Privacy and freedom: from whom?

Living in a society we develop a nexus of relations with others. Some are with our family, others with those we with and still more with coreligionists. Depending on the form of government, we have more or less contact with civic authorities. These relations circumscribe our privacy and restrict our freedom. Privacy and freedom are intimately connected throughout history and they should be considered together. Eminent Sociologist Emile Durkheim wrote: In the beginning, everything was religious.1. Faced with the forces of nature of which they had limited understanding, those living centuries ago attributed all events, good and bad, to the will of God. The omniscient God, they believed, wrecked vengeance on those who disobeyed his commands. All they sought by their prayers and their offerings was to save them from bad luck in this world and for salvation after death. The distancing of individual from an omniscient and controlling God was a slow process with many variations and reversals within each religion. Christianity, the religion that achieved dominance in Europe by the High Middle Ages, viewed God as a benevolent though demanding Father than as an avenger.2. Even those who were converted to it continued to believe in the watchful role of the God with transgressions forgiven and salvation achieved through the church. In the sixteenth century, humanists like Erasmus and reformers like Luther challenged the role of church and emphasized individual faith. For centuries divine wrath was the explanation for sudden calamities like illness and death that were beyond rational explanation and the public resorted to prayers, penances and offerings to ward them off. The development of probability theory in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries enabled identifying a new concept of order in random events. It enabled the growth of insurance which provided a way to mitigate the consequence of unforeseen catastrophes. The scientific developments of science allowed the Enlightenment movement of eighteenth century to challenge the view that God is a micromanager of the physical world and the lives of individuals. Many of the popularisers, whose work reached an audience far larger than did Newtons original text, interpreted the Mathematical Principles as showing Gods distance form his creation. Newtons work thus was used in ways far removed from his original intentions, to support those whom the century called Deists, who believed in God only as the creator of the universe, a Being thus virtually equivalent to the laws of nature itself. Such a God displayed no interest in the moral choice of men, but existed only as the First Cause. 3. Today large majority of people continue to believe in religion and they continue to pray, do penance and make offerings to earn earthly benefits and salvation after death. While the degree of religiosity varies with societies and among individual, religion ceased to be everything.

In the Medieval Europe, more than eighty percent of the population was peasants living in rural areas. Some more were living in the villages as artisans. The socio-economic structure of this society determined the extent of privacy and freedom individuals had. Family in the villages was functionally a domestic group who ate at a common table than those with lineage.4. As life expectancy was around 30 years, remarriages were common and relatives of both wives might be in a family group. Many households had more than one married couple. Living and working in such close proximity, the actions of an individual were transparent to others and individual behavior could easily start a rumor mill. Relatives, neighbors and even authorities would step in to pressure and even penalize anyone breaking the customs. Privacy in the modern sense did not exist in a medieval village. Around the household was the land. Under the manorial system of Western Europe, the peasants rented the land from lords. Their rights to the produce and bequeath the land varied among different regions and with changes over time. They owed rent and labor service to the lord; in addition church dues and various other taxes had to be paid. In the great estates of East Europe, the serfs were the property of the landlord. They had less freedom than the peasants in Western Europe. The frustrations of the peasants led to spectacular revolts across Europe in 14th to 16th centuries but all of them failed.5. Eighteenth century saw the beginning of industrial revolution and the rise of nation state. Industrialization led to urbanization; there was a demographic shift from villages to towns. The factory system broke the link between family and work. The new immigrants to the towns experienced a fall in the standard of living standard as they lost whatever shelter the rural household provided. Economic improvement and social change took a long time and the longprevailing customs and restrictions continued to hold sway even as more and more individuals began to resent them. Those living in slums in the eighteenth century London had little privacy. Neither do those living today in the favelas of Rio de Jeneiro or the slums of Bombay have it. It is only as standard of living improved could individuals afford private space. Freedom of adult individuals to make their own decisions about family and work became a norm in western nations only in the twentieth century and it is still not widely accepted in the Asia. The transformation from feudal order to absolute monarchies began around the sixteenth century. Reflecting the needs of the time, Niccolo Machiavelli The Prince published in1532 advised the prince to eschew idealism and be realistic in using force and political intrigue to achieve his goals. There were struggles in each territory between the kings and the barons but in the end the outcomes favored the kings. They consolidated the territory, transferred to the court the power to impose taxes and levies on the populace and developed standing armies. Industrial revolution increased the capabilities of the government to penetrate or intrude into the life of its citizens. Such penetration can be expressed, to use an earlier term, as the newly found intrusiveness of the government into the homes, occupations, and daily lives of the citizenry. 2

