Camille: Tara's Thesis

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Tara’s thesis was artfully crafted and reframed privacy rights in an intuitive way that aligns with several of the most respected philosophers of all time. In so doing, she creates a framework that would better secure the freedoms of individuals and their data by casting a positive obligation on the state to protect the basic worth of people’s liberty, property, and personal space.


While I agree with almost all of the arguments nested within the thesis, I am still intrigued by several unanswered questions about democracy and privacy. First, like many of the philosophical readings we have explored throughout the semester, any conception of a universal principle or right requires a consideration of how each person's freedoms interact with other people’s. For example, Ripstein provides an account of freedom detailing each person's entitlement to be their own master, so long as their schemes of freedom can coexist with everyone else’s freedoms. Similarly, different freedoms can come into conflict with one another. For example, while we have a right to private property, we also have a right to freedom of movement, which sometimes requires usurpations of land for public roads to secure that freedom. I am curious how the right to privacy and control of our personal space interacts with the hierarchy of our other liberties. Is there a precedence for public safety over individual privacy? Would the overprotection of privacy create too much liberty for, say, an abusive husband to take advantage of his wife? 


It is clear from the thesis that privacy includes rights in both the positive and negative senses. As W&B make clear, there is a sense of freedom from (the right to be left alone), but as Tara expands, there are also freedoms to (including self-control over one’s body, thoughts, and extensions of self in property). What happens when our "freedoms to" require an infringement of our "freedoms from"? Or vice versa? At TSA, we have to go through a scanner and sacrifice some privacy to ensure the safety of the flight (balancing our freedom from intrusion of privacy with our freedom to travel safely). In a similar balance of privacy and public security, government entities wiretap or surveil people they deem a potential threat. In these cases, it is clear that there is a balance between privacy and public safety.


However, data collection seems to be distinct from these two examples because it isn’t as publicly known, visible, and common to everyday life. It is systemic, affecting almost every action we take throughout the day in a society increasingly reliant on technology and the internet. Additionally, there doesn’t seem to be a legitimate reason for infringing upon privacy (like public safety in the other two examples) beyond providing large corporations more consumer information to exploit decision-making and generate profit. Therefore, the prioritization of protecting privacy seems reasonable and necessary. However, the realm of “personal space” that Tara advocates for might be so broad that it would be difficult to determine how that freedom interacts with other liberties.


Another question surrounds the conception of coercion, with choices being deemed illegitimate if the agent is put in “that choice situation because of social structures or other people.” Especially given the Anderson reading from this week, it seems clear that social norms and constraints affect almost every decision we make. Yet, there is certainly a spectrum of constrained choice and coercion that doesn’t delegitimize all of those choices. It might be necessary to delineate that boundary line of what social constraints are extreme enough to invalidate the choice situation as a legitimate one.


Lastly, Tara brings up Kant and innate rights when discussing her conception of privacy and property. Freedom and the right to possess/control one’s own means to pursue their end is considered an innate right. Kant argues that every person has a duty to preserve their freedom/innate rights. (Locke and other philosophers hold similar positions as well). Following from this line of thinking, do we, as consumers and individuals, have a moral responsibility to protect our privacy? Would that conception place too much blame and responsibility on the individual rather than the major corporations?

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