Re: The Utility of Privacy

[Hal Finney <hal@rain.org>]

David Brin has an article in the December issue of Wired arguing that
privacy is obsolete and was never that great an idea in the first place.
I corresponded with him a few years ago when he was working on a draft
of a book which would develop this idea.  Needless to say, I disagreed
with many of his views.  Here is an excerpt from a letter I sent to him
where I defended the notion that privacy is valuable:

===

You suggest that the main motivation which someone might have for protecting
privacy is that they are engaged in some illicit activities:

page 45: "Why should I really care if someone sees this?  I have nothing to
hide."

But aren't exceptions to this quite common in real life?  What about the gay
man who doesn't want to come out of the closet?  What about the
environmentalist who works in the clerical department of an oil company with
little tolerance for such beliefs? What about the closet atheist in the
fundamentalist Midwestern town?

Maybe you'd say that all of these people should expose their secrets, or have
them exposed for them, and that the world would be a better place. (Actually,
you do seem to say this, and I'll discuss it later.)  But I think this assumes
a certain level of tolerance on the part of society. What if this is wrong?
What if society, or just your neighbors, or your boss, is not so tolerant?
What if you lose your job, or get hounded from your neighborhood, once these
secrets are exposed?

I really don't think we have any right to second-guess the decisions people
have made about what they will reveal and what they will keep private.  They
are the ones who have to live with the consequences.  They are the ones who
should make the decisions.  For you to say that people should have "nothing to
hide" is awfully facile.  If you had admitted in your book to be a pedophile
or a white supremacist, coming out of the closet as a demonstration of your
faith in the values of openness, that would at least indicate that you had
experienced that of which you had written.  But of course even that would not
give you the right to presume to tell others to follow the same course.  In my
opinion.

Furthermore, there is a long tradition of anonymity and pseudonymity in
literature.  Probably the most prominent examples are the Federalist Papers,
published anonymously due to fear of political retribution.  The whole area of
politically-inspired anonymity is another counter-example to this notion that
people only want privacy for evil purposes.  How can you look back at the
history of even this country, which probably has one of the best records in
the world, and feel confident that no one will ever be wiser to express an
unpopular view anonymously?  Even if you feel safe about it in the U.S., your
suggestions would have world-wide impact. There are many countries in the
world where criticizing the government will have to be done anonymously if it
is done at all.

This raises the point that anonymity may promote criticism.  You go to some
lengths to praise the value of critical commentary as a route to the truth.
Yet in real life political considerations are one of the most potent blocks to
criticism, and these often apply most strongly to those who are in the best
position to criticize.  It is only through anonymity that much of the most
useful criticism can arise.  This is why we have our "whistle-blower" laws,
anonymous informants, etc.  Yes, anonymity can be easily misused in this
regard.  Information supplied anonymously needs to be carefully verified
before it can be relied on.  But I don't see the value in stripping the shield
of anonymity from people who would like to expose some injustice but are
afraid of the personal consequences.

===

Hal