Saturday, 28 May 2011

The only way to maintain privacy for anyone is to guarantee it for no-one.

Having grown up in the rural North Cotswolds I can assure you that the so called 'small-town mentality' is something more than apparent, and in fact something very real and tangible.  In small towns and villages in Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire it is not uncommon to find that everybody knows everybody else, everybody knows everybody else's business, and everybody is quite happy to talk about it.  As a newcomer to the area you might well conclude that rural Britain is rife with scandal and intrigue.  Unnerving?  Perhaps.  Conspicuous?  Perhaps not.  But this phenomenon definitely should not be surprising since it is not so much a measure of scandal, as the degree of focus.

As an uncertain person in a competitive city environment, one must necessarily pick their battles carefully.  In a small rural hideaway, one can afford to be more or less indiscriminate - keeping an ever vigilant watch out for betrayal, opportunity, and weakness.  The brief glare from a solitary passing stranger instead morphs into the all-seeing eye of the parish community.  I'm sure it would not be too difficult for you to imagine the scene (bearing in mind that cliche and stereotypes do not sporadically sprout from thin air) of the local village pub.  The place might be full of many groups of friends, family and colleagues - each having their own conversation about work, sports, or even politics.  But quite probably the conversation will veer towards the latest local scandal to have found its way through the rumour mill.  With flippancy, gentle misogyny, casual racism, unwarranted hubris, and above all a healthy dose of hypocrisy, the group parse the latest indictment, ferociously castigating one party, whilst maybe reluctantly praising another, and eventually come to their own conclusions about the matter. The next day they will go to work and disseminate their philosophy to their further friends and colleagues, revel in the attention, and enjoy the humoured banter that results from this mitosis.

Of course, this narrative may well make the event sound far more malicious than its participants would have you believe.  But if you can see past this, perhaps you could imagine the subject of such a discussion standing up in the pub and demanding that conversation about him cease immediately.  The fellow would be laughed, jeered, and snorted at.  He would be accused of wanting to have his cake and eat it - or perhaps make his bed and then wish to lie in someone else's.  The fact of the matter is that to adhere to his vain cry of anonymity would strain the instincts of all involved, and forever engage them in a masochistic web of complexity and deceit.  Even on a small scale, the submission to such a request would be the beginning of the end of honesty.

But let's multiply out the numbers, shall we?  Say the small village of a hundred becomes hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people, who, if they don't know you, at least have access to information about you and your activities.  Suddenly, the issue of privacy becomes one of great concern to such a person and, as we have seen recently, they will go to great lengths and expenditure to maintain it.  Tens of thousands of pounds can be spent in an effort to silence as many individuals as possible, to the point where we very nearly face the absurd prospect of trying, and possibly imprisoning, someone with a legal bar on them being named even after their conviction.  But does all this rigmarole really preserve someone's privacy?

The obvious problem with this system is that far from being fair, it openly dictates that the level of this vague 'privacy' one might be entitled to is determined by your ability to pay for it.  Our poor friend in the pub might well wish to take out a court injunction could he afford it, but he can't.  Therefore, the oft invoked 'court of public opinion' can do its worst.  If you can afford it even public opinion is of little consequence.

The less obvious characteristic of this issue is how people view 'privacy'.  Privacy is of course nothing to do with other people talking about us.  Privacy is everything to do with people talking about things we do not want them to know.  And one could be forgiven for thinking that there may be something more than a little suspicious about wanting to do something but actively not wanting people to know about it.  There is no implicit bowing to the tyranny of the majority here - if one partakes in something considered just by the cringeworthy minority but wishes to remain anonmyous, then one should not be surprised when people begin to question your motives.  Either such a person agrees with the minority but wants to assume the position of the majority, or they ostensibly wish to appease the minority whilst being part of the majority.  In either case, the subject is both deceitful and duplicitous, and it remains to be seen whether such characteristics can be good for the human condition.

Ultimately, 'privacy' is the shield we use to excuse our dishonesty and deceit.  The cornerstone of liberalism is the ability to exercise our freedoms so long as we do not restrict the freedoms of others.  But the corollary of such a maxim is that you must be prepared  for dissent and debate.  If we are not proud of our actions then we should not partake in them.  If we are proud and true to our convictions then what does it matter when the baying crowd decry them - they are what we believe to be true and just.  We make our own privacy and we get the final say on what is said and what is not by virtue of our actions.  The moment that anybody is able to circumvent this simple responsibilty then the focus on such a person necessarily increases.  To put it another way, the more you seek to protect your privacy, the further you thrust yourself in the public eye.  What do you have to hide?

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