It’s a good Topic

This is the most important impact. Respect for dignity is a baseline requirement of ethical conduct.

Even if we can successfully disambiguate the term, why is dignity important? The concept of dignity does a better job than autonomy in describing and accounting for the intrinsic value of every human being. We are valuable not simply because of our choices, and still less do we have value only while we are exercising our autonomy. We have value even when we are not choosing or cannot choose. In his 2009 Tanner Lectures at UC Berkeley, “Dignity, Rank, and Rights,” Jeremy Waldron pointed out that in ancient times dignity was accorded in particular to persons regarded as royalty or nobility. Noble persons were accorded rights, privileges, and immunities that accorded with their elevated rank. Contemporary society at its best does not reduce the noble but elevates the commoner, making every single human person equal in rank to the Duke or Lady. Although these ideals are often imperfectly realized in our society, still Waldron has a point when he writes, “we are not like a society which has eschewed all talk of caste; we are like a caste society with just one caste (and a very high caste at that): every man a Brahmin. Every man a duke, every woman a queen, everyone entitled to the sort of deference and consideration, everyone’s person and body sacrosanct, in the way that nobles were entitled to deference or in the way that an assault upon the body or the person of a king was regarded as a sacrilege.” The term dignity better captures than most, if not all, other terms the elevated status of the human person.

Do we have any reason for ascribing to all human beings such intrinsic dignity? In an earlier essay, I suggested that there are a number of ways to argue for the proposition that all human beings are endowed with intrinsic dignity and certain inalienable rights. The first is that our dignity should be based on who we are, the kind of being that we are, rather than on how we are functioning in the moment. Dignity should be based on our membership in the human family, rather than on any particular performative activity in which we could engage. Our functioning, whether it be understood in terms of our ability to experience pleasure and pain, or our consciousness, or our intelligence, comes in many degrees. If we think that our value as persons is based on a degreed characteristic, an accident in terms of Aristotelian metaphysics, then we cannot secure equal basic dignity and equal basic rights for all persons. We should therefore base our fundamental ethical judgments on the substantial identity of who we are rather than on any accidental degreed quality. Since all human beings are endowed with the same nature, members of the same kind—homo sapiens—they all share equally basic rights and dignity.

Privacy Key To Identity Formation

The breathing room provided by privacy is an end in itself. We can’t be “ourselves” without it.

Even though the practices of many companies such as Facebook are legal, there is something disconcerting about them. Privacy should have a deeper purpose than the one ascribed to it by those who treat it as a currency to be traded for innovation, which in many circumstances seems to actually mean corporate interests. To protect our privacy, we need a better understanding of its purpose and why it is valuable.

That's where Georgetown University law professor Julie E. Cohen comes in. In a forthcoming article for the Harvard Law Review, she lays out a strong argument that addresses the titular concern "What Privacy Is For." Her approach is fresh, and as technology critic Evgeny Morozov rightly tweeted, she wrote "the best paper on privacy theory you'll get to read this year." (He was referring to 2012.)

At bottom, Cohen's argument criticizes the dominant position held by theorists and legislators who treat privacy as just an instrument used to advance some other principle or value, such as liberty, inaccessibility, or control. Framed this way, privacy is relegated to one of many defenses we have from things like another person's prying eyes, or Facebook's recent attempts to ramp up its use of facial-recognition software and collect further data about us without our explicit consent. As long as the principle in question can be protected through some other method, or if privacy gets in the way of a different desirable goal like innovation, it is no longer useful and can be disregarded.

What Cohen means is that since life and contexts are always changing, privacy cannot be reductively conceived as one specific type of thing. It is better understood as an important buffer that gives us space to develop an identity that is somewhat separate from the surveillance, judgment, and values of our society and culture. Privacy is crucial for helping us manage all of these pressures -- pressures that shape the type of person we are -- and for "creating spaces for play and the work of self-[development]." Cohen argues that this self-development allows us to discover what type of society we want and what we should do to get there, both factors that are key to living a fulfilled life.

Woodrow Hartzog and Evan Selinger make similar arguments in a recent article on the value of "obscurity." When structural constraints prevent unwanted parties from getting to your data, obscurity protections are in play. These protections go beyond preventing companies from exploiting our information for their financial gain. They safeguard democratic societies by furthering "autonomy, self-fulfillment, socialization, and relative freedom from the abuse of power."

In light of these considerations, what's really at stake in a feature like Facebook's rumored location-tracking app? You might think it is a good idea to willfully hand over your data in exchange for personalized coupons or promotions, or to broadcast your location to friends. But consumption -- perusing a store and buying stuff -- and quiet, alone time are both important parts of how we define ourselves. If how we do that becomes subject to ever-present monitoring it can, if even unconsciously, change our behaviors and self-perception.

Privacy provides an “interior zone” that’s necessary for full and free personal development.

