(Individual) Privacy and Freedom

Alan Westin’s Privacy and Freedom is a staple in the privacy literature. Written in the 1970s, he was concerned with shifting the privacy debates away from ‘raising privacy awareness’ to ‘a sensitive discussion of what can be done to protect privacy in an age when so many forces of science, technology, environment, and society press against it from all sides’ (Westin 1970: 3). For our purposes, I explicate Westin’s understand of privacy’s functions and surveillance in society, and pose some critiques/questions that arose when I read the text.

In my previous post, I noted that privacy is a particularly large, well/over-used concept that many people talk about, with Colin subsequently asking “large in definition? context? the term’s connotations, or denotations?” In terms of Westin, I would respond that he proposes a broad definition that is meant to be context sensitive (and thus both contextually specific for certain geo-social spaces, but broad in potential understandings of how privacy should be balanced), and meant to be reasonably explicit in what is addressed. Privacy is an individual claim that is voluntarily exercised and meant to limit the exposure of personal information to the public, provide a space for intimacy, anonymity, and reserve, and is always conditioned to social forces. The term is used to establish a space where particular surveillance practices can be understood in light of personal/private needs that must be met for individuals to lead healthy lives.

Westin argues that privacy is a fundamental value that can be identified across the animal kingdom, and in both ‘primative’ and ‘advanced’ societies. As a result of each person’s dependence on their senses for daily life, we tend to understand privacy invasions in terms of how our ’sensory space’ is intruded upon – close contact is resisted, on the basis that it is offensive to the senses (Westin 2007: 9). Somewhat more broadly, based on anthropological reports, he identifies four general aspects of privacy that hold across all human societies.

1. Each possesses individual and group norms
2. Few/none perceive absolute privacy when individuals are isolated from other community members
3. Curiosity and surveillance are aimed at understanding the reality of the world, but this becomes harmful when it unduly penetrates social taboos/private spaces
4. Understandings of privacy are ‘extended’ as there is a change from ‘thick’ to ‘thin’ social bonds and increases in social and physical mobility in ‘advanced’ states

Shifting to a somewhat narrower discussion of privacy to ‘advanced’ Western societies (specifically Germany, Britain, and the United States of America), Westin argues that each specific situation in these environments has a boundary between permissible surveillance invasion and privacy protection. It is our sensory worlds that help us identify what are permissible and impermissible invasions of our individual privacy [1], though we can generally identify four basic states of privacy that indivdual and organizational balancing acts revolve around [2].

1. Solitude – separation from the group and are shielded from the observation of others. This is needed for individual personal autonomy and organizational autonomy.
2. Intimacy – act in small groups; this state is needed for basic human contact. Individuals draw on this for emotional release, and organizations to release members from their public roles so they can speak efficiently.
3. Anonymity – evidenced when in public spaces and seek and find freedom from identification and surveillance [3]. Individuals use this for self-evaluation, and organizations for evaluative periods and decision making.
4. Psychic barrier of Reserve – a space that limits communications with others to secure a ‘mental distance’ needed to protect their personality (Westin 1970: 32). Individuals need this for limited and protective communication (i.e. both space for intimate exchanges and for restriction of publicity in intimate relationships) and organizations for protected communications.

Having laid out the arenas around which privacy balancing occurs (and establishing that they are needed), Westin moves to bring up what actually intrudes on privacy in contemporary (1970) American society. He identifies three causes:

1. Self-disclosure as a threat to libertarian views of privacy; Westin finds that while people do disclose personal information, it is often conditioned by the confidentiality of the information transmission and it occurring with trusted sources [4].
2. Problem of voyeuristic curiosity; concerned with tactless and aggressive exposures of personal privacy [5].
3. Effects of surveillance by authorities of group and community life; there are three modes of this surveillance: (a) surveillance by observation that imposes an expectation of perfect normality and is dehumanizing when performed through data surveillance; (b) surveillance by extraction, where a person is forced to shed elements of their psychic privacy; (c) producibility of communication [6].

At the end, we are left with a very liberal understanding of privacy, insofar as it tends to focus on the needs of the individuals in their personal and community lives, and adopts a very state-centric (as opposed to a nation- or nation-state-centric) view of the world. At the same time, we can understand how he is desperately trying to carve out the particular spaces that a privacy debate/discussion should take place within. There are a host of questions/critiques that emerge from Westin’s account, but I just want to identify a few that struck me.

[1] While Westin speaks of finding a balance between the needs of government and society, and recognizes that we must negotiate sensory worlds to do this, what are we to do in multicultural environments where there are presumably a host of divergent sensory worlds derived from different cultural expectations and demands?

Moreover, the language of ‘balancing’ seems to suggest that the individual should sacrifice some of their right for governmental efficiently, but this implies that rights should be read economically. In agreement with Dworkin, I would argue that only in exceptional situations should rights be infringed upon, and a government should be required to publicly debate about such violations without the benefit of organizational privacy on the basis that such infringements strike at the heart of each citizen’s basic constitutional dignity. How should this be read, charitably, against Westin?

[2] In his discussion of states of privacy for organizations and individuals, isn’t he equating strategic exercises of privacy (organizations) with an intersubjective/presumably non- or less-strategic demand for privacy? What are the implications of this equation? Am I off the mark in seeing this distinction?

[3] If anonymity is only possible when free of both identification and surveillance, does this mean that for surveillance to be invasive that it must target identifiable people and organizations? Where would broad-based population surveillance fall in this? Effectively, what specifically is identification referring to?

[4] Westin seems to implicitly identify disclosure with a person being “normal” or part of the majority; would his logic thus suggest that deviant/minority members of the population would tend towards a ‘libertarian’ mode of privacy, whereas majority members would be less inclined to adopt such extreme attitudes? Who’s ‘privacy’ is he really talking about?

[5] What effects would voyeuristic curiosity have on organizational privacy, given that Westin only notes its implications for individual privacy?

[6] Westin identified three broad causes of privacy invasion; self-disclosure, voyeuristic curiousity, and effects of surveillance on group and community life. Do these effectively capture the full range of what we would consider ‘privacy invasions’, or is there a broader spectrum of issues that evade this typography? Could his understanding of privacy be charitably read to capture them?