On his book Life After Privacy: Reclaiming Democracy in a Surveillance Society
Cover Interview of February 17, 2021
The wide angle
More broadly, this book concerns the nature of democracy,
and disputes the notion that individual citizens are its foundation. I agree
with the American philosopher John Dewey, who claimed that the power of
democracy is found and formed in communities. Individual citizens are not born
ready-made; they do not come to their ideas on their own, nor do they have
political impact individually. Rather, citizens are formed and mobilized in
communities that nourish and encourage them. Associations are key to developing
active, emboldened citizens, Dewey argued. Citizens cannot be isolated but must
rather build bridges within intentional communities that operate and engage in
the public realm. Thus, a right to privacy is less consequential to the welfare
of democracy, which relies, rather, on the nature of our bonds, how we reach
out, communicate, deliberate, and organize.
Life After Privacy also aims to contend with the reality
of the digital economy. The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated our dependence on
technology, which consumes our data as a matter of course. Our privacy will be
ever more vulnerable as the digital economy continues to envelop us. The task
of protecting privacy—for the individual consumer—will only get harder. Much
harder. Such that protecting privacy will be (or already is) a non-starter for
many of us. Digital citizens, who are accustomed to exposing themselves on
social media, and sharing data with retailers in exchange for services, will
not be inclined to conceal themselves; besides the fact that they could hardly
do so if they tried.
Privacy advocates recommend stronger regulations, which give
us more power to control our data, and share it as we wish. But we have no idea
what information our spies want, and why—the science of data analysis is so far
beyond comprehension for most of us. Who knows, for example, that retailers
have determined that buying felt pads for your furniture is a preeminent marker
of creditworthiness? And who knows that Facebook can tell from our ‘likes’ and
the patter of our posts if we are falling in love or breaking up? It is
increasingly clear that lone individuals, even if bolstered by privacy
regulations, stand little chance against the vastly powerful data industry that
aims to analyze and influence us.
This is in keeping with a recurring theme of my writing: the
relative impotence of the individual citizen, reliant upon him or herself. My
first book, Do Guns Make Us Free? studied the radical gun rights
movement, the strongest expression yet of American individualism, which holds
that armed citizens are empowered to better protect themselves and exercise
liberty. By contrast, I argued, a mass of unaffiliated armed individuals
endangers us all, and makes us less free to inhabit any public space. Martin
Luther King, Jr. demonstrated that non-violent citizens are eminently powerful
when they cohere and coordinate efforts in concerted public demonstration.
[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.Carolyn J. Dean, Interview of February 01, 2011
The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.Jerome Kagan, Interview of September 17, 2009
The wide angle
More broadly, this book concerns the nature of democracy, and disputes the notion that individual citizens are its foundation. I agree with the American philosopher John Dewey, who claimed that the power of democracy is found and formed in communities. Individual citizens are not born ready-made; they do not come to their ideas on their own, nor do they have political impact individually. Rather, citizens are formed and mobilized in communities that nourish and encourage them. Associations are key to developing active, emboldened citizens, Dewey argued. Citizens cannot be isolated but must rather build bridges within intentional communities that operate and engage in the public realm. Thus, a right to privacy is less consequential to the welfare of democracy, which relies, rather, on the nature of our bonds, how we reach out, communicate, deliberate, and organize.
Life After Privacy also aims to contend with the reality of the digital economy. The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated our dependence on technology, which