding forth on a political matter. To paraphrase his position, he stated that because he had nothing to hide, he not only didn't object to government surveillance (wiretapping); he welcomed it…
I was shocked. I had expected that a representative of an organization which had such a vested interest in gun ownership and gun freedom would have embraced political views which cleaved closer to more conservative ideals. In retrospect, I've begun to understand that there is more than a little confusion on this topic. The "I've nothing to hide" (INTH) group seems to believe that government surveillance is harmless to those with nothing to hide, is a potential aid to discovering potential bad actors, and therefore necessarily has a very high (infinitely high?) benefit to cost ratio.
The problem with this reasoning is the unusually narrow scope tacitly assigned to of the utility of privacy. It assumes that privacy is only useful for obfuscating bad/criminal actions. I submit that isn't the case at all; Americans have taken a VERY broad view of privacy, legal and otherwise, for generations. A time long enough for broad privacy to be an American legal tradition which courts of all kinds take under consideration. I've asked a few people about their attitudes toward privacy and gotten answers which reflect a broad view: privacy is valuable even if one has nothing to hide such that surveillance is a burdensome violation even for those with nothing to hide.
Example 1: I've got translucent glass in my bathroom window, that wavy glass that destroys image resolution but allows light to pass. I'm pretty sure my neighbors like it that way and so do I. Not that I have anything to hide, if they want to watch, let them. If they're really all that curious, I'll set up seats and sell them tickets and popcorn. I just prefer my privacy; I value it even though I don't really have anything to hide.
Example 2: How would you feel if merchants followed you around their store as you shopped? You wouldn't be doing anything wrong, just shopping… But being followed seems like an invasion doesn't it? Wouldn't it be worse if it were just *certain* shoppers? Wouldn't you feel like you were being flagged for wrongdoing? Wouldn't it make you uncomfortable enough to start shopping elsewhere?
Example 3: I notice a real paucity of people publishing the contents of their medicine cabinets, the contents of their wallets, their library lists, their credit cards purchases. All of the houses on my street have curtains or blinds or both… People seem to believe that their privacy is a layer of protection from people they don't trust. Even if that protection is illusory, illusory protections provide real comfort to those poor slobs clueless enough to rely upon them. If they weren't, all those TSA screeners at the airports would be unemployed. Stripping people of their comforts, seems like real harm.
Example 4: Should you have to tell everyone about every embarassing thing that has every happened to you? What about situations that you've been in which would SEEM illegal, immoral, etc. at first blush? Isn't it of real comfort to know that facts which are prone to misinterpretation or are otherwise disreputable can be kept secret?? Harm to reputation, personal, professional, or otherwise is recognized as real harm at law; stripping people of a layer of protection for their reputations seems to open them to harm.
Example 5: Information is valuable. Corporations have trade secrets (phone lists, formulae, etc.) Inventors want to keep their projects private until they patent them. Writers want to keep their latest books or movies secret until they go on sale in order to build suspense and interest. Corporations pay millions for consumer data lists. Shouldn't data about one's own self, information which has potential value to a buyer, whether of consumer data, or titillating voyeuristic information, or whatever, be something that a person should be able to protect because it has value? If I could sell the data if I chose, might it not be my intellectual property? Isn't taking (or converting) valuable information (or intellectual property) without due process a violation of the Fourth Amendment?
Privacy is a much broader collection of rights than the right to hide wrongdoing, if you give away your privacy you've opened your property, reputation, freedom, and maybe your life itself to auditing or maybe seizure by any agent who cares to take an interest. Worse, you're not just opening it to the people presently empowered; if you destroy privacy protection, you're opening it to everyone who get into power in the future...