Brooks 15 — David Brooks, Columnist for the New York Times, Commentator for PBS NewsHour, holds an A.B. in History from the University of Chicago, 2015 (“The Lost Language of Privacy,” New York Times, April 14^th, Available Online at http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/14/opinion/david-brooks-the-lost-language-of-privacy.html, Accessed 05-15-2015)

Privacy is important to the development of full individuals because there has to be an interior zone within each person that other people don’t see. There has to be a zone where half-formed thoughts and delicate emotions can grow and evolve, without being exposed to the harsh glare of public judgment. There has to be a place where you can be free to develop ideas and convictions away from the pressure to conform. There has to be a spot where you are only yourself and can define yourself.

Privacy is important to families and friendships because there has to be a zone where you can be fully known. There has to be a private space where you can share your doubts and secrets and expose your weaknesses with the expectation that you will still be loved and forgiven and supported.

Privacy is important for communities because there has to be a space where people with common affiliations can develop bonds of affection and trust. There has to be a boundary between us and them. Within that boundary, you look out for each other; you rally to support each other; you cut each other some slack; you share fierce common loyalties.

All these concentric circles of privacy depend on some level of shrouding. They depend on some level of secrecy and awareness of the distinction between the inner privileged space and the outer exposed space. They depend on the understanding that what happens between us stays between us.

Privacy Key To Other Rights

Intellectual privacy is the basis for all other political and religious rights.

Richards 8 — Neil M. Richards, Professor of Law at the Washington University School of Law, former law clerk to Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, holds a J.D. and an M.A. in Legal History from the University of Virginia, 2008 (“Intellectual Privacy,” Texas Law Review (87 Tex. L. Rev. 387), December, Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via Lexis-Nexis)

The core of intellectual privacy is the freedom of thought and belief. The freedom to think and to believe as we want is arguably the defining characteristic of a free society and our most cherished civil liberty. n118 This right encompasses the range of thoughts and beliefs that a person might hold or develop, dealing with matters that are trivial and important, secular and profane. And it protects the individual's thoughts from scrutiny or unwilling disclosure by anyone, whether a government official or a private actor such as an employer, a friend, or a spouse. At the level of law, if there is any constitutional right that is absolute, it is this one, which is the precondition for all other political and religious rights guaranteed by the Western tradition.

They Say: “Nothing To Hide”

The “nothing to hide” argument is selfish and wrong.

Snowden 15 — Edward Snowden, NSA whistleblower, Member of the Board of Directors of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, former Central Intelligence Agency officer and National Security Agency contractor, 2015 (“Just days left to kill mass surveillance under Section 215 of the Patriot Act. We are Edward Snowden and the ACLU’s Jameel Jaffer. AUA.,” Reddit Ask Me Anything with Edward Snowden, May 21^st, Available Online at https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/36ru89/just_days_left_to_kill_mass_surveillance_under/crglgh2, Accessed 06-16-2015)

Jameel is right, but I think the central issue is to point out that regardless of the results, the ends (preventing a crime) do not justify the means (violating the rights of the millions whose private records are unconstitutionally seized and analyzed).

Some might say "I don't care if they violate my privacy; I've got nothing to hide." Help them understand that they are misunderstanding the fundamental nature of human rights. Nobody needs to justify why they "need" a right: the burden of justification falls on the one seeking to infringe upon the right. But even if they did, you can't give away the rights of others because they're not useful to you. More simply, the majority cannot vote away the natural rights of the minority.

But even if they could, help them think for a moment about what they're saying. Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say.

A free press benefits more than just those who read the paper.

* Jameel = Jameel Jaffer, Deputy Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union and Director of the ACLU's Center for Democracy

Privacy is not about hiding wrongdoing. We all have “something to hide.”

Greenwald 14 — Glenn Greenwald, journalist who received the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for his work with Edward Snowden to report on NSA surveillance, Founding Editor of The Intercept, former Columnist for the Guardian and Salon, recipient of the Park Center I.F. Stone Award for Independent Journalism, the Online Journalism Award for investigative work on the abusive detention conditions of Chelsea Manning, the George Polk Award for National Security Reporting, the Gannett Foundation Award for investigative journalism, the Gannett Foundation Watchdog Journalism Award, the Esso Premio for Excellence in Investigative Reporting in Brazil, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Pioneer Award, holds a J.D. from New York University School of Law, 2014 (“The Harm of Surveillance,” No Place To Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State, Published by Metropolitan Books, ISBN 9781627790734, p. ebook)

As the experiments showed, there are all sorts of things people do that they are eager to keep private, even though these sorts of things do not constitute doing “something wrong.” Privacy is indispensable to a wide range of human activities. If someone calls a suicide hotline or visits an abortion provider or frequents an online sex website or makes an appointment with a rehabilitation clinic or is treated for a disease, or if a whistle-blower calls a reporter, there are many reasons for keeping such acts private that have no connection to illegality or wrongdoing.

