Can the government stick us with privacy we don't want? It can, it
does, and according to this author, may need to do more of it.
Privacy is a foundational good, she argues, a necessary tool in the
liberty-lover's kit for a successful life. A nation committed to
personal freedom must be prepared to mandate inalienable,
liberty-promoting privacies for its people, whether they eagerly
embrace them or not. The eight chapters of this book are
reflections on public regulation of privacy at home; isolation and
confinement for punitive and health reasons; religious modesty
attire; erotic nudity; workplace and professional confidentiality;
racial privacy; online transactions; social networking; and the
collection, use and storage of electronic data. Most books about
privacy law focus on rules designed to protect popular forms of
privacy. Popular privacy is the kind that people tend to want,
believe they have a right to, and expect governments to secure.
Typical North Americans and Europeans embrace privacy for
home-life, telephone calls, e-mail, health records, and financial
transactions. This unique book draws attention to unpopular
privacy- privacies disvalued or disliked by their intended
beneficiaries and targets-and the best reasons for imposing them.
Examples of unwanted physical and informational privacies with
which contemporary Americans have already lived? Start with laws
designed to keep website operators from collecting personal
information from children under 13 without parental consent; the
anti-nudity laws that force strippers to wear pasties and thongs;
the 'Don't Ask Don't Tell' rules that kept gays out of the US
military; and the myriad employee and professional confidentiality
rules- including insider trading laws- that require strict silence
about matters whose disclosure could earn us small fortunes.
Conservative and progressive liberals agree that coercion and
paternalism should be the exceptions rather than the rule. Better
to educate, incentivize and nudge than to force. But what if people
continue to make self-defeating bad choices? What are the
exceptional circumstances that warrant coercion, and in particular,
coercing privacy? When can government turn privacies into duties,
especially duties of self-care? Early modern societies went wrong,
imposing unequal conditions of forced modesty and confinement on
women and others groups, giving privacy and imposed privacies a bad
rap. But now may be a time for imposed privacies of another
sort-imposed privacies that are liberating rather than dominating.
A role for coercive and paternalistic regulation may be called for
in view of the Great Privacy Give-Away. The public turns over vast
amounts of personal information in exchange for the ease of online
shopping, browsing and social networking, protected in some
instances by little more than a pro forma privacy policy pasted on
a home page. The public uploads and stores information 'in the
cloud,' and have become more and more dependent upon electronic
telecommunications and personal archiving exposed to public and
private surveillance. Have they lost the taste for privacy? Do they
fail to understand the implications of what is happening? This book
offers insight into the ethical and political underpinnings of
public policies mandating privacies that people may be indifferent
to or despise. Privacy institutions and practices play a role in
sustaining the capable free-agents presupposed by liberal
democracy. Physical sanctuaries and data protection by law confers
and preserve opportunities for making and acting on choices.
Imposing privacy recognizes the extraordinary importance of
dignity, reputation, confidential relationships, and preserving
social, economic and political options throughout a lifetime.
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