While much of our contemporary
disquiet about privacy tends to spring from the malevolent capacity of
technology, a yearning for a private realm long precedes the Brave New World of
bits and bytes, of electronic surveillance, and CCTV. Indeed, anthropologists
have demonstrated that there is a near-universal desire for individual and
group privacy in primitive societies, and that this is reflected in appropriate
social norms. Moreover, we are not alone in seeking refuge from the crowd.
Animals too need privacy. At the most general level, the
idea of privacy embraces the desire to be left alone, free to be ourselves—uninhabited
and unconstrained by the prying of others. This extends beyond snooping and
unsolicited publicity to intrusions upon the “space” we need to make intimate,
personal decisions without the intrusion of the state. Thus “privacy” is
frequently employed to describe a zone demarcated as “private” in which, for
example, a woman exercises a choice as to whether she wishes to have an
abortion, or an individual is free to express his or her sexuality. Debates about
privacy are therefore often entangled with contentious moral questions,
including the use of contraception and the right to pornography. In any event, at the
core of our concern to protect privacy lies a conception of the individual’s
relationship with society. Once we acknowledge a separation between the public
and the private domain, we presume both the existence of a community in which
such a division makes sense, but also an institutional structure that
facilitates an organic representation of this sort. In other words, to
postulate the ‘private’ presupposes the ‘public’. A life without privacy
is inconceivable. But what ends does privacy actually serve? In addition to its
significance in liberal democratic theory, privacy stakes out a ‘space’ for
creativity, psychological well-being, our ability to love, forge social
relationships, promote trust, intimacy, and friendship. In his classic work,
Alan Westin identifies four functions of privacy that combine the concept’s
individual and social dimensions. First, it engenders personal autonomy; the
democratic principle of individuality is associated with the need for such
autonomy—the desire to avoid manipulation or domination by others. Second, it
provides the opportunity for emotional release. Privacy allows us to remove
one’s social masks: On any given day a man
may move through the roles of stern father, loving husband, car-pool comedian,
skilled lathe operator, union steward, water-cooler flirt, and American Legion
committee chairman—all psychologically different roles that he adopts as he
moves from scene to scene on the individual stage . . . Privacy . . . gives
individuals, from factory workers to Presidents, a chance to lay their masks
aside for rest. To be always ‘on’ would destroy the human organism. Third, it allows us to engage in self-evaluation: the ability to formulate and test creative and moral activities and ideas. And, fourth, privacy offers us the environment in which we can share confidences and intimacies, and engage in limited and protected communication. |
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