Even if we don’t, others do.

Shackford 13 — Scott Shackford, Associate Editor at Reason, former Editor of Freedom Communications—a libertarian media organization, 2013 (“3 Reasons the ‘Nothing to Hide’ Crowd Should Be Worried About Government Surveillance,” Reason, June 12^th, Available Online at https://reason.com/archives/2013/06/12/three-reasons-the-nothing-to-hide-crowd, Accessed 06-17-2015)

The “nothing to hide” crowd's involvement in political activism is likely limited. That’s perfectly fine. Nobody should feel obligated to join the Occupy movement or a Tea Party organization or be the kind of person who might end up on a politician’s enemies list. But to say “I have nothing to hide” is a fundamentally selfish declaration. What about parents, sisters, brothers, partners, and other loved ones? Can we say the same for them? You don’t have to have an illness whose suffering can be eased with the use of medical marijuana to be concerned about the way the federal government treats this industry. Would you say, “I don’t need medical marijuana so I don’t care if they imprison those who do”? Sadly, some people do. Fundamentally, saying “I have nothing to hide,” is similar to saying “I don’t care about those who do.”

They Say: “No Risk of Tyranny”

The risk of tyranny is high.

Glennon 14 — Michael J. Glennon, Professor of International Law at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, Member of the Council on Foreign Relations, former Legal Counsel to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, holds a J.D. from the University of Minnesota, 2014 (“National Security and Double Government,” Harvard National Security Journal (5 Harv. Nat'l Sec. J. 1), Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via Lexis-Nexis)

The trivial risk of sudden despotism, of an abrupt turn to a police state or dictatorship installed with coup-like surprise, has created a false sense of security in the United States.618 That a strongman of the sort easily visible in history could suddenly burst forth is not a real risk. The risk, rather, is the risk of slowly tightening centralized power, growing and evolving organically beyond public view, increasingly unresponsive to Madisonian checks and balances. Madison wrote, “There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.”619 Recent history bears out his insight. Dahl has pointed out that in the 20th century—the century of democracy’s great triumph—some seventy democracies collapsed and quietly gave way to authoritarian regimes.620 That risk correlates with voter ignorance; the term Orwellian has little meaning to a people who have never known anything different, who have scant knowledge of history, civics, or public affairs, and who in any event have likely never heard of George Orwell. “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization,” Thomas Jefferson wrote, “it expects what never was and never will be.”621 What form of government ultimately will emerge from the United States’ experiment with double government is uncertain. The risk is considerable, however, that it will not be a democracy.

Rights based Advantage Impact/Framing

The impact is the loss of personal autonomy and agency. Privacy is a gateway right, it enables all of our other freedoms.

PoKempne 2014,
Dinah, General Counsel at Human Rights Watch, “The Right Whose Time Has Come (Again): Privacy in the Age of Surveillance” 1/21/14 http://www.hrw.org/world-report/2014/essays/privacy-in-age-of-surveillance

Technology has invaded the sacred precincts of private life, and unwarranted exposure has imperiled our security, dignity, and most basic values. The law must rise to the occasion and protect our rights. Does this sound familiar? So argued Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis in their 1890 Harvard Law Review article announcing “The Right to Privacy.” We are again at such a juncture. The technological developments they saw as menacing—photography and the rise of the mass circulation press—appear rather quaint to us now. But the harms to emotional, psychological, and even physical security from unwanted exposure seem just as vivid in our digital age.Our renewed sense of vulnerability comes as almost all aspects of daily social life migrate online. At the same time, corporations and governments have acquired frightening abilities to amass and search these endless digital records, giving them the power to “know” us in extraordinary detail. In a world where we share our lives on social media and trade immense amounts of personal information for the ease and convenience of online living, some have questioned whether privacy is a relevant concept. It is not just relevant, but crucial. Indeed, privacy is a gateway right that affects our ability to exercise almost every other right, not least our freedom to speak and associate with those we choose, make political choices, practice our religious beliefs, seek medical help, access education, figure out whom we love, and create our family life. It is nothing less than the shelter in which we work out what we think and who we are; a fulcrum of our autonomy as individuals. The importance of privacy, a right we often take for granted, was thrown into sharp relief in 2013 by the steady stream of revelations from United States government files released by former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden, and published in the Guardian and other major newspapers around the world. These revelations, supported by highly classified documents, showed the US, the UK, and other governments engaged in global indiscriminate data interception, largely unchecked by any meaningful legal constraint or oversight, without regard for the rights of millions of people who were not suspected of wrongdoing.

The impact is Totalitarianism, the loss of autonomy due to surveillance enables “turnkey totalitarianism,” destroying democracy.

