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The Forum > Article Comments > If you've nothing to hide > Comments

If you've nothing to hide : Comments

By Mirko Bagaric, published 14/8/2008

Privacy legislation: when less is more

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The right to privacy is much greater than a want for privacy, it can also be a safety net.

In this age of faceless communication and commerce were business is conducted between people who have never met before information is as good as gold. Many banks around the world these days, although maybe not in Australia yet, will approve credit cards to people without even seeing their face with online approvals. If I knew enough about you I could apply for a credit card in your name, run up a huge debt and 'disappear' leaving you with the bill.

Our society is becoming more litigious everyday, with people out there looking to sue at the drop of a hat or to have some warped sense of justice filled. To know all dirty secrets of our neighbours will be more divisive than be in blissful ignorance. Imagine if in their youth one of your neighbours was a drug dealer who was directly responsible for a death by overdose. Would you trust them even though it was something that happened in the stupidity of youth? Probably not. Our society often defines an individual not by their good works but by what they have done in their past. A drug dealer will always remain a drug dealer, no matter what they do afterwards.

Privacy is a good thing, it keeps us safe from those who would want to do us harm and while some may see that it causing harm by not allowing full disclosure I ask, isn't risk a part of life? We must accept some risk in life or die alone in our rooms scared of everything.
Posted by Arthur N, Thursday, 14 August 2008 10:33:02 AM
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“No one has yet been able to identify where the right to privacy comes from and why we need it.” Bagaric is just so shallow - and wrong.

Privacy is often most appreciated when it's taken away. Tyranny thrives on the control of personal information. Authoritarian governments don’t ask individuals to consent to their privacy being invaded - they just assert that the interests of society or ‘the State’ must dominate the interests of individuals.

Widespread police surveillance is the very definition of a police state. At the time of German unification, in 1989, East Germany had been engaging in a massive institutional invasion of privacy. Stasi had secret files on 6,000,000 citizens – one in three of the entire population. It employed over 90,000 spies and 300,000 voluntary informants. It had infiltrated and undermined West Germany's government (Geoffrey Robertson, Crimes Against Humanity, Penguin 2002, p. 293).

Faced with privacy-invading surveillance technologies, individuals are less ready to complain or voice dissent. Public interest advocates and ‘troublemakers’ are repressed. Oppositional candidates are less willing to be critical; supporters less prepared to go out on a limb; and voters more fearful of the consequences if their voting patterns become known.

The parallels with big business should not be dismissed. With massive data bases, powerful organisations are able to share your personal data with ‘business partners’, corporations and government agencies to exercise control through tracking people’s consumer and other behaviours.

Biometric technologies create new capabilities that have never been known before.

Any system that involves access to stores of personal data is fraught with enormous risks. Malevolent imposters can trick devices into authenticating another person. This enables them to gain access to software or data, digitally sign messages and transactions, capture the person’s identity, harm the person’s reputation, or ‘frame’ the person. New biometrics are potentially dangerous, because they’re the equivalent of a PIN that can’t be changed. Lose it once, and you’re forever subject to impersonation and false charges.

Those are some of the reasons why we should champion the right to privacy even when we have nothing to hide.
Posted by Spikey, Thursday, 14 August 2008 12:54:49 PM
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Mirko Bagaric should commence his post with his annual salary and medical history - "if he's got nothing to hide ...". In this light, I find his arguments disingenuous. To further bring pedophilia into the debate (when research shows it's far more likely a pedophile will be a relative than a neighbour), has become the modern variant on Godwin's Law.

There is debate to be had for saying individuals should be treated differently to organisations: individuals deserve better privacy protections, organisations less. But that debate is lost in this piece by the poor tabloid style arguments presented.
Posted by Fozzy, Thursday, 14 August 2008 1:59:45 PM
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There goes Mirko once more, implicitly championing the cause of every totalitarian philosophy from Mao to Mussolini to Milosevic.

I used to think that, maybe, Mirko was playing devil’s advocate in his expressed views but – don’t be fooled – he believes this claptrap, hiding behind such innocuous ‘sucker punches’ as: "If you have done nothing wrong, why do you have anything to fear."

The answer is simple: "Because the government gets to define what's wrong, and they keep changing the definition." Privacy is a requirement for maintaining the human condition with dignity and respect; unfettered surveillance is the antithesis of this.

Cardinal Richelieu understood the value of surveillance when he famously said, "If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged." Privacy protects us from abuses by those in power because, without it, surveillance information will be abused.

An old proverb says it best: Quis custodiet custodes ipsos? ("Who watches the watchers?")

Privacy is a fundamental human right recognised in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the European Convention on Human Rights.

As I have said before, Mirko, you can take the boy out of Croatia but you can’t take Croatia out of the boy.
Posted by Doc Holliday, Thursday, 14 August 2008 3:21:38 PM
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All these negative comments. Mirko really hit a nerve. I think he is 1/2 right because the utopia he paints is real, on one condition. 1/2 wrong because he did not mention that condition.

