PrivacyA B C D E F G H IJKL M N O P R S T U VXYZWtraditionally been shielded from public gaze – is
now more visible to the public than ever before.
John B. Th ompson in Th e Media and Modernity:
A Social Th eory of the Media (Polity, 1995) says
that ‘the development of communication media
provides a means by which many people can
gather information about a few and, at the same
time, a few can appear before many; thanks to
the media, it is primarily those who exercise
power, rather than those over whom power is
exercised, who are subjected to a certain kind
of visibility’. Thompson believes the visibility
made possible by communication media makes
it ‘more diffi cult for those who exercise politi-
cal power to do so secretively, furtively, behind
closed doors’.
The power of intrusion remains, however,
with those in authority. Th e results of a survey
of conditions of privacy conducted by Privacy
International and the Electronic Privacy Infor-
mation Centre, US, and published in 2002, cited
UK government and authorities as one of the
most ineff ective of fi fty countries in protecting
rights to privacy. Th e UK government in recent
years has not only increased practices of surveil-
lance in Britain, but has also been instrumental
in pushing the European Community in the
same direction. According to Simon Davies,
director of Privacy International, government
ministers in the UK have mounted a ‘systematic
attack’ on the right to privacy by introducing
laws extending mass surveillance. His belief
is that ‘the UK demonstrates a pathology of
antagonism towards privacy’, declaring that, for
example, the UK Data Protection Act ‘is almost
useless in limiting the growth of surveillance’.
Personal privacy is at its most vulnerable
online, yet for the pleasure of social networking
(see networking: social networking) many
users of networking bases such as facebook and
myspace are happy to disclose facts about them-
selves in the ready knowledge that those facts
might be exploited. In the age of mobilization,
loss of privacy would seem to be a price well paid
for connecting and interacting with others. See
blogosphere; calcutt committee reports
on privacy and related matters, 1990 and
1993; data protection act (uk), 1984; defa-
mation; digital economy act, uk (2010);
freedom of information act (uk), 2005;
human rights act (uk), 2000; new visibil-
ity; privacy: press complaint’s commission
code of practice (uk), 1997; regulation of
investigatory powers act (ripa), uk, 2000;
super-injunction; usa – patriot act, 2001;
wikileaks; youtube. See also topic guidesprivacy (when it suits them) at the same time
seeking publicity (when it suits them).
What might be deemed of public interest is
often simply mistaken for what interests the
public. We may be indiff erent to matters of this
kind until we experience our own loss of privacy.
As never before, the privacy of ordinary citizens
is seen by many commentators as being at risk
from surveillance on the part of those who
hold data on us (see surveillance society);
a risk in the New Millennium compounded by
the so-termed ‘war on terror’. With the declared
objective of targeting suspects, governments
have extended their powers to monitor the
population as a whole.
Th e French philosopher Michel Foucault, in
Discipline and Punish (Pantheon, 1990), refers
to ‘technologies of power’ which reach into
the very hearts of our lives; while Mark Poster
in Th e Mode of Information: Poststructuralism
and Social Context (Polity, 1990) fears that the
‘populace has been disciplined to surveillance
and to participating in the process’ willingly,
without coercion: ‘Social security cards, drivers’
licences, credit cards, library cards and the like
- the individual must apply for them, have them
ready at all times, use them continuously. Each
transaction is recorded, encoded and added to
databases. Individuals themselves in many cases
fi ll out the forms; they are at once the source of
information and the recorder of the information.’
Home networking constitutes ‘the streamlined
culmination of this phenomenon: the consumer,
by ordering products through a modem
connected to the producer’s database, enters
data about himself or herself directly into the
producer’s database in the very act of purchase’.
In this sense, the population participates in ‘the
disciplining and surveillance of themselves as
consumers’.
A practice that came dramatically to the fore in
2011 was phone tapping, in particular the secret
and illegal extracting of information by journal-
ists in pursuit of headlines (see journalism:
phone-hacking). Revelations of the systemic
hacking of the phones of people in the news led
to the closure of the Murdoch Sunday paper, the
News of the World, and the debate about public
and private, about inadequate legal protection
and redress (see press complaints commis-
sion) became a pressing issue for government
and the UK press.
It must be acknowledged that surveillance and
the loss of privacy are not entirely one-way. Th e
performance of a nation’s leaders, civil servants,
business people – people whose activities have