Privacy: An Affective Protocol
Privacy is best understood by putting down the
mobile phone, stepping away from the computer and turning-off all digital
communication devices. Privacy is a fact of living in communities and although
the ways in which privacy is expressed is ethnocentric, and differs on a
community-by-community basis, anthropologists have long observed that “it”
exists. What “it” is very hard to define. The problem is at once linguistic,
categorical, experiential, sociological, anthropological and philosophical. Put
otherwise, is privacy a thing, condition, property, right, ethic or even
biological necessity?
Some people suggest that privacy might
somehow be removed, surpassed or lost from the human equation – that privacy is
dead. However, this is to very much misunderstand what privacy is. Excitable
folk (particularly CEOs of tech’ companies) who herald the death of privacy are
quite likely to be unpopular with their family, colleagues and acquaintances.
This is because privacy plays a fundamental role in our most basic daily
interactions. Be this in our behaviour towards each other, what we consider to
be taboo, our modes of intimacy, the confidences we share with others, who we
are open to, how we arrange our homes and working spaces, where we store
thoughts and things of value, and more recently the ways that these are
imbricated in media and technological systems, privacy is a basic and primal
premise.
One
implication of this view is that it makes little sense to think of privacy as
being alone and if we are to think in terms of seclusion, this must be in terms
of managing relationships with others (and being open as well as withdrawn).
After all, being alone and being private are very different as the former
involves an absence of relationships and connection. This absence can be very
palpable and may even occur in public as well as on a hypothetical desert
island where no one knows nor cares that an unlucky individual is stranded
there. Without connection, being alone is simply that – utter absence of others
that relate to us in some way.
While I broadly share what today is a liberal
outlook on privacy (involving Kant and JS Mill’s thoughts on control,
dignity, rights and autonomy), I also see it in more systemic terms. By this I
mean that privacy norms contribute to how we connect and interact with others.
Privacy is not about being alone, but how we are social. A systemic
approach thus sees privacy as an organizational principle that contributes to
the regulation of institutions, practices, modes of interaction, and social and
individual life more generally.
It is
at this point we can bring technologies back into the mix, particularly if we
see technologies as social actors that both contribute to the existence of
social norms, and are required to abide by them. As a principle, or set of
principles, privacy is best conceived in terms of meta-stable protocols
informed by physical, social, historical, technological and
environmental circumstances. Importantly,
protocols are not imposed, but are co-created between actors of all sorts so to
be an emergent norm that advises interaction and behaviour. Thus while privacy
does not have substance, it is quite real, and when we say real, we are able to
say that it has capacity to affect and to bring about corporeal, behavioural,
technological, psychological and organizational differences.
With privacy
being affective protocol, the ethical onus for anyone seeking to
dramatically modify or alter it is to make a case for their actions. To do
otherwise is an act of force. While concern about consent,
cookie use, legislation and surveillance of our digital communications remain
critical areas for scrutiny, these investigations are renewed and refreshed by
recognition of the breadth of privacy matters. This breadth is comprised of the
fact that privacy protocols are found in the most basic of arrangements.
Privacy is very much part of the human equation and suggestions that it might
be waning are to be treated sceptically.
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