Haggerty, 2015
Kevin D. Professor of Criminology and Sociology at the University of Alberta, “What’s Wrong with Privacy Protections?” in A World Without Privacy: What Law Can and Should Do? Edited by Austin Sarat p. 230

Still others will say I am being alarmist. My emphasis on the threat of authoritarian forms of rule inherent in populations open to detailed institutional scrutiny will be portrayed as overblown and over dramatic, suggesting I veer towards the lunatic fringe of unhinged conspiracy theorists.66 But one does not have to believe secret forces are operating behind the scenes to recognize that our declining private realm presents alarming dangers. Someone as conservative and deeply embedded in the security establishment as William Binney – a former NSA senior executive – says the security surveillance infrastructure he helped build now puts us on the verge of “turnkey totalitarianism.”67 The contemporary expansion of surveillance, where monitoring becomes an ever-more routine part of our lives, represents a tremendous shift in the balance of power between citizens and organizations. Perhaps the greatest danger of this situation is how our existing surveillance practices can be turned to oppressive uses. From this point forward our expanding surveillance infrastructure stands as a resource to be inherited by future generations of politicians, corporate actors, or even messianic leaders. Given sufficient political will this surveillance infrastructure can be re-purposed to monitor – in unparalleled detail – people who some might see as undesirable due to their political opinions, religion, skin color, gender, birthplace, physical abilities, medical history, or any number of an almost limitless list of factors used to pit people against one another. The twentieth century provides notorious examples of such repressive uses of surveillance. Crucially, those tyrannical states exercised fine-grained political control by relying on surveillance infrastructures that today seem laughably rudimentary, comprised as they were of paper files, index cards, and elementary telephone tapping.68 It is no more alarmist to acknowledge such risks are germane to our own societies than it is to recognize the future will see wars, terrorist attacks, or environmental disasters – events that could themselves prompt surveillance structures to be re-calibrated towards more coercive ends. Those who think this massive surveillance infrastructure will not, in the fullness of time, be turned to repressive purposes are either innocent as to the realities of power, or whistling past a graveyard. But one does not have to dwell on the most extreme possibilities to be unnerved by how enhanced surveillance capabilities invest tremendous powers in organizations. Surveillance capacity gives organizations unprecedented abilities to manipulate human behaviors, desires, and subjectivities towards organizational ends – ends that are too often focused on profit, personal aggrandizement, and institutional self-interest rather than human betterment.

Freedom and dignity are ethically prior to security.

Cohen, 2014
Elliot D. Ph.D., ethicist and political analyst. He is the editor in chief of the International Journal of Applied Philosophy, Technology of Oppression: Preserving Freedom and Dignity in an Age of Mass, Warrantless Surveillance.. DOI: 10.1057/9781137408211.0011.

The threat posed by mass, warrantless surveillance technologies

Presently, such a threat to human freedom and dignity lies in the technological erosion of human privacy through the ever-evolving development and deployment of a global, government system of mass, warrantless surveillance. Taken to its logical conclusion, this is a systematic means of spying on, and ultimately manipulating and controlling, virtually every aspect of everybody's private life—a thoroughgoing, global dissolution of personal space, which is supposed to be legally protected. In such a governmental state of "total (or virtually total) information awareness," the potential for government control and manipulation of the people's deepest and most personal beliefs, feelings, and values can transform into an Orwellian reality—and nightmare. As will be discussed in Chapter 6, the technology that has the potential to remove such scenarios from the realm of science fiction to that of true science is currently being developed. This is not to deny the legitimate government interest in "national security"; however, the exceptional disruption of privacy for legitimate state reasons cannot and should not be mistaken for a usual and customary rule of mass invasion of people's private lives without their informed consent. Benjamin Franklin wisely and succinctly expressed the point: "Those who surrender freedom for security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one." In relinquishing our privacy to government, we also lose the freedom to control, and act on, our personal information, which is what defines us individually, and collectively, as free agents and a free nation. In a world devoid of freedom to control who we are, proclaiming that we are "secure" is an empty platitude.

Privacy First

Freedom and dignity are ethically prior to security.

Cohen, 2014
Elliot D. Ph.D., ethicist and political analyst. He is the editor in chief of the International Journal of Applied Philosophy, Technology of Oppression: Preserving Freedom and Dignity in an Age of Mass, Warrantless Surveillance.. DOI: 10.1057/9781137408211.0011.

