Re: some arguments for privacy

[Greg Broiles <gbroiles@netbox.com>]

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At 02:15 AM 4/8/97 -0700, Wei Dai wrote:

>Suppose you are looking for a job.  It seems reasonable to argue that if
>you are a better than average worker, you would be able to get a better
>offer if you had less privacy because the potential employers would be
>better able to distinguish your abilities from your past history.  On the
>other hand less privacy would hurt you if you are a worse than average
>worker.

One of the problems with talking about privacy is that people use the word to
mean many different things. Apropos to the current discussion, I see two
different uses co-existing in a non-useful way:

1.	Privacy as a lack of information
2.	Privacy as a right to control the flow of information

where the second usage refers to the ability to decide who ends up with the
first usage. I'm assuming that lack of information can be characterized as
risk, and that risk can be characterized as negative value. The Coase Theorem
would seem to suggest that the second usage is (may be) superfluous, because
the [lack of] information/risk will be allocated to the party which values it
most. However, the right discussed in (2) is still meaningful, because it is
(and will) be used as a bargaining chip to gain or lose other things of
value.

Also, it's useful to think about whether or not there are (or should be) some
things we are unwilling to do in the name of efficiency. For example, we
might consider it "efficient" if people were allowed to sell their children;
but most societies have chosen to consider markets for children unacceptable
on moral grounds, apart from concerns about the efficient distribution of
children. (I've heard that (Richard?) Posner, an outspoken federal appellate
judge, wrote a paper discussing markets for children as a thought exercise;
and that the political fallout from that paper (some 10-15 years later) means
that he's got no real chance of a Supreme Court seat, even if he's otherwise
qualified. Perhaps this message means I'll never get there, either. :(

A society might choose to place privacy on the list of "things for which
there may not be a market"; but adherents to the strong version of
cryptoanarchy will likely predict that a market will exist, anyway. (I
believe there's currently a small global market for children; but they're
still more difficult to buy than, say, cigarettes. And slightly less
difficult to buy than, say, a gun in Berkeley.) 

But (for me) the real reason that privacy is good (even if it's
"inefficient") is that privacy is inherently related to control, and to
freedom. It's very difficult to influence or alter the behavior of a person
unless you can monitor their behavior. If we make it difficult (or
impossible) to learn some things about people, we effectively create zones of
autonomy related to those zones of privacy.

I believe that this is the somewhat elusive link between the various
constitutional rulings on "privacy" grounds, discussing abortion and
contraception and childraising and interracial marriage and private
possession of pornography and gay rights (although the last has failed, so
far.) Those decisions paint an invisible line between "private" and "public"
spheres, whereby the state cannot or should not interfere with personal
choices; and I believe that the close correspondence between those lines and
traditional notions of "intimacy" is not coincidental. 

I believe that a hypothetical privacy-free state would be "efficient" in the
same way that a hypothetical centrally-planned economy is "efficient" - e.g.,
on paper, it sounds good. All of the right things will happen at just the
right times, risks (or economic goods) will be allocated to those who deserve
them, etc. In practice, centrally planned economies have proven to suffer
from human flaws - greed, lust for power, shortsightedness, poor judgement,
and so forth. The initial allocation of all (or substantially all) economic
resources to one economic actor (the state) prevents the operation of the
Coase Theorem and its redistribution of rights/values, because the other
actors (individuals) have nothing to offer in return; and because it is not
possible for the other actors to legitimately retain those rights or value. A
society which initially distributed information rights to the state - or
which refused to recognize them as rights - would, I believe, create a
similar lack of freedom and autonomy. 

It's difficult to discuss privacy in economic terms because we are accustomed
to valuing one side of the choice - risk, or lack of information - in
quantitative terms, but we are not accustomed to valuing the other side -
freedom, or lack of opportunity to exercise control - in quantitative terms.
(I don't think that the other party's valuation of risk is a good measure for
the value of the freedom. But this is turning into a pretty long message
which is somewhat more theoretical than may be of interest to many list
members. So I'll go to bed and see if people feel like continuing in this
vein.) 


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--
Greg Broiles                | US crypto export control policy in a nutshell:
gbroiles@netbox.com         | 
http://www.io.com/~gbroiles | Export jobs, not crypto.
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