Most people are concerned with their privacy, at least when it comes to their own privacy - but just what is privacy? That's a difficult question to answer, in part because the question of privacy is so complicated and filled with so many contradictions. For how example, how to you retain easy access to your own data while making it difficult for others to access it?

James Cornford writes in the July, 1981 issue of Political Quarterly:

1. The problems are inherently complex, both legally and administratively. ...

2. Privacy involves serious conflicts of interests, commercial and political: any legislation would touch both on questions of of personal information. It would also have a profound effect on the conduct of public administration.

3. There is not enough popular concern about privacy to create a political impetus for change. There are recurrent scandals and well-publicised cases of hardship, but nothing large or continuous enough to overcome administrative inertia.

4. The focus of concern about privacy has itself shifted: from the activities of the Press, to those of private detective and credit reference agencies, to the collection and use of personal information by public authorities, to police surveillance. All of this is compounded b the growing awareness of the rapid development of the technology of surveillance and automatic data processing.

5. And as the focus has shifted there have emerged what [Andre Danzin] has called “immature contradictions”, namely:

-simultaneous demands for a right of access to information and for a right to protect confidentiality;

-support for an improvement of social and fiscal justice and a refusal to submit to a system of surveillance which prevents fraud;

-the wish to be recognised and treated as an individual, but at the same time to remain anonymous;

-the desire for ready access to everything which is contained in records about him and the refusal of a universal personal identifier.

The problem of privacy is a relatively new one in society. In the past, someone knowing a few of the wrong facts about you might prove embarrassing, but that's about it. Today, knowing the wrong facts — like your social security number, your favorite password, or some of your medical information — could have disastrous consequences.

Laws on issues like divorce or traffic are pretty well settled because we've had so much time to work out the potential problems. Privacy — especially data privacy — is so new, however, that the presence of so many problems and contradictions is only to be expected. It will be a while before we can get into some state of settled normalcy and reliability.

 

Quick Poll: Do people have any sort of right to privacy?

1. No, there is no right to privacy - no personal data, information, or decisions are protected.
2. There is a right to privacy covering personal data, but that's it.
3. There is a broad right to privacy covering personal data, information, and decisions.
4. I don't know.
5. I don’t care.

Click an option to vote, or View Current Poll Results

 

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