Should There be a Right to Privacy ?

I have to plead "Guilty": I have not examined the possibility that there should not be.

This article by Norman Siebrasse on the consistently stimulating "Overcoming Bias" website tests my previously unthinking belief. Some extracts:

...the thinness of the arguments that are most often raised in favour of privacy inclines me to look for an explanation of the privacy presumption based on cognitive biases...

I can think of two types of cognitive bias that might lead to the privacy presumption. First is simply the salience bias. We’ve all done something wrong that we would like to keep hidden (well, not me, but most people), and the consequences to us of being caught are far more vivid and easily imagined than are the indirect consequences of better enforcement against everyone else...

A second possibility is that we might have evolved a direct cognitive bias in favour of privacy. Suppose that free flow of information is in fact that the best social policy. This would set up a classic prisoners’ dilemma: the best case overall is if no one keeps information private, but the best case for me is that I keep my information private and everyone else reveals theirs. Since everyone has the same reasoning, everyone elects to keep their information private, even though free flow of information would be substantively desirable.

Interesting stuff, but I still believe in a right to privacy.

The "legitimate and essential responsibility of newspapers"

This week has seen an interesting story from Liberia.

In what seems to me to have been an obvious set-up (perhaps by journalists, but more probably by political rivals), a government minister was photographed in flagrante delicto. The photograph was published in explicit quasi-pornographic detail by a newspaper, and the minister lost his job. The newspaper was closed down by the authorities. I do not approve of this and unsurprisingly the president of the World Association of Newspapers Gavin O'Reilly - yes, that's our own Gavin, son of Dr A.J.F. - condemns it.

However, the terms in which he does so are revealing:

While the publication of sexually explicit photos is controversial, the investigation of public officials is a legitimate and essential responsibility of newspapers.

In other words, he says that he believes that it is a legitimate and essential responsibility of newspapers to pry into the sexual behaviour of individuals who happen to hold public office.

Why ?

I do not exclude the possibility that the sexual behaviour of public figures might in some circumstances be a matter of legitimate public interest - though it should be noted that I would require a considerable amount of persuasion that it was justifiable to publish such material - but in the Liberian case, there was no suggestion of the minister's private life having any relevance beyond the usual guff along the lines of "how could anyone trust this man ?".

(No politician should ever be trusted is my view; the old wisdom was "put not your trust in princes").

Gavin O'Reilly is a public figure more powerful than most, if not all, politicians. I'll bet that he does not accept that his private life, much less his behaviour in the bedroom - any bedroom - could ever be of legitimate public interest.

After all, the great Vincent Browne has often claimed on his radio programme that O'Reilly does not even allow he media he controls to fully cover the news from the Planning Tribunal. It may be purely coincidental - if I am to be contortionately fair - that Dr A.J.F. (the da) is implicated in the matters upon which he apparently does not see it as their "essential responsibility" to properly and fully report.

The Privacy Bill (Ireland)

The Irish government's proposed law on the protection of privacy is still moving slowly through the Senate, which is the upper house of parliament. Since the lower house has not seen it yet, it is difficult to believe that it will become law before next summer's general election. This will accord with the Justice Minister Michael McDowell's real wishes: the Bill is beloved of the governing coalition's majority party, but is personally repugnant to the libertarian Minister, leader of the Progressive Democrat party, who is also close to media interests in Ireland.

I have made available a link to the text of the Bill here

Your Privacy is my Business

A celebrity couple - I refuse to name them - are notoriously going through a "spot of marital difficulty" at present, and some rather nasty material is being written about it in the media. This was the background to a discussion on BBC Radio 4's "Any Questions" last weekend. A "media person" who I gather from the BBC website was Anne McElvoy, Executive Editor of London's "The Evening Standard", defended the invasion of privacy involved on the basis that the material had not been invented by the media but had, she asserted as matter of fact, been provided to the media by the parties. So, that's all right, then ? Well, not for me. Some questions arise:

• Do journalists write their own stuff any more ?
• Do journalists never invent ?
• Is the Common Good unaffected if warring parents "wash their dirty linen in public" ?
• How about the good of affected parties such as e.g. their children ?

I congratulate the Government, however impure its motivation, on proposing legislation in this area.