In my deviance class, we just covered a paper on privacy. Specifically, we covered a paper on the implications of computer databases and ubiquitous surveillance technology on privacy. And I came away from it as I come away from most such discussions. Confused.
Privacy is a concept that I realize that other people appreciate and value, but it’s something that I personally don’t understand very well. I see it has implications for two major things, but it almost has to have broader implications than that, doesn’t it?
First, it has implications on intimacy. I take it to be at least somewhat true that an event shared by just two people builds more intimacy than an event shared by a dozen builds more intimacy than an event shared by thousands, etc. Privacy would seem to be, at least on the surface, an important factor in making interactions more intimate. I’ve got some reasons I think this may not be true, but I’m willing to grant it for now.
Second, privacy has implications for deviance. This is due to the fact that you can get away with deviant behavior as long as you are not caught at it. This suggests that privacy is important for us to be able to engage in all those little deviances that we end up engaging in. Society is just too big for everyone to fit into the mold it shapes, in fact it’s too big for anyone at all to perfectly fit into that mold. Maybe you play D&D or like to cross-dress or watch obscure foreign propaganda films. These are all deviant behaviors, and privacy gives you some ‘safe space’ to undertake them in.
But those don’t seem like they are powerful enough to drive this huge tradition of privacy that we have in Western culture. It’s one of the rights that we simply assume that everyone has. There’s got to be more than simple tradition behind this value, right? But for the life of me I can’t think of what it is.
This ends up being problematic because it hinders my ability to understand, and especially to design, community management stuff. I simply don’t understand the value of privacy, and thus it rarely figures into my calculations. While I’m willing to support multiple identities for users and such, I don’t see why anyone would care about who is reading what they write. But actual discussions suggest that people do care, and care a lot.
So, could some of you please help me understand this stuff?
Thomas
Well, there’s also the protection motive. You can be doing something impersonal (and thus intimacy isn’t important) and non-deviant, and still need to maintain privacy.
Specifically in the example you mentioned, computer databases and surveillance, privacy can be important to keep rivals from using the data in those databases against their owners. If the databases contained, to go to a recent real-world issue, the personal information of various veterans that could be used to track them down and harrass or harm them, you wouldn’t want that falling into just anybody’s hands.
On a more personal level, as such that might be of use to you in designing community management systems.. Keeping certain thoughts, ideas, values private or restricted to a small group lessens the chance that someone who doesn’t like you can use them to hurt you. For instance, if I harbored a serious case of puppy love for, say, Selene Tan (I don’t, to set the record straight) and someone in the Forge community took a decided dislike to me, they could use that in ways that could be hurtful and embarassing to me, if they knew.
On another level, privacy (as in multiple IDs) can help someone to overcome expectations about them. For instance, back when I was writing fiction and roleplaying regularly in a FFRP community, I wrote some unusually styled fiction. I didn’t want people to judge the material as something written by Lance, but on it’s own merits. Also, incidentally, I wasn’t sure if it would be well received, and wanted to avoid the stigma of being associated with it if people decided it sucked. When people complimented how well it was written, I later ‘fessed up as it’s author, and eventually deleted the SN when the character’s story was ended.
Just some thoughts. Hope they help you understand better.
Dariuswolfe said some good stuff.
Also, so far as deviance goes, consider this: deviance is defined as something not understood or condoned by those in power. Christianity was, for several hundred years, a deviant religion. Without privacy it never would have been able to spread through the Roman empire — every last one of them would have gone to the lions.
Privacy is essential for any mode of new thought, religious expression, or artistic expression developing in a society that has any form of social repression.
And societies with any form of social repression are: all of them.
In addition to that, consider the ways (good and bad) that privacy is linked to the western notions of individualism, mobility, and nuclear family primacy. Add to that the whole information=power issue.
Here in India folks will ask you any kind of question and expect an answer — especially folks from smaller villages and lower castes. In their world privacy is not an issue because life is communal. You are expected to live, in a real way, for the community first and yourself second. Thus the group should be able to access all information about you. In the western world, otoh, we put the self and the individual as primary, and thus the person with the most access to information about you should be, well, you.
This becomes particularly important in the areas of privacy related to governement databases and the like because it is possible, increasingly, that a dedicated investigative team could possibly learn more about you than you know yourself. Doctors, cops, credit corporations and such all keep very detailed records — including records about you that you may not know exist or have access to even if you do know they exist. If someone had access to all of those they could put together pyschological and economic profiles of you using information about you that you have no control over.
What does that do to their ability to, say, focus market to you? To influence your political decision through specific rhetorical preasure? To manipulate you through mass communications? All of these things are no issue at all if you’re just part of the community, but if you are “I” and find that “I” important….
