'Humpty Dumpty Was Wrong - Consistency in Meaning Matters: Some
Definitions of Privacy, Publicity, Secrecy, and Other Family Members' by Gary T Marx in (2016) 1(1)
Secrecy and Society states
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone,
“it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so
many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master –
that’s all.”
-
Lewis Carroll
Through the Looking Glass
Humpty Dumpty was partially right. His words may mean what
he chooses to have them mean, but that is just his story.
There is
nothing inherent or eternal in the words (or what they represent).
Granted that he has the power to say what
he
means, but others have
the power to say what they mean, not to mention hearing what they
choose to hear. Alice is the more interesting of the two when she
wonders what the consequences are of making "words mean so many
different things." For the understanding of secrecy and related
phenomena those consequences are decidedly negative.
In the beginning there was the concept. And in beginning an
inquiry into surveillance (Marx 2015), I argue that the failure to
adequately define and differentiate terms can cloud and contort ethical
and empirical understanding and lead to unnecessary conflict and
unwise policies.
Consider surveillance and privacy, terms central to
understanding secrecy. What "are" they really? (Or better what do
people mean when they use the terms)?
In popular and academic dialogue
surveillance is often wrongly
seen to be only the opposite of privacy—the former is seen as bad and
the latter good. For example, social psychologist Peter Kelvin (1973)
emphasized privacy as a nullification mechanism for surveillance. But
Kelvin’s assertion needs to be seen as only one of four basic empirical
connections between privacy and surveillance. Surveillance is not
necessarily the dark side of the social dimension of privacy.
Surveillance implies an
agent
who
accesses
personal data (whether
through discovery tools, rules, or physical and logistical settings).
Privacy, in contrast, involves a
subject
who can
restrict access
to
personal data through related means. But both can be connected in a
variety of ways.
Surveillance can obviously invade privacy—that’s what the fuss
is all about (e.g., the employee in a lab testing for AIDS who sold
information on positive results to a mortuary). Yet surveillance can
also be the means of protecting privacy (biometric identification and
audit trails, video cameras that film those with access to sensitive
data). And privacy can also protect surveillance (undercover police
who use fake IDs and call forwarding to protect their identity) just as it
can nullify it (e.g., encryption, whispering, and disguises). Privacy for
whom and surveillance of whom and by whom and for what reasons
need to be specified.
Depending on how it is used, active surveillance can affect the
presence of privacy and/or publicity.
As nouns, the latter can be seen
as polar ends of a continuum involving rules about withholding and
disclosing, and seeking or not seeking, information. Thus, depending
on the context and role played, individuals or groups may be required
to engage, find it optional to engage, or be prohibited from engaging
in these activities, whether as subjects or agents of surveillance and
communication .
The rules applying to agents and subjects are in principle
independent. When the rules specify that a surveillance agent is not to
ask certain questions of (or about) a person and the subject has
discretion about what to reveal, we can speak of privacy norms. When
the rules specify that the subject must reveal the information or the
agent must seek it, we can speak of publicity norms (or, better
perhaps, disclosure norms). With publicity norms there is no right to
personal privacy that tells the agent not to seek information, or that
gives the subject discretion regarding revelation. Rather there is the
reverse — the subject has an obligation to reveal and/or the agent to
discover