The threat posed by mass, warrantless surveillance technologies

Presently, such a threat to human freedom and dignity lies in the technological erosion of human privacy through the ever-evolving development and deployment of a global, government system of mass, warrantless surveillance. Taken to its logical conclusion, this is a systematic means of spying on, and ultimately manipulating and controlling, virtually every aspect of everybody's private life—a thoroughgoing, global dissolution of personal space, which is supposed to be legally protected. In such a governmental state of "total (or virtually total) information awareness," the potential for government control and manipulation of the people's deepest and most personal beliefs, feelings, and values can transform into an Orwellian reality—and nightmare. As will be discussed in Chapter 6, the technology that has the potential to remove such scenarios from the realm of science fiction to that of true science is currently being developed. This is not to deny the legitimate government interest in "national security"; however, the exceptional disruption of privacy for legitimate state reasons cannot and should not be mistaken for a usual and customary rule of mass invasion of people's private lives without their informed consent. Benjamin Franklin wisely and succinctly expressed the point: "Those who surrender freedom for security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one." In relinquishing our privacy to government, we also lose the freedom to control, and act on, our personal information, which is what defines us individually, and collectively, as free agents and a free nation. In a world devoid of freedom to control who we are, proclaiming that we are "secure" is an empty platitude.

Privacy must be valued above all else

Goold, 10- Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia Faculty of Law and a Research Associate at the Oxford University Centre for Criminology, (Benjamin, “How Much Surveillance is Too Much? Some Thoughts on Surveillance, Democracy, and the Political Value of Privacy”, OVERVÅKNING I EN RETTSSTAT - SURVEILLANCE IN A CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT, 2010, PDF, page 45-47)//AP

This all of course leads us back to the question at the beginning of this chapter, namely: how much state surveillance is too much? Perhaps the first and most obvious response to this question is that the state should at all times be sensitive to the fact that privacy is a basic human right, and that it is essential to personal development, individual dignity, and the ability of citizens to engage in meaningful social relationships. We have, in the words of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, a right to “respect for private and family life” because without such privacy we can never truly flourish. Going further, however, the state must also recognize that privacy has an important role to play in the promotion of democracy and the meaningful exercise of a number of other fundamental rights, such as the right tofreedom of expression and freedom of association. As a consequence, all state surveillance activities – regardless of whether the justification for such measures is the prevention of crime, the promotion of security, or even the efficient delivery of public services – must be evaluated in terms of the potential cost to political freedom and the maintenance of democratic values. This is particularly important given that, as Bennett and Raab rightly point out, the social value of privacy can be easily forgotten in our efforts to protect individuals from the personal effects of overzealous state surveillance: The social value [of privacy] is underpowered and survives precariously unless it can be specifically reinforced by a change in the privacy culture, for it is powerfully challenged by the legacy of the conventional paradigm and by forces that tend to the protection of privacy seen as an individual value, if a value at all.62 Put simply, there is little point in the state seeking to create a society free from crime and secure against terrorist threats if the overall cost is a severe loss of personal freedom and the introduction of Orwellian, authoritarian government. Put more simply, we know that there is too much surveillance when citizens begin to fear the surveillance activities of the state, and no longer feel free to exercise their lawful rights for fear of unwanted scrutiny and possible censure. Finally, given that a democratic state can only be legitimate and thrive in an atmosphere of mutual trust between government and governed, it follows that any surveillance measure that threatens to erode or destroy that trust must be resisted, or at the very least its potential costs and benefits carefully considered. As anyone who has lived in a state where the rule of law is not taken for granted – and where there is little in the way of institutional trust – will be able to tell you, confidence in the institutions of government is hard won and easily lost.63 For this reason, the presumption should be that any surveillance measure which is directed at the public at large – and which treats all citizens as potential threats or management challenges – has prima facie gone a step too far, and demands an extra-ordinary justification. According to this view, mass state surveillance should always be the exception and never the rule. In short, we will know when there is too much state surveillance when political rights and democratic participation are threatened, and it is at this point that the citizenry should demand that the state pulls back and accepts that there are times when it is better for the government to know less rather than more. Of course, some will say that we have already passed this point, that the current surveillance infrastructure already poses a serious threat to democracy and the rule of law. If this is true, then there is an even more pressing need for us to demand a halt to any further expansion in the surveillance apparatus of the state, and a fundamental reappraisal of the state’s use of technologies like public area CCTV.

Privacy is a fundamental moral right.

Alfino and Mayes, 2003
Mark Alfino Department of Philosophy Gonzaga University G. Randolph Mayes Department of Philosophy California State University, Sacramento "Reconstructing the right to privacy." Social Theory and Practice 29.1 (2003): 1-18.

