“Qu’on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j’y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.”
If one give me six lines of writing in the most honest man’s hand, I shall find there something for which to have him hung. -Cardinal Richelieu
Privacy is a way of protecting us from several species of persecution. True information can be manipulated to convey an untrue impression of character or even of action. Information about one’s habits and thoughts belong to that individual, to be disclosed at his or her own discretion. For this very reason, privacy is also a powerful tool for civil disobedience, and it is for this reason that oppressive governments in the past have sought to restrict gatherings and associations, and monitor the thoughts, actions, and words of its opponents. Without the right to privacy, honest citizens are powerless to exchange ideas and lay plans to provide for their own salvation. There is no reason for an institution or person to gather information against an individual’s will unless it be to prevent them from exercising his right to freely associate and hear arguments on an equal plane of information as he who presents the argument (this last point is relevant in online advertising, in which psychological deductions are drawn against the consumer’s will, allowing them to be unfairly manipulated). For this reason, privacy is a requirement of democratic governance, and citizens should be suspicious when any business or government body infringes upon their privacy. We are currently heading toward a world characterized by reverse transparency, in which governments know everything about their constituents while the citizens know nothing of their government. Real transparency facilitates informed decision-making; reverse transparency (in commerce as well as government) makes informed decision making impossible, while making oppression effortless.
One source of our cultural desire for privacy, in my opinion, is a reaction to our inherent hypocrisy. Men are both beasts and gods, and this tension is a source of shame for us. The privacy boundaries we agree upon are so structured as to insulate our animal natures from our public, god-like aspirations. We all wish to associate with one another on the basis of what wish to be and what we hope to become, rather than on the basis of what we begrudgingly accept and endure as what we partially are. This compartmentalization is the foundation of vulnerability and intimacy in interpersonal relationships and supports a free and hopefully community. In the context of this conflict between our hopes and our short-comings, privacy is therefore also a source of spiritual freedom and a necessary condition of the discovery and evolution of friendships.