Re: [Social-discuss] Control own privacy, posted by _others_

[Hellekin O. Wolf]

On Wed, Apr 07, 2010 at 10:19:57AM +0200, Matija Šuklje wrote:
> 
> I'm all for free speech, but the thing is that legally as well as IRL you 
> get a clash of privacy vs. free speech. To put it in legalspeek: "One's 
> right extends only as far as another's begins."
>
*** Putting privacy and free speech in the same pot sounds to me like
a counter-revolutionary attack on both privacy and free speech.  It
seems to say: you cannot have privacy if you have free speech, and you
cannot have free speech if you have privacy.  I wonder when this
dichotomy appeared, but I relate it to the general trends in warfare
speech that says "Either you're with us, or against us" and the
marketing-fascist trend of pushing transparency at all price, "because
you don't have anything to hide." 

Free speech in these terms, has become an advertisement for "I can say
anything I want, especially gossip that lifts the dirty veil of
secrecy you maintain about your private life".  The panopticon of
paparazzi. 

Privacy is these terms, has become the mark of someone ("un-american")
who doesn't trust the system, and hides from it things that  are
consequently suspicious.

Proponents of PRIVACY VS. FREE SPEECH mix all concepts and flatten
them so as to obtain a thin film of nonsense that can cover and choke
anything below it.

When TRANSPARENCY is used to champion democratic ideas, we're not
talking about TOTAL TRANSPARENCY (that would be fascism), but about
PUBLIC TRANSPARENCY: democratic institutions and representatives
activity *should* be transparent, as in: publicly accountable.  That
works in Sweden, where public finances are indeed public, and people
can check where their tax money go.  That is entirely different from
Big-Brother-ing the neighboorhood with a dense network of spy cameras.

One should remember that the original version of the Panopticon was a
conceptual prison, where prisoners would believe they are under
constant surveillance, hence self-discipline out of fear of
punishment.  I don't know how you feel about it, but since the 1970s
and Foucault, this not only sounds childish and retrograde, but a very
dangerous and fascist way of looking at society.

When designing social software, and thinking about these issues, one
has to be careful with terms and concepts.

==
hk