The core claim in our theory is that privacy is a fundamental moral right. The argument to support this claim is simple, but the consequences and implications of the argument are not. In this section, we focus on establishing the right to privacy as a fundamental moral right and elucidating some of the most obvious implications of the view. We leave further development of the view and an exploration of objections to the next section. In arguing for privacy as a fundamental moral right, we obviously assume that a scheme of rights and correlative duties is a well-justified way to describe social relations among individuals. Specifically, moral rights describe the legitimate exercise of power, both of individuals and others, severally and collectively. Rights can be thought of negatively as mutual protection schemes and positively as a reflection of our best understanding of how individuals establish and maintain their moral agency." At the heart of our understanding of moral agency is a belief about the ability of moral individuals to be "self-legislating" or autonomous. We will look at important differences of emphasis in different definitions of autonomy in a moment, but at present the important point is that in a system of rights and duties the concept of the self-legislating individual is central. In fact, most basic moral rights can be understood as explications of the concept of a self-legislating agent, or the implications of how such a person necessarily interacts with a physical and social world. For example, rights of due process are fundamental moral rights, because in an environment in which I could not be guaranteed a rational (due) process for losing rights and privileges, I could not formulate rational rules for my own conduct. Privacy plays a fundamental and ineliminable role in constructing personal autonomy. To see this, it may help to extend the juridical metaphor at the heart of the notion of autonomy. What kinds of law do agents legislate? To what realm of objects does such law apply? Of course, these are questions that Immanuel Kant posed and answered extensively.12 Kant demonstrated that a basic heuristic of moral life is an analogy between physical space and the laws of nature that govern it, on the one hand, and moral space and the moral law on the other hand. This analogy lies at the heart of "rights talk." It is common to speak of rights as law-like background conditions from which we can predict the out come of claims and torts. Jurists and legislators use rights instrumentally—for good and ill—to establish various kinds of space: a private space of property relationships and private social relationships, a public space of communal expectations for fair treatment and access. When we grant "privilege" to specific kinds of relationships, such as the confidential conversations between priests and confessors or lawyers and their clients, we are using moral laws to configure moral space just as a divine creator might be imagined to configure physical space from a set of possible physical laws. Whether or not we grant moral space any ontological significance, it still helps to elucidate our basic theoretical framework. The analogy between moral and physical space also reminds us of the need to configure the moral space needed for individuals to become autonomous agents upon a realistic view of how individuals actually develop, both cognitively and emotionally. We can criticize competing explications of moral space by reference to our background knowledge of human behavior and development. Facts about our psychology do not by themselves justify moral rights. However, our understanding of the moral space that an autonomous agent inhabits and the moral laws that govern that space must cohere with our understanding of the laws of the physical world, especially those governing the psychological development of human animals and the physical conditions of their existence. Within these constraints we make a variety of choices about which aspects of our physical and psychic environment to value, and in so doing we construct the specific moral space that governs social life.

Additionally, because of foundational nature of privacy, it is not optional.

Allen, 2011
Anita. J.D., Ph.D, Henry R Silverman Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy, University of Pennsylvania School of Law. Unpopular privacy: what must we hide?. Oxford University Press, 2011. Pp 172-3

Since the 1970s, when scholars first began to analyze privacy in earnest, philosophers have linked the experience of privacy with dignity, autonomy, civility, and intimacy. They linked it also to repose, self-expression, creativity, and reflection. They tied it to the preservation of unique preferences and distinct traditions. Privacy is a foundational good. The argument that privacy is a right whose normative basis is respect for persons opens the door to the further argument that privacy is also potentially a duty. "To respect someone as a person is to concede that one ought to take account of the way in which his enterprise might be affected by one's decision," S. I. Benn wrote.3S And to respect oneself may require taking into account the way in which one; personality and life enterprises could be affected by decisions to dispense with foundational goods that are lost when one decides to flaunt, expose, and share rather than to reserve, conceal, and keep. The idea that the experience of privacy is ethically mandatory is logically consistent with leading normative accounts. It is consistent with Robert Post's (citing Erving Goffman and Jeffrey Reiman) "characterization of respecting privacy as respecting civility norms" of deference and demeanor. 39 It is likewise consistent with Helen Nissenbaum's analysis of privacy. She defines privacy and its value in relation to norms of the appropriateness of specific behaviors and the distribution of certain information in social and cultural context.40 If people are completely morally and legally free to pick and choose the privacy they will experience, such as deferential civility, appropriateness and limited data flow, they are potentially deprived of highly valued states that promote their vital interests, and those of fellow human beings with whom they associate. We need to restrain choice—if not by law, then somehow. Respect for privacy rights and the ascription of privacy duties must both be a part of a society's formative project for shaping citizens. Lior Jacob Strahilevitz has argued that privacy violations can be understood as rechanneling information flow, so that information unknown or obscure in a network becomes known: "Where a defendant's (in a suit alleging informational privacy invasion disclosure materially alters the flow of otherwise obscure information through a social net- work, such that what would have otherwise remained obscure becomes widely known, the defendant should be liable for public disclosure of private facts."41 Viewed in this way, it may not seem to matter that privacy is invaded unless the person whose information flows out against his will cares. We have to go back to dignitarian ideals about privacy to see why we, as liberals, should care about optional dismissals of privacy. Jeffrey Reiman defined privacy as the "social rituals" that serve to teach us that we are distinct moral persons and autonomous moral agents.42 Liberals agree that there is something wrong with being watched and investigated all the time. As legal theorist Daniel Solove argues, surveillance can make "a person feel extremely uncomfortable" and can lead to "self-censorship and inhibition."43 Surveillance is a form of social control. As such, it impacts freedom. I have been urging that dispensing with one's privacy is yielding to social control, and that that impacts freedom, too. Realizing this, the notion that some privacy should not be optional, waivable, or alienable should have instant credibility.