As stated here, penetration is meant as a summary variable which is composed of three elements. They are, to begin with, the surveillance of the population, the control and direction of that populations activities. The first of these three implies acquiring information. The other two, together, imply government action.6. The eighteenth century enlightenment movement, noted earlier for promotion of secularism, argued for conferring rights and privileges on individuals.7. Many of its principles were incorporated in the American Constitution. Democratic countries that did not have constitutions passed laws and regulations to protect the liberty and security of the citizens. Like all social changes, the process was slow with frequent reversals. Statsi, the security arm of the East Germany, showed how, in the absence of legal restraints, mid-twentieth century technology and German thoroughness can be used to build one of the most effective and repressive secret police force ever. Even in democratic countries there were periodic abuses of power; in 1975 Senator Frank Church chaired a committee whose report identified abuses of power by the Central Intelligence Agency. In the wake of the Report, CIA was prohibited from surveillance of Americans and in establishing an apparatus for oversight of the agency. 8. It is well known that J. Edgar Hoover, long-time Director of Federal Bureau of Investigation, used wiretapping, breakins and other shady tactics to pursue civil rights leaders including Luther King and intimidating those in the Congress and the Administration.9. Today ideology and technology are putting history in reverse. The demand for personal freedom among younger generations in Asia and Africa triggered a counter-reformation movement. Some extreme groups, when not able to gain political power through alliances with religious leaders, resorted to coups and terrorist acts to push for a theocratic society. Muslim groups in the Middle East have gained most attention as they went beyond seeking local control and attacked Western Nations for being the source of hearsay. 10. The 9/11 attack created a general conviction that unless the extremist groups are monitored and counterattacked at their bases, more loses of life and property will occur. And this happened at a time when new technologies had enhanced capability to erode the privacy of individuals. The digital era has created a paradox. The ease and speed information technology to communicate and to enter into transactions has resulted in individuals voluntarily posting private information in internet. Internet banking and commerce gained popularity. In addition to frequent posts on their private activities, the public are posting more than seven billion photos are added to Facebook every month and hundred hours of video are loaded into YouTube every minute. In turn companies and social groups like Facebook are monitoring activities of individuals so that they can promote their products and services and the public seems to passively accept it. In spite of encryption, there is the possibility that unauthorized individuals and groups with criminal intent can access this information.

Given the concern about national security after 9/11, the United States government used to development in information technology to gather information about private communication among individuals. As the extent of this activity became clear though the revelations by Edward Snowden, many were concerned that government was secretly eroding the privacy guaranteed by third and fourth amendments to the United States constitution. 11 The Administration has argued that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court authorization required for surveillance made it legal. Philip Bobbitt, Professor of Federal Jurisprudence and Director of the Center for National Security Law at Columbia University writes: Indeed the Supreme Court has long held that the collection of telephone numbers without including conversations or content does not violate fourth amendment limits on search and seizure. As recently as 2008, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal held that IP and email addresses are analogous to the address on a letter in the mail and thus persons have no right of privacy for that information. 12. In a sense the issue is not what president started the program or whether it is within the current law. Privacy and freedom cannot be defined without reference to ideological convictions and technological capabilities of a society. The development of information technology has made the previous concepts about the boundary between private and public space outmoded. Privacy watchers and civil libertarians are surprised at the indifference of the public to the recent revelations about NSA activities. The public has every reason to be concerned that restraining the government will result in strengthening the capabilities of those who are attacking the society. As a matter of historic analysis, the relationship between secrecy and privacy can be stated as an axiom: the defense of privacy follows, and never precedes, the emergence of new technologies for the exposure of secrets.13. History warns that bureaucracy will expand its powers unless constrained but they do need to be given enough to protect the individual liberty from encroachment by others. The concepts that were developed at the formation of nation in eighteenth century need reexamination as the house, our private space, is no more a fortress.

Footnotes.
1.

Quoted in Antonino Palumbo and Alan Scott, Weber, Durkheim, and the sociology of modern state, in Twentieth Century Political Thought Terence Ball and Richard Bellamy ed. (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2003). P.371.
2.

Diarmaid MacCulloch, The History of Christianity (London: Allen Lane, 2009), pp.77-102; and Orlando Patterson, Freedom vol.1 (New York: Basic Books, 1991), pp. 293-344.
3.

Dorinda Outram, The Enlightenment (New York: The Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp.119-20.

4.

Andre Nurguiere et al, A history of family Vol. II (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press), p.31; Alison Rowlands, The condition of the life of the masses, in Euan Cameron (ed.), Early Modern Europe (new York: Oxford University Press, 1999), p32.

5.

Werber Rsener, The Peasantry of Europe (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), pp.83-103. S.E.Finer, The History of Government, Vol. III (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), p.1611.

6.

7.

For a short summary of the enlightenment movement and it social implications, see Opportunities and choices, pp.13-15. http://www.scribd.com/doc/49513234/Opportunities-and-Choices.
8.

Geoff Dyer, Church versus state, Financial Times, June 1, 2013. http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/ecd1f15a-d1ad11e2-b17e-00144feab7de.html#axzz2Xd7sjzbB
9.

Max Frankel, Where did our inalienable rights go, New York Times, June 23, 2013. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/23/opinion/sunday/where-did-our-inalienable-rights-go.html?_r=0
10.

Other religions also have extremist that resorted to violence to intimidate those belonging to other sects or religions. They are mostly local and has not received the attention and response created by Muslim fundamentalist. The Irish Troubles and Sri Lanka civil war have both ethnic and religious overtones. Attacks by small Hindu and Buddhist groups in India and Myanmar are reported.
11.

On http://nsa.gov1.info/data/index.html National Security Administration provides a summary of tis surveillance operations. Third Amendment as interpreted by courts required that individuals home should be free from agents of the state. The Fourth Amendment guarantees due process.
12.

Phillip Bobitt, The NSA is upholding, not subverting, the law, Financial Times, June 11, 2013. http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/2da229bc-d1bc-11e2-9336-00144feab7de.html#axzz2Xd7sjzbB
13.

Jill Lipton, The Prism, The New Yorker, June 24, 2013. P. 33.

Rama V. Ramachandran
http://www.visualeconomicanalysis.info/index.html Facebook: Ramanomics
Copyright 2012 Rama V. Ramachandran