Privacy is another fundamental issue, especially with the dramatic growth of digital
technologies for gathering and storing personal information. Privacy is not merely
a legal right but a condition or status in which humans, by virtue of their humanness,
control the time, place, and circumstances of information about themselves.
A private domain gives people their own identity and unique self-consciousness
within the human species. Democracies as a system of rule by the people distinguish
themselves in these terms. Legally it means that citizens have freedom from
government control over what they themselves control. Totalitarian societies use
the near absence of privacy to produce a servile populace. Those with no privacy
lose their sense of human dignity. Government surveillance may demand personal
records outside owner controls, but human dignity requires absolute protection.
Security measures that intrude upon personal information without notification in
the process of securing a nation state deny its democratic character.
Instead of a bevy of rules and constraints to determine whether privacy is being
invaded by the press or the government, the question is whether the people themselves
consider the information or action invasive. Protection of privacy is basically a
citizen’s ethics, understood and implemented by policy makers and media professionals
who see themselves first of all as human beings, not as professionals. The human
dignity of the citizenry, rather than legalities, is the alpha and omega, the beginning
and end. Hence the formal criterion for privacy as a moral good: Since human dignity
entails control of private life space, information is communicated about human beings
to others if and only if a reasonable public considers it permissible.
Public opinion polls indicate that the invasion of privacy ought to be a premier
issue in journalism ethics. Intruding on privacy creates resentment and damages
the credibility of the information providers. Legal definitions by themselves are an
inadequate foundation. How can the legally crucial difference between newsworthy
material and gossip or voyeurism be reasonably determined? Privacy is not a
legal right only but a moral good. For all of the sophistication of case law and tort
law in protecting privacy, legal safeguards do not match the challenges of powerful
new media technologies for storing data and disseminating information.
Therefore, while acknowledging legal distinctions and boundaries, the protection
of privacy must be constructed and defended as a normative principle. Privacy
is a moral good since it is a condition for developing a healthy sense of personhood.
Violating it, therefore, violates human dignity. However, privacy cannot be made
absolute because people are cultural beings with responsibility in the social and
political arena. People are individuals and therefore need privacy. People are social
beings and therefore need public information about others. Since people are individuals,
eliminating privacy would eliminate human existence as they know it; since
people are social, elevating privacy to absolute status would likewise render human
existence impossible. These considerations lead to the formal criterion that the
intimate life space of individuals cannot be invaded without permission unless the
revelation averts a public crisis or is of overriding public significance and all other
means to deal with the issue have been exhausted.
ICTs have greatly facilitated data collection, privacy invasion, and surveillance.
And with the “War on Terrorism”, ICT-based surveillance policies and practices
have increased dramatically.
Invasion of privacy and abuse of personal data by third parties, as well as harassment
and identity theft are oft-criticized side effects of data networks and new communication
technologies. Popular Web 2.0 applications such as social networking sites, provide a
convenient socializing tool for its users who often carelessly reveal detailed personal
information in their profiles. This makes social networking sites gigantic data collection
agencies that allow highly individualized forms of marketing and advertising through
the combination of user profiles and user behaviors (Debatin, 2008, p. 261).
Small micromedia, such as podcasts, blogs, mobile phones, and social networking
sites are increasingly used to publicize personal and intimate information within the
so-called anonymity of the digital environment. It can be assumed that the threats to
privacy will only be aggravated as new smart communication technologies pervade
industrial societies. This type of technology tends to become invisible because it is so
widely adapted that it is readily taken for granted. “In the not-too-distant future,
ubiquitous computer technology will be embedded in every aspect of our everyday
environment. It is obvious that this new pervasive technology will inevitably lead to
unintended consequences with ethical implications due to its invisibility, definitional
power and deep impact on existing social structures” (Debatin, 2008, p. 261).
In fostering an ethics of privacy, the vitality of education becomes our preoccupation
rather than focusing on the violations of privacy one-by-one. The question is
not first of all policy makers and media professionals dealing with privacy issues caseby-
case, but their commitment to privacy as normative for a healthy democracy. To
the extent that privacy as a moral good is known and appreciated, the details of
privacy protection in law and professional practice will be interpreted correctly.
Post a Comment