Privacy = Gateway Right

The impact is the loss of personal autonomy and agency. Privacy is a gateway right, it enables all of our other freedoms.

PoKempne 14,
Dinah, General Counsel at Human Rights Watch, “The Right Whose Time Has Come (Again): Privacy in the Age of Surveillance” 1/21/14 http://www.hrw.org/world-report/2014/essays/privacy-in-age-of-surveillance

Technology has invaded the sacred precincts of private life, and unwarranted exposure has imperiled our security, dignity, and most basic values. The law must rise to the occasion and protect our rights. Does this sound familiar? So argued Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis in their 1890 Harvard Law Review article announcing “The Right to Privacy.” We are again at such a juncture. The technological developments they saw as menacing—photography and the rise of the mass circulation press—appear rather quaint to us now. But the harms to emotional, psychological, and even physical security from unwanted exposure seem just as vivid in our digital age. Our renewed sense of vulnerability comes as almost all aspects of daily social life migrate online. At the same time, corporations and governments have acquired frightening abilities to amass and search these endless digital records, giving them the power to “know” us in extraordinary detail. In a world where we share our lives on social media and trade immense amounts of personal information for the ease and convenience of online living, some have questioned whether privacy is a relevant concept. It is not just relevant, but crucial. Indeed, privacy is a gateway right that affects our ability to exercise almost every other right, not least our freedom to speak and associate with those we choose, make political choices, practice our religious beliefs, seek medical help, access education, figure out whom we love, and create our family life. It is nothing less than the shelter in which we work out what we think and who we are; a fulcrum of our autonomy as individuals. The importance of privacy, a right we often take for granted, was thrown into sharp relief in 2013 by the steady stream of revelations from United States government files released by former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden, and published in the Guardian and other major newspapers around the world. These revelations, supported by highly classified documents, showed the US, the UK, and other governments engaged in global indiscriminate data interception, largely unchecked by any meaningful legal constraint or oversight, without regard for the rights of millions of people who were not suspected of wrongdoing. The promise of the digital age is the effortless, borderless ability to share information. That is its threat as well. As the world’s information moves into cyberspace, surveillance capabilities have grown commensurately. The US now leads in ability for global data capture, but other nations and actors are likely to catch up, and some already insist that more data be kept within their reach. In the end, there will be no safe haven if privacy is seen as a strictly domestic issue, subject to many carve-outs and lax or non-existent oversight. Human Rights Watch weighed in repeatedly throughout 2013 on the human rights implications of Snowden’s revelations of mass surveillance, and the need to protect whistleblowers. This essay looks at how the law of privacy developed, and where it needs to reach today so that privacy is globally respected by all governments, for all people. Global mass surveillance poses a threat to human rights and democracy, and once again, the law must rise to the challenge.

Privacy = Moral Obligation

Equal freedom establishes privacy not only as a duty but also as a right

Mokrosinska, 2014
Dorota, Research Fellow in Philosophy at the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands (2014), Privacy and the Integrity of Liberal Politics: The Case of Governmental Internet Searches. Journal of Social Philosophy, 45: 369–389. doi: 10.1111/josp.12068

I close my argument by drawing attention to the value and the normative status of privacy in political practice. I have argued that privacy is implicated in the concept of public justification that liberals place at the core of the concept of political legitimacy. Public justification requires that people explain to one another how the principles and policies they advocate can be supported by reasons that everyone can reasonably accept. That requirement is substantially linked to the idea of the equal freedom of individuals: equal freedom between individuals acting in the political domain is not realized unless policies are justified to all those who are subject to them. Political liberals tie the concept of public justification to an obligation that falls on individuals as members of political societies. In this context, Rawls speaks of a “duty of civility,”62 Lafont and Audi speak of a similar duty.63 Now one cannot appeal to reasons that everyone can accept unless one holds back and refrains from bringing under collective attention one's unreasonable and comprehensive views. This is to say that one cannot perform the duty of civility unless one brackets such material as private. From this perspective, privacy is an aspect of the duty of civility and a condition of equal freedom. Equal freedom requires not only that individuals withhold their unreasonable and/or comprehensive views from the political forum. It also requires that they not attend to similar material in others. Given that such material is equally dysfunctional to the political realm, its exposure would be equally threatening to equal freedom. From that perspective, refraining from seeking, scrutinizing and exposing unreasonable and/or comprehensive beliefs of others is another aspect of the duty of civility. The same point can be expressed in the language of rights. If one's equal freedom cannot be realized unless others refrain from attending to one's (unreasonable) comprehensive views, then one is entitled, by virtue of equal freedom, that they do so. In this sense, equal freedom establishes privacy not only as a duty but also as a right.