I don't mean to jump to conclusions, but I imagine that the range warden at my local rifle club would be much more concerned about his privacy (and maybe his right to bear arms) if he knew that, in just a few short years, President Hillary Clinton might be listening in…
While I was in the club office, the range warden was holding forth on a political matter. To paraphrase his position, he stated that because he had nothing to hide, he not only didn't object to government surveillance (wiretapping); he welcomed it…
I was shocked. I had expected that a representative of an organization which had such a vested interest in gun ownership and gun freedom would have embraced political views which cleaved closer to more conservative ideals. In retrospect, I've begun to understand that there is more than a little confusion on this topic. The "I've nothing to hide" (INTH) group seems to believe that government surveillance is harmless to those with nothing to hide, is a potential aid to discovering potential bad actors, and therefore necessarily has a very high (infinitely high?) benefit to cost ratio.
The problem with this reasoning is the unusually narrow scope tacitly assigned to of the utility of privacy. It assumes that privacy is only useful for obfuscating bad/criminal actions. I submit that isn't the case at all; Americans have taken a VERY broad view of privacy, legal and otherwise, for generations. A time long enough for broad privacy to be an American legal tradition which courts of all kinds take under consideration. I've asked a few people about their attitudes toward privacy and gotten answers which reflect a broad view: privacy is valuable even if one has nothing to hide such that surveillance is a burdensome violation even for those with nothing to hide.
Example 1: I've got translucent glass in my bathroom window, that wavy glass that destroys image resolution but allows light to pass. I'm pretty sure my neighbors like it that way and so do I. Not that I have anything to hide, if they want to watch, let them. If they're really all that curious, I'll set up seats and sell them tickets and popcorn. I just prefer my privacy; I value it even though I don't really have anything to hide.
Example 2: How would you feel if merchants followed you around their store as you shopped? You wouldn't be doing anything wrong, just shopping… But being followed seems like an invasion doesn't it? Wouldn't it be worse if it were just *certain* shoppers? Wouldn't you feel like you were being flagged for wrongdoing? Wouldn't it make you uncomfortable enough to start shopping elsewhere?
Example 3: I notice a real paucity of people publishing the contents of their medicine cabinets, the contents of their wallets, their library lists, their credit cards purchases. All of the houses on my street have curtains or blinds or both… People seem to believe that their privacy is a layer of protection from people they don't trust. Even if that protection is illusory, illusory protections provide real comfort to those poor slobs clueless enough to rely upon them. If they weren't, all those TSA screeners at the airports would be unemployed. Stripping people of their comforts, seems like real harm.
Example 4: Should you have to tell everyone about every embarassing thing that has every happened to you? What about situations that you've been in which would SEEM illegal, immoral, etc. at first blush? Isn't it of real comfort to know that facts which are prone to misinterpretation or are otherwise disreputable can be kept secret?? Harm to reputation, personal, professional, or otherwise is recognized as real harm at law; stripping people of a layer of protection for their reputations seems to open them to harm.
Example 5: Information is valuable. Corporations have trade secrets (phone lists, formulae, etc.) Inventors want to keep their projects private until they patent them. Writers want to keep their latest books or movies secret until they go on sale in order to build suspense and interest. Corporations pay millions for consumer data lists. Shouldn't data about one's own self, information which has potential value to a buyer, whether of consumer data, or titillating voyeuristic information, or whatever, be something that a person should be able to protect because it has value? If I could sell the data if I chose, might it not be my intellectual property? Isn't taking (or converting) valuable information (or intellectual property) without due process a violation of the Fourth Amendment?
Privacy is a much broader collection of rights than the right to hide wrongdoing, if you give away your privacy you've opened your property, reputation, freedom, and maybe your life itself to auditing or maybe seizure by any agent who cares to take an interest. Worse, you're not just opening it to the people presently empowered; if you destroy privacy protection, you're opening it to everyone who get into power in the future...
I don't mean to jump to conclusions, but I imagine that the range warden at my local rifle club would be much more concerned about his privacy (and maybe his right to bear arms) if he knew that, in just a few short years, President Hillary Clinton might be listening in…
posted by Minotaur at 10:18 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home