New book: The Ethics of Privacy and Surveillance
Privacy matters because it shields us from possible abuses of power. Human beings need privacy just as much as they need community. Our need for socialization brings with it risks and burdens which in turn give rise to the need for spaces and time away from others. To impose surveillance upon someone is an act of domination. The foundations of democracy quiver under surveillance.
Given how important privacy is for individual and collective wellbeing, it is striking that it has not enjoyed a more central place in philosophy. The philosophical literature on privacy and surveillance is still very limited compared to that on justice, autonomy, or equality—and yet the former plays a role in protecting all three values. Perhaps philosophers haven’t attended much to privacy because for most of the past two centuries there have been strong enough privacy norms in place and not enough invasive technologies. Privacy worked for most people most of the time, which made thinking about it unnecessary. It’s when things stop working that the philosopher’s attention is most easily caught—the owl of Minerva spreading its wings only with impending dusk.
This hypothesis is supported by the publication date of the most impactful philosophical articles about privacy thus far. Judith Jarvis Thomson’s “The Right to Privacy,” Thomas Scanlon’s response, “Thomson on Privacy,” and James Rachels’ “Why Privacy Is Important,” were all published in a 1975 issue of Philosophy and Public Affairs. The 1970s were marked by Watergate and the scandals that followed. A tape-recording system in the Oval Office, and the discovery of Nixon’s surveillance of political rivals and activists led to the Church Committee —a Senate select committee that investigated abuses perpetrated by the CIA, NSA, FBI, and IRS— and to 1975 being dubbed the “Year of Intelligence.”
Since then, a whole industry dedicated to the trade of personal data has developed and grown to become one of the most popular business models of the 21st century. It’s time for ethics to revisit privacy. Ubiquitous surveillance snuck up on us. By the time we recognized it was happening, the surveillance architecture was already in place. As computers became cheaper, smaller, easier to use, and more powerful in what they could do, they became more pervasive. Everything— from our phones to our electricity meters, washing machines, and kettles —is turning into a computer. Interacting with computers produces data as a by-product. Businesses realized they could profit from the data left behind by users by collecting, analysing, and selling it. They started doing so without asking permission to governments or securing consent from users.
Ordinary citizens, spellbound by the novel services offered by tech companies, accepted a deal without understanding what they were giving up. The first time we opened an email account it never occurred to us that we were surrendering our personal data in return. As data-invasive corporate practices became commonplace, governments realized that they could tap into the streams of data being collected by companies, and that they could use it for the purposes of law enforcement, national security, and international espionage. The job of investigative agencies suddenly became much easier. That gave governments an incentive to allow the surveillance economy to proliferate. In June 2013, Edward Snowden, then an American National Security Agency (NSA) contractor, shocked the world by blowing the whistle on the existence of an extensive network of mass surveillance.
With the invention of new privacy-invasive technologies such as drones, wearables, and generative AI; with a world economy that is increasingly fuelled by personal data; and with governments passing laws that continue to transform the privacy landscape, philosophical reflection on the ethics and politics of privacy has never been more necessary.
This book is intended to contribute to a better understanding of privacy—what it is, what is at stake in its loss, and how it relates to other rights and values. The choices we make about privacy today and in the coming years will shape the history of humanity for decades to come. Decisions about privacy will influence how courts work, how political campaigns are run, our relationship with corporations, the power that governments may wield, the advancement of medicine, the individual and collective risks we are exposed to, and, not least, whether our rights are respected as we go about our daily lives.
The five parts that compose this book respond to five basic questions about privacy: Where does privacy come from? What is privacy? Why does privacy matter? What should we do about privacy? Where are we now?
Chapter One argues that our desire for privacy is not a cultural invention, but rather has animal roots. In particular, I discuss four traits that are related to privacy and can be observed in human beings and some non-human animals alike: the need to withdraw from others, the ability to deceive, the desire to save face, and the tendency to feel uncomfortable when others stare.