The nervousness is understandable. Up till now we have had one example of total loss of privacy - the one served up by East Germany. It's enough to frighten anyone, including me. Yet undeniably our privacy is gradually being eroded, and equally undeniably we aren't heading down the East German road. If you want to know where we are headed look at this:

http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11332879

To many that is the ultimate horror, yet what harm came from it? Nothing as far as I can tell. Lots of reactions like the ones I see here, but no harm ands its hard to see how it could arise given it happens to everyone. On the positive side we have this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/30/nyregion/30about.html

Here again, what was once private is no longer so. But I bet no one is arguing it was a bad thing in that case.

So what is different about East Germany? It was not loss of privacy. It was imbalance of power. In East Germany you lost your privacy to a select few. They knew everything about you, yet you knew nothing about them. Surprise surprise, that imbalance was used to keep the populace in check.

What you must guard is not your privacy. Its your right to know as much about someone as they do about you. Don't be suspicious of someone taking your picture in public. Be suspicious of the person who won't let you take their picture. Be suspicious of the credit rating agency that gets your information to a select few, who then uses it to decide what you can and can't do.

Loss of privacy is like disarmament. Its frightening. You are giving them power over you. It only works if they give you the same power over them. But given the balance is preserved I think the picture Mirko paints is pretty accurate, and the pain of disarmament is worth it.
Posted by rstuart, Thursday, 14 August 2008 6:33:03 PM
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Dear Mirko

I'm sort of with you on this one. I too agree that privacy (of the socially insular kind) is a breeding ground for some of society's creepier, more foetid ills. I think that most of society's misfits are created in an overabundance of family privacy. I think that it would be a great thing if all members of our society could be encouraged to be far more open and accomodating to one-another.

I don't think I ever had a secret worth keeping. Knock on my door on a stinking hot day, and I might answer it in the nud. Mate - I don't give a hoot! And nor should anyone else (in a more ideal world).

*

But I have other privacy issues which need addressing too:

1. Do you think that the commercial-in-confidence sections of our State Government PPP contracts should be kept private from the public?

2. If the AFP makes an accusation against any person, why should the AFP be entitled to keep the evidence private?

3. Is any corporation or thing which breaches the privacy of the individual, entitled to any privacy of it's own?

4. Do you think any slackening of privacy should be applied equally across the board, regardless of a person's job, status, wealth or privelege?

^

Mirko - can you take the time to give me your prognostications on this?

Sincerely....
Posted by Chris Shaw, Carisbrook 3464, Thursday, 14 August 2008 7:16:05 PM
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This is largely a response to Chris Shaw's post.

Chris, there is a huge difference between privacy rights of the individual and demands of "publically elected officals" to intrude into those individual privacy rights, possibly for the purose of preserving the hegemony of the related bureaucrats.

By definition, "elected officals" are there by dint of individual requirements for their (i.e. the individual's) sovereign rights to be cared for - supposedly, by persons formally qualified for the task.

The real difference you are delineating is that between an individual's right to privacy and the requirement for public disclosure and transparency in the bureaucratic decision-making process.

This, then, raises the issue of adequate Freedom of Information laws that parallel the issues we are here discussing.

Both matters are intimately related and both fall on the side of being "fair and reasonable" in effect.

(Note that we have not yet touched upon the legal areas of contractual confidentialty and fairness, which are the very foundations of our legal system.
Posted by Doc Holliday, Thursday, 14 August 2008 7:42:28 PM
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"If you have done nothing wrong, why do you have anything to fear."

Simply because I don't want to assume that someone else will not choose to do wrong with information about me which they might not otherwise be entitled to.

Fozzy, forget Mirko opening the article with "his annual salary and medical history " - bank account details and passwords please.

If the answer from Mirko is "no thanks" (or a variation of that) then we have established the transaction, now we haggle over the price.

What are reasonable boundaries on privacy?

R0bert
Posted by R0bert, Thursday, 14 August 2008 8:22:07 PM
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I don't see any evidence that tolerance towards homosexuals, the mentally ill, or those inflicted with the AIDS virus was developed simply by putting people's private details on show. Any developments on these fronts were due to a complex process of social change not through individuals being forced to divulge their most tightly held secrets.

It is laughable to think that anyone in the world, struggling or not, would not protest if their privacy was compromised. After all, isn't dignity and respect important to every community?

I'll take this one as satire.
Posted by BrownWoman, Thursday, 14 August 2008 11:15:55 PM
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Wanting to destroy privacy between the citizen and state means that you want people to be pawns of an authoritarian government whose rights can be removed at will. This author is an extremely corrupt individual, or breathtakingly ignorant.

Sometimes privacy is a little burdensome and inefficient for governments but that's all you can say about it.
Posted by Steel, Friday, 15 August 2008 12:29:54 AM
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Fozzy: "Mirko Bagaric should commence his post with his annual salary and medical history"

If Mirko looses his privacy and you don't loose yours it doesn't work, and obviously no one would accept it, yet that is what you ask for. It is unreasonable. Try to understand what he is proposing.

Doc Holliday: "Who watches the watchers?"

In a word: you. Because you know as much about the watchers as they do about you. If you don't it doesn't work.

Steel: "Wanting to destroy privacy between the citizen and state means that you want people to be pawns of an authoritarian government whose rights can be removed at will. This author is an extremely corrupt individual, or breathtakingly ignorant."

