Privacy

Trade-offs are real and boldly highlighted in this class. In this case, the tradeoff between security and privacy prevails. Before I respond to the specific reflection questions, I want to emphasize a certain point made by President Obama in June of 2013 concerning NSA surveillance. He said:

“I think it’s important to recognize that you can’t have 100 percent security and also then have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience,” — President Obama, June 2013.

This is just another way of saying trade-offs exist. I don’t mean to oversimplify the argument or seem to not take a stance–there are certainly extremes when it comes to overreaches in privacy or no sense of security. However, I think it’s important to note that our society is largely the way it is because of hundreds of years of tug-a-war between values. You can’t, as the question implies, employ the logical fallacy of false dichotomy: either Apple is ethically responsible for protecting consumer privacy or it is ethically responsible for helping prevent extremist activity. Isn’t there grey area? Doesn’t this require a more complex response?

In Thomas Hobbes’ view, the relationship between individuals and the government or individuals and corporations is defined by a social contract where people make concessions in exchange for a service or social good. For instance, I agree to pay taxes if the government agrees to keep my neighborhood safe and respond in cases of emergency. Additionally, I give my email and location information to a service to find me better food recommendations. That’s not 100% privacy, it’s likely not 100% security, and it may have both convenient and inconvenient factors. The question then has to do with relative importance between values–which understandably shifts from person to person.

In Brave New World, Aldous Huxley poses a question: is it better to be happy or free? A relevant corollary might be: is it better to be safe or have privacy? In my view, privacy is a fundamental human right that, if not protected, forces us into unhealthy conformity. In the late 18th century, the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham designed a prison that ensured inmate conformity using no extra weapons or locks. Known as the Panopticon, it utilized psychology to control people by instituting a single watchman with a view of all inmates–only, the inmates could never know if they were being watched. This gave the impression that one was constantly being watched and subsequently led to obedience and conformity. Such a concept became the new societal weapon of control in western civilization. No longer was brute force necessary to keep crowds of people at bay–the illusion of surveillance is enough.

Our behavior changes when we think we’re being watched, and not because we’re doing anything wrong. Why do some people sing only in the shower? Why might someone password-protect a diary? Perhaps people need that freedom of privacy to accomplish great things. By requesting a backdoor to the iPhone, the FBI was teetering on the edge of a slippery slope with our privacy–how can we be certain the software won’t be used for more than it was originally intended? In short, we can’t. History has shown that there’s no such thing as just, as the question states, “a little more privacy.” There is more benefit to society than detriment to it by safeguarding our freedom to privacy.