Chapter Two examines the etymology, history, and anthropology of privacy. Many of the misconceptions surrounding privacy that contribute to people not giving it the importance it deserves are sustained through ignorance of historical and anthropological facts. This chapter shows how practices designed to protect privacy are found in almost all societies, across time and geographies.
Chapter Three is about the relationship between privacy, the private, and the public. I argue that, whatever definition of privacy we favour, we cannot rely on the private and public distinction as it is commonly understood in order to justify a claim about what privacy is or what ought to be kept private.
Chapter Four goes through some of the definitions and accounts of privacy that are most influential in the literature in law and philosophy—those that turn on the concepts of the right to be left alone, control, possession of information, and limited access, as well as reductionism, contextual integrity, and the attempt to understand privacy as a “family resemblance” concept. For each account I point out its strengths and weaknesses.
In Chapter Five, I present my own view of privacy: the hybrid account of privacy. An adequate theory of privacy should incorporate both access and control elements. In this chapter I argue that privacy itself and losses thereof are better explained by an access theory, while the right to privacy and violations thereof are better explained by appealing to control. I argue for why we should understand privacy in terms of remaining personally unaccessed, and why we should think about the right to privacy as a robustly demanding good.
To better comprehend privacy losses, we need an understanding of when it is that we lose privacy to someone else. Chapter Six is about the epistemology of privacy. Privacy is a relational epistemic state, but is knowledge necessary for a loss of privacy? What if my neighbours have justified but false beliefs about me? And what if they have unjustified but true beliefs? I argue that full and weak knowledge (true beliefs), as well as access to someone’s personal space, can lead to privacy losses.
Chapter Seven makes a case for the value of privacy. Chapter Eight argues for the value of surveillance. Chapter Nine analyses how to balance privacy and surveillance. I argue that the internal connections between the values that privacy and surveillance protect are such that the balancing challenge demands a process of “qualitative priority” as opposed to a quantitative analysis. I use the examples of security, accountability, and democracy to illustrate how surveillance has a tendency to undermine the values, objectives, and institutions it purports to protect. Because of the difficulties in noticing and measuring the negative effects of surveillance, we are blinded by what I call the surveillance delusion: the mistaken belief that surveillance has no significant moral costs.
Part Five provides a map of the moral territory of privacy. Chapter Ten offers an account of the right to privacy. I argue that what we colloquially call the “right to privacy” is in fact a right to robust privacy, because we want our privacy to be respected both here and now, and in relevant possible worlds.
Chapter Eleven is about privacy duties. I argue that the duty to respect other people’s right to privacy is composed of a duty of ignorance and a duty of silence. I then argue for a civic duty of reticence when it comes to protecting one’s own privacy for the sake of the common good.
Chapter Twelve is about perceptions of privacy and their manipulation: cases in which our perception about the degree of privacy we have and the actual degree of privacy enjoy come apart.
In Chapter Thirteen, I offer a brief snapshot of the state of privacy in the digital age. I argue for what I call the Law of Digitization: digitization implies surveillance. Transforming the analogue into the digital amounts to increasing surveillance because it turns the world into data, making trackable that which was not. I go on to explore how surveillance is affecting the values that privacy protects and conclude that, if we want to preserve goods like autonomy, freedom, and democracy, we ought to scale back surveillance.
The book concludes with some thoughts about philosophy and the future of privacy.
In an age of unprecedented data collection and analysis, we would do well to think carefully about what we might be losing when we neglect privacy. May this book provide an informative map and theory of the ethics of privacy and surveillance for the philosophically inclined; may it serve as a foundation for others to refine and build on.
This is a summarized version of the book’s introduction. To get the book with a 30% discount, visit Oxford University Press’s website and use the promotion code AAFLYG6 when checking out.
Suggested citation: C.Véliz, ’New book: The Ethics of Privacy and Surveillance', AI Ethics at Oxford Blog (23rd January 2024) (available at https://www.oxford-aiethics.ox.ac.uk/blog/new-book-ethics-privacy-and-surveillance)