There are a fair few breathtakingly ignorant points in that one statement Steel, but the one that really gets me is your assumption you have some sort of privacy from the government now. They know what you earn, your medical history, where you live, where you work, what you drive, and what pharmaceuticals you purchase. They photograph you on most major roads, know all your traffic infringements, what cars you drive and how much you drive it. They can legally obtain your credit history, tap your phone calls, watch your movements, and see everything you purchase and where you got it from using your bank statements. The icing on the cake is that every few years some bad apple in the public service decides to make a buck by selling this information.

But that is not the worst of it. With the anti-terror mania sweeping our society, we have given them the power to collect all this information and study it, looking for chinks in your armour. As the Haneef example shows us they have no qualms about leaking what they find to the press when it suits them. Yet they insist we let them do this in private, armed with press gag orders and control orders no one is supposed to talk about. Mirko's proposal is about redressing that imbalance, not making it worse.
Posted by rstuart, Friday, 15 August 2008 8:46:38 AM
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This is undoubtedly a serious issue, and deserves serious treatment.

But the author does not appear to discriminate between the various – very important – levels of privacy that need to be considered.

"If there were less privacy, criminals would find it harder to plot harmful acts (hundreds of crimes have been thwarted by closed-circuit television)"

If the CCTV is in a public space, or if I am a company protecting my property through the use of CCTV, there is a strong case to be made that the right to privacy cannot exist in this environment.

However, if the CCTV is used, say, by a swimming pool to monitor activity in the changerooms, I would suggest that this trips over the line between security – detecting wrongdoers – and privacy, in this case a personal preference to take ones clothes off without being spied upon.

Clearly, generalizations are not going to work here.

But that's all we are given.

“We would be better placed to make informed investment decisions (no more tiresome "commercial in confidence" conversation-stoppers) and know more about the real agendas of our politicians.”

“Commercial in Confidence” is a bastion, a bulwark, a mainstay of business dealings. To believe otherwise, you must never have been closer to a real, functioning, commercial business than buying milk at the corner store.

Here's the deal. I walk into the Boardroom one sunny morning and declare to the Board “we should make a takeover bid for Woolworths”. How would that work, asks the Board, and I outline my – quite brilliant – plan to them. Sounds good, they say, and send me off on “commercial in confidence” discussions with Woolworths.

At what point does the public – in this case Woolworths' shareholders, shareholders in my company, the Stock Exchange, the press, the ACCC, ASIC and so on ad infinitum – have the right to the contents of my plan?

The trick here is to be clear about what is covered by the label, not the outlawing of the act itself

However, when it comes to politicians...

But that would be a generalization.
Posted by Pericles, Friday, 15 August 2008 9:21:23 AM
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rstuart>"There are a fair few breathtakingly ignorant points in that one statement Steel, but the one that really gets me is your assumption you have some sort of privacy from the government now."

Where did my comment state that I made such an assumption? That was your own.
Posted by Steel, Friday, 15 August 2008 11:54:07 AM
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you gotta admire the way this torture-loving fascist can take 500 years of legal principle and trivialise it as a "middle-class invention".
Posted by bushbasher, Sunday, 17 August 2008 9:59:34 AM
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Oh, Please . . . enlighten me, Mr. Bagaric . . .

Exactly how much UNINHIBITED and, therefore, REAL liberty will we actually have when everyone and their second cousin knows everything there is to know about our private business, which, however harmless and legal it may be, would still be embarrassing?

On the other hand, modern societies positively REJOICE in the nauseating production of voyeuristic television shows with mass audiences AND participants who delight in the revelation of someone else's idiosyncrasies, as well as displays of their own "15 minutes of fame" narcissism. Maybe the majority no longer WANTS any privacy.
Posted by sonofeire, Monday, 18 August 2008 4:23:20 PM
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Gosh the debate is really deep and meaningful and it makes me realise how simple I like to keep life. I belong to the brigade that if you have nothing to hide then a degree of loss of privacy doesn't mean much to me. I don't use on line banking for a start, I don't own shares, or a business so I have an advantage is not being "afraid" and "alert" to potential dangers. I haven't got that much to lose I suppose except my belief in a right to free speech.

One bug about privacy is that it works to protect the guilty at the expense of the innocent. The Skases of this world who salt away millions of dollars of mum and dad superannuation investors. Property scams are rift and yet the news and current affairs programs are so afraid of legal action that we can't be told their names etc.

My biggest bug though is that a person with AIDS can be nursed by my daughter without her having the right to know that there is a major risk factor at work with vomit, urine, tears etc etc. It is all so ho hum and it is her duty to expect that everyone is a potential AIDS risk to her. The problem is with sick people you're too busy thinking about their needs in an emergency to worry about your own. She got bitten helping a woman in a fit once and had to wait weeks for the test results to show she was clear. What of Hepatitis carriers working with food?

Balance is needed by all parties - and without surveillance crime would be the order of the day...how would drug importers and couriers ever get caught?
Posted by Choice, Tuesday, 19 August 2008 5:05:00 AM
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