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Law in the Internet Society
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It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted.
Is privacy an inalienable right?
-- By MelissaTeh - 11 Oct 2019
What got me interested in this topic
My cultural background
Having lived in Singapore all my life before college, I had never really thought much about surveillance. Ironically, governmental surveillance in Singapore, being a one party state, is rampant, and privacy ranks second to other national security – and perhaps also political – interests. In return, those in power provide safety and a stable social fabric. Naively, I believed that this tradeoff was fair, and that giving up individual privacy was even necessary, as per Hobbesian’s social contract theory.
A paradigm shift
The Edward Snowden fiasco was one of the big events that ignited a paradigm shift in my mind. Needless to say, the revelation of US governmental spying appalled most – if not all – Americans. Interestingly (to me), the spying was the wrong and the harm in itself in the sense that it did not matter if the spying did not culminate in anything, like persecution. In fact, but for the leak, most people would be able to live their whole lives unaffected in any material way by the spying. This is because most people are not high security individuals entrusted with secrets that they might then have an interest in protecting. Most individuals, like myself, lead average lives with petty problems that will not interest many.
Could spying be a good thing?
One might think that spying actually results in a net benefit for average individuals since stability and safety is a reward for the spying. Acts of terrorism for example, can be preempted and prevented by monitoring messages containing certain key words, affiliations with other suspected individuals, online and in store purchases of dangerous items and etcetera. Beyond security, spying arguably also increases convenience in the world we currently live in – customization of advertisements and applications for instance, make the lives of average people easier by tailoring users’ experience to their own unique needs.
Why do people even care about privacy?
Why then do people view privacy infringement as a wrong in itself? The Supreme Court itself struggled to find a constitutional right to privacy in Griswold given that it is not explicitly worded in the Bill of Rights. Is the response to Edward Snowden simply an emotional eruption? Or does it stem from a principled belief that privacy is a human right, one that “occupies so profound a position in the constellation of human values that it is innately inalienable and should never be subject to commodification, regardless of the potential social or economic benefit”? Where does this need for annonymity stem from? Are people truly concerned with someone in Washington or silicon valley knowing what kind of porn they watch? Or is it that people are unhappy that big corporations are profitting hugely from their personal information? In that case, would more people be satisfied if they could profit from selling their personal data?
Analyzing the importance of privacy
On reflection, there might be several reasons for why privacy should be regarded by everyone as an inalienable right. For one, it is a fallacy to think that spying creates a net benefit for individuals. Rewards like convenience only exist because we have bought into the system that we currently live in, where big corporations collect large amounts of data and provide us with bespoke services in turn. In other words, it is only good because it is difficult for us to conceive of another system where services can be equally convenient absent the constant spying and surveillance. In an alternate reality where big corporations did not provide these services, it is likely that adequate services can be provided by others who did not have the perverse incentive to spy on individuals, simply because there will always exist individuals who yearn to create better services. Convenience thus, is a concept that companies use to deceive its users that spying is acceptable and even good.
Importantly, privacy is also important because it enables us to create boundaries and protect us from unwarranted interference. Net benefit, even if it truly exists, is a slippery slope because it can then be extended as a justification for other infringements. If “for the greater good” is always an allowable line of reasoning, then there can be no discernable end to individual sacrifice. Further, it is difficult for lay persons to truly analyze claims of these alleged benefits – for example, privacy has been wrongfully pitched against security, whereby privacy is viewed as an impediment to the “fight against terrorism”.
Further, asymmetric distribution of information is inherently dangerous. In the world, information is power – large corporations and governments thus currently have a dangerously uneven upper hand. Whilst some might believe that the information collected is only being used for legitimate and good purposes – like to provide convenience, security etc. – the situation could radically change should these organizations want to. In other words, it is inherently risky that power is concentrated in these oligopolies. It is difficult to see the importance of privacy rights where these oligopolies are benevolent, but to believe that they will always be is hubris.
Additionally, the way in which our privacy is being infringed also robs individuals of choice. Whilst corporations and the government provide services and security in exchange for data collection, there is no way for individuals to meaningfully opt out of this system unless they make radical changes to their lifestyle, which most people are not willing to do. As a result, individuals are forced into making this tradeoff, even if they do not meaningfully make the decision to do so. The cost of opt-out (if possible) is so high that it is almost impossible, resulting in the situation that we have now, where people have no choice but to be subjected to spying. As a coping mechanism for this learned helplessness, they then defend the system by psyching themselves into thinking that spying results in a net benefit for them.
Conclusion
In conclusion, whilst individuals should be entitled to exercise their freedom of choice to give up their privacy rights, the system we currently exist in subjects us to mandatory spying that favors large corporations at our expense. Perhaps, the tradeoff is not necessary, and more people need to think about that.
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