Since John Stuart Mill's On Liberty, privacy has always seemed a mainstay of liberal theory in particular. In that view, recently defended cogently by Beate Rössler, a philosopher at the University of Amsterdam, privacy supports our autonomy, our informed, uncoerced freedom to act. We cannot act truly freely, goes the argument, unless we have some measure of knowledge of, and control over, our interlocutors' knowledge of us.
But autonomy is a good that accrues to the individual, and those thinkers who put the community first (because an individual's identity and being only make sense against the backdrop of a community that provides meaning for individuals) tend to downplay privacy. Michael Sandel, in Democracy's Discontent, argues that the purpose of privacy is to preserve particular institutions (such as marriage), not a person's autonomy. Amitai Etzioni argues that the interests of the community should always come first, and that communities often need information about the individuals within them.
This communitarian critique of privacy is flawed. Privacy does protect autonomy, which is no bad thing in the abstract. But it protects a lot more, especially in an age dominated by information technology.
First, a firm grasp of our private space will allow us to make firmer and more coherent distinctions between the public and the private sphere. The tittle-tattle in the newspapers obscures serious issues (one pines, in the Anglo-Saxon nations, for media that are able to show European-style restraint). Democracy is not served when the choice of the most powerful man in the world is swayed by whether voters would prefer to have a beer with him. Hannah Arendt and Richard Sennett have described the importance, and the decline, of our public space in a media age. Conversely, the meaning we give to our private lives is undermined by images and celebrity gossip that bombards us. John Cheever's magnificent story The Enormous Radio details the decline in a couple's image of themselves and understanding of their own relationship as they accidentally eavesdrop on their neighbours.
Second, our interactions - particularly electronic ones such as commercial transactions, emails and web downloads which governments are annoyingly intent on monitoring - reveal a lot not just about us, but also about the social networks in which we operate. Someone who wishes to keep his or her sexuality private may be electronically 'outed' if he or she has email contact with a large number of known gay people. Someone who wishes to keep his or her political views quiet may unconsciously reveal them through their network of social contacts. The insidious profiling industry categorises us, often on flimsy evidence, and that categorisation may determine the way we are treated in the future. Every piece of information you give away fingers not only yourself, but others in your network.
Third, perhaps most importantly, to determine whether one's privacy has been breached, a common law concept of "reasonable expectations of privacy" is used. But as surveillance increases, and as people voluntarily give more and more information away (to government, to Facebook, to retailers), our reasonable expectations decline. As a direct consequence, so does our legal protection.
The premise of the communitarian argument (that the rights of the community come before those of the individual because 'individuality' makes no sense without the context provided by a functioning society) is persuasive, but that does not mean that privacy rights should be discarded or downgraded. No - invasions of an individual's privacy hurt the individual, but also damage the society around him or her. Each decision we make to relinquish our privacy for convenience or the gain of a few more points on our loyalty card reduces the privacy of our fellow citizens.
Hence the communitarians have it wrong. If we accept their premise, then we must not only fight to preserve privacy, but we must also admit that the defence of privacy is a responsibility as well as a right. Privacy is a public good, and its reduction diminishes the quality of social interaction. It is a duty of a socially responsible person to take care in online transactions, and to minimise the amount of information he or she gives away.
