From: Graham Reginald Hill [mailto: ]
The problem with privacy as a fundamental human right is a cultural and moral one. Just because we desire a degree of privacy in the West does not mean that it is indeed, a human right applicable to all. Do Westerners have the moral right to insist that their version of moraity is any better in any way than, say the Sentinelese of the Indian Andaman Islands where tribesmen go naked all of the time? Do Westerners have the moral right to insist that the Sentinelese wear clothes, or practice organised religion, or put their children through a Western education. Obviously not. This is the problem with absolute morality and so called universal human rights. Including the so called right to privacy.There is no problem with privacy (the natural/human right) - unless you believe there is a problem with nature. Or in other words, there is as much a problem with privacy as there is a problem with gravity.If you have a problem with nature, you have a severe problem, but this does not invalidate nature.Insinuating that morality, in the sense of cultural/religious norms (of indecency say), has something to do with moral right (natural right) and therefore that all rights (natural as well as legislated) are a product of norms and hence vacuous, or at least subjective, is a misdirection, not an argument.A caveman in a cave has the power to assert his privacy, to exclude others, and hence all men, being equal, have the right to privacy. This is natural and inescapable. It cannot be undone by argument. It is not an arbitrary cultural norm, but a natural law.That said, Scott Adams confuses natural privacy (the natural right to exclude others from a physical space and communication therein) with NewSpeak 'Privacy': the foolish aspiration to compel another's discretion and/or otherwise control the circulation of one's disclosures.The individual has the natural right to privacy whether they believe they have anything to hide or not.It is not due to having something to hide that people have privacy, but due to occupying a space from which others can be excluded.The allegory is The Forbidden Planet. The Framers of the US Constitution apparently believed they could institute a government whose power would not exceed the natural rights of the inhabitants, that it could not kill them at will, nor violate their privacy at will, nor lie to them at will, nor imprison them at will. We now know the monster of their id can, and does, though invisibly and at night - at the moment, until its power is sufficient to visibly rampage in the full light of day...
Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.19.