Moral obligation to protect privacy — just as important as any other right

Gavison 12 — Ruth E. Gavison, Professor of Human Rights Law at Hebrew University Law Faculty. Born in Jerusalem. Received an LLB (cum laude) in 1969, LLM (summa cum laude) in 1971, and BA in economics and philosophy (1970), all from Hebrew University. Law clerk at the Israel Supreme Court (Justice Benjamin Halevi). Admitted to the Israeli bar in 1971. In 1975 she received a D.Phil. in legal philosophy from Oxford University, 2012 (“Privacy and the Limits of Law,” Yale Law Journal, Vol 28 No. 3, Available online at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2060957, Accessed on 7-15-15)

It is here that understanding the reasons for the new concern with privacy becomes crucial. It is true that individuals today enjoy more opportunities for privacy in some areas, but this observation, taken alone, is misleading. The rarity of actions is not a good indication of the need for privacy, or of the extent to which invasions are un- desirable. We enjoy our privacy not because of new opportunities for seclusion or because of greater control over our interactions, but be- cause of our anonymity, because no one is interested in us. The moment someone becomes sufficiently interested, he may find it quite easy to take all that privacy away. He may follow us all the time, ob- tain information about us from a host of data systems, record our con- versations, and intrude into our bedrooms. What protects privacy is not the difficulty of invading it, but the lack of motive and interest of others to do so. The important point, however, is that if our privacy is invaded, it may be invaded today in more serious and more permanent ways than ever before. Thus, although most of us are unlikely to experience a substantial loss of privacy, we have an obligation to protect those who lose their anonymity. In this sense, privacy is no different from other basic entitlements. We are not primarily concerned with the rights of criminal suspects because we have been exposed to police brutality ourselves. We know that we may be exposed to it in the future, but, more generally, we want to be part of a society that is committed to minimizing violations of due process.

Privacy - Deontology

Privacy is Kantian — key to human dignity

Buitelaar, 2014
J. C. Professor, Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology, and Society, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands "Privacy and Narrativity in the Internet Era." The Information Society 30.4 (2014): 266-281.

There are manifold definitions and views of privacy. A seminal starting point is that of Warren and Brandeis (1890), namely, that privacy should be regarded as a general right to the immunity of the person. The right to privacy, as part of the more general right to the immunity of the person, is related to the right to one's personality. From this point of view it can be argued that the value of privacy is grounded in the principle of permitting and protecting an autonomous life (Kant 1996; Rössler 2001). The moral philosopher Kant was an early proponent of the view of the intrinsic value of human dignity (Kant 1996). Kant did, however, put a constraint on this view, namely, that humans owe themselves a duty of self-esteem but also a claim to and the duty to respect other humans. In Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, this Kantian principle of intrinsic human dignity is adopted, where the declaration states that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. This inherent dignity accounts for the possession of inalienable human rights. These rights find their origin in the capacity of the human being to reflect and make choices. A. R. Miller combines these two concepts to explain the importance of informational self-determination for preservation of privacy: “the basic attribute of an effective right of privacy is the individual's ability to control the circulation of information relating to himself; a power that often is essential to maintaining social relationships and personal freedom” (Miller 1971, 25). If the individual can no longer determine to what extent they reveal themselves to the outside world, privacy is robbed of its core value, which is the opportunity to freely decide for oneself. The intrinsic dignity of the individual, from the liberal point of view at least, guarantees the autonomy to act freely and thus make the choices that allow a person to flourish and to develop their personality. This is also the principle of personal freedom enshrined in the German Constitution. Furthermore, privacy provides the individual with a safe place, where they can decide for themselves which relations they enter into. I maintain that they can only do so if they can control who has access to them. When this situation exists, they have the assurance that they can control the patterns of behavior they want to adopt.

Directory: uploads
uploads -> 587 Return function, r i(X) r i(0) r i(1) r i(2) r i(3) 1 0 2 4 6 Thermal Station, I 2 0 1 5 6 3 0 3 5 6 10
uploads -> Department of science and humanities department of mathematics part-a questions and answers
uploads -> The Case Against the nypd’s Quota-Driven ‘Broken Windows’ Policing What Is It?
uploads -> For want of a nail
uploads -> Ownership Models There are two different types of ownership models
uploads -> Police Militarization
uploads -> City of rising star regular meting thursday, july 14, 2016
uploads -> Township of winfield
uploads -> Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement Act of 2014
uploads -> The Black Panther Party’s Ten-Point Program What We Want Now!

Download 1.51 Mb.

Share with your friends: