#3 Why Privacy Matters?

Visualise yourself alone in your room, engaging in some form of expressive behaviour; wild singing, gyrating dancing, making weird faces, perhaps in an intimate moment, only to discover that you are, in fact, not alone. The realisation that someone is watching will immediately, in sheer horror, cause you to stop what you were doing. The feeling of embarrassment would be palpable. There are some things that you are willing to do, only If no one else is watching.

Hence the question of ‘why privacy matters’ is important.

A question that was highlighted by Edward Snowden’s revelations, that the US and its technology partners had converted the Internet into a zone of indiscriminate mass surveillance.

Many believe, that mass surveillance is harmless because only people who are engaged in bad acts, have a reason to hide and hence care about their privacy. This view is implies that there are two kinds of people in the world; good and bad people. Bad people are those who engage in illegal, immoral or unethical activities, and hence have a reason to hide what they are doing. By contrast, good people are those who go to work, come home, raise their children, watch television. These people are doing nothing wrong, and hence have nothing to hide from the govt. or the capitalistic data hungry corporates monitoring them.

The idea that “I am an unimportant, uninteresting person and hence it doesn’t matter what the govt. or corporates know about me” is self deprecative.

In a 2009 interview, when the erstwhile Google CEO, Eric Schmidt was questioned on Google’s privacy invasive practices, he said that 'if you are doing something that you don’t want other people to know, then maybe you should not be doing it in the first place'.

People with a mentality that privacy isn’t really important, actually don’t believe it themselves. Mark Zuckerberg who stated in an infamous 2010 interview that privacy is no longer a ‘social norm’, went on to purchase 4 adjacent properties next to his new home, to create a zone of privacy, that would prevent other people from monitoring what they do in their personal lives.

Glenn Greenwald, an American journalist, author and lawyer, challenges such people to email him the passwords of all of their email accounts; not just the respectable work email addresses in their name, but ‘all’ of them. So he could go through their online activities, read what he wants to read, maybe publish whatever he finds interesting. After all, if they are doing nothing wrong they should have nothing to hide. (Btw, Google scans all your emails on their platform, in order to provide you with specific services). No one has taken him up on his challenge! This is because human beings instinctively understand the importance of privacy.

While we are social animals, with an urge to share with other people, it is equally essential, as a free, fulfilled person, to have a place where we can be free of judgement. This is because all of us, not just bad people, have some things to hide. There are all sorts of things we do and think, that we may perhaps tell our doctor, lawyer, psychologist, spouse, or our best friend, that we would be mortified for the rest of the world to know. We make judgements every single day about the kinds of things we say and do that we are willing to let other people know, and the kinds of things that we don’t want anyone to know.

This is important because when we are monitored, our behaviour changes dramatically. This fact about human behaviour has been recognised in social science, literature, religion, and virtually every field of discipline. Psychology studies have proved that people under observation are more conformist and compliant. When they are watched people take decisions based on the expectations from them or as mandated by societal norms.?Human shame is a very powerful motivator, as is the desire to avoid it.

This realisation was exploited by the 18th century philosopher Jeremy Bentham, who designed an enormous tower, a Panopticon, in the centre of an institution, from where anyone could watch everyone else, but they themself are hidden. Because the inmates could not actually know whether or when someone is watching them, they have to assume that someone actually is, all the time. This results in compliant behaviour and puts the person in the tower in control. This is the same reason why CCTV in shops are hidden behind a one-way mirror.

20th century French philosopher Michel Foucault realised that this model could be applied not just to prisons, but for every institutions that seeks to control human behaviour: schools, hospitals, factories, roads, workplace, and other places strewn with a plethora of CCTV cameras. This mindset is the key means of societal control for modern, western societies.

Even most religions posit the existence of an omnipotent, all seeing being who constantly watches your actions and thoughts, which means you never have a private moment, which dictates your obedience.

Mass surveillance creates a prison in the mind which is a subtle, but effective way of fostering compliance with social norms. Such a society breeds conformity, obedience and submission, which is why every tyrant, from the most overt to the most subtle crave such a system. Conversely, it is in the realm of privacy, where one has the ability to think, reason, interact and speak without being judged, in which creativity, exploration and dissent can reside. Which is why in a society which allows itself to be monitored, we allow the essence of freedom to be crippled.

A system of mass surveillance suppresses our own freedom in all sorts of ways. “He who does not moves, does not notice his chains” No matter how subtle, or invisible these chains are, it has the capacity to constrain us.

Privacy is important. Be aware of your right to privacy, exercise it, and learn more about how to protect it.

Inspired by a Ted Talk by Glenn Greenwald.