Plus, with any such system you always have to ask, “What happens when the other guys get their hands on it?” If you assume that the current folks with power would never missuse information they gather about you (laughter here) then you have to quesiton what would happen if the other guys ever got their hands on it.
A friend of mine wrote the following not so long ago:
“But this test! It’s a gem. I call it the “November Rain” test, because it presumes a gloomy election season.
This test is really simple. For any given piece of legislation, any government agency or any proposed political change that you think is a really good idea, ask yourself, “That’s great, but what if we lose the next election?”
That’s it. That’s all you need. This test works for any ideology, on any level (local, state, federal), on trivial subjects and titanic ones alike.
Liberals: public education fails this test. Public schools work great when kids are learning about the Civil War, the solar system and penicillin. They fail when kids are learning that evolution is an optional part of biology. Note that I’m not making that up; it has already happened. A great system was put in place and then your opposition took charge of it.
Conservatives: immigration restrictions fail this test. Border controls work great when they keep radical Sunnis and brand-new welfare recipients out of the country. They fail when Irish Catholics and Eastern Europeans are being kept out for no reason other than being Irish, Catholic or Eastern European. Note that I’m not making that up; it has already happened. A great system was put in place and then your opposition took charge of it.
The RICO act, passed years ago to crack down on racketeers, has been used to silence pro-life protestors. The FBI used wiretaps, a tool meant to gather evidence for criminal prosecution, to spy on Martin Luther King, Jr..”
(cont)
Then, add this to that stuff — do you know everything about the government? Do they know everything about you? If there is no privacy then can one group know about you without you knowing about them? And is it possible to run a governement, especially in this world, that has no privacy or restricted information? And if not, then does not their ability to restrict information from you without you being able to restrict it from them put you into the subservient role?
Or, lets put it on a smaller and more innocent front — where no one is bad and no huge moral freedoms are on the line. Not too long ago on Story Games Tony was having a thread about Push and Pull. There were folks getting heated in the thread, and there were a lot of whispers going back and forth. There was a lot of personal stuff passed back and forth, and a lot of politics and personal feuds were shown in people’s private messages.
Thing is, they weren’t private. Andy could read all of them. Including ones that included people’s phone numbers, private details, and so on. Now, I don’t think anything bad happend because of this. Andy is a good guy and wouldn’t do stupid things with it. But… in a world that was just a little less nice… what is Andy’s relationship with Tony? With me? With Ron? If one of us came asking, “what are they saying behind my back” or “I need a way to convince them, tell me what they’re thinking” or “I’ll give you $5000 if you sell me the emails and phone numbers of the people on your forum for marketing purpouses….” what then? How much preasure can we expect Andy to stand up to before he says something, even by accident, that causes the relations in the community to get worse?
Or to take it down to the most common example: we’re up talking one night, you tell me your father died and you feel responsible. I tell someone else about that, rather than keeping it to myself. Two days later everyone in town is saying that you were resposnible for your father’s death. Perhaps it would have been best if I, fully at the individual level, had kept your communications private.
Anyway, those are some thoughts. I’m hit and miss on privacy myself, and often find that Constitutional lawyers say that rights to privacy are in the US Con that aren’t actually there… but those are some ideas as to why it isn’t always for the best for some people to know everything about you.
Oh, I also didn’t get into con artists, identity theft, and all that good stuff. That, in todays world, is also quite an issue.
So, Thomas, when you get married, will you have sex with your wife in front of your parents? In front of your children? In front of the general public? If not, why not? If so, why is that important to you?
Probably not, but not, I think, because it would bother me, but because it would bother the other people. So, it wouldn’t be about protecting my business, but rather about not pushing it on uninterested parties.
Thomas
So if people DID want to watch, you’d let them? I mean, you can make real money doing this.
Now that’s a very interesting question, and one I’m not sure I can answer truthfully. I don’t think I’d have a problem with it, but I am pretty sure that I wouldn’t pursue it, which implies something… but I’m not sure what.
Though that may be because I consider pornography to be actively unhealthy for those who view it. But I’m not sure that I’m not rationalizing…
Thomas
Brand,
Thanks for all that, I’ve been thinking about it for a couple of days now, and here’s what I’m thinking right now.
Privacy is utilized for three purposes:
1. Intimacy. This, I’m willing to grant for discussion, but I think I’m willing to dispute the idea that privacy is necessary for intimacy.
2. Deviance. Privacy allows you to undertake deviant acts without suffering the social consequences. I’m reading a lot on the subject these days, so I’m pretty familiar with what this entails and why it is important.
3. Security. This is the con artist thing, as well as possibly bleeding in some stuff from government.
Thomas