Privacy

Privacy is a loaded word which is hard to define. It means many things to many people. Without reallycomplicating the definition, Allen states a general legal understanding of privacy is that "privacy is the “right to be let alone" and “"control over personal information” for policy makers designing data protection and electronic communications practices" It also concerns, "seclusion, solitude, anonymity, confidentiality, modesty, intimacy, secracy, autonomy, and reserve."

Socialist Critiques

According to Jansson and Christensen (2014), "In a socialist privacy concept, existing liberal privacy values have therefor to be reversed. Whereas today we mainly find surveillance of the poor and citizens who are not capital owners, a socialist privacy concept focuses on surveillance of capital and the rich in order to increase transparency and privacy protection of consumers and workers" (pp. 51-2).

Criticisms

According to Jansson and Christensen (2014), privacy has faced the following criticisms: 1) it is "a form of individualism which neglects the common good" (p 51); 2) privacy makes a distinction between the private and public (which is problematic when, i.e., thinking about domestic violence); 3) privacy can shield the operations of illegal enterprises and can be used to mislead others; 4) is a liberal notion of democracy which can be opposed by participatory democracy; 5) privacy is a western-centric idea; 6) privacy is tied to property ownership and can shield the rich and powerful from accountability and transparency (p. 51)

Ericson and Haggerty comment that risk societies value privacy because it is constructed as spaces where one can avoid risk calculations. Tocqueville (1840) commented that more bureaucratic surveillance is needed as citizens are more privatized (p. 117). Ericson and Haggerty bring out privacy is ultimately a spiral because the more people seek privacy, the more intrusions there are into privacy so people can be “trusted.” The more surveillance is used to create trust, the more skeptical people are about trust. The more people are distrustful, the more surveillance is presumed as needed.

See: Post-privacy

References:

Allen, Anita L. "Privacy, Definition of." Encyclopedia of Privacy. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2006. Credo Reference. Web. 20 April 2014.

Ericson, R. V., & Haggerty, K.D. (1997). The Risk Society. In R.V. Ericson & K.D. Haggerty (Eds.) Policing the risk society (pp. 81-130). U of Toronto: Toronto.

Jansson, A.,& Christensen, M. (Eds.) (2014). Media, surveillance and identity: Social perspective. New York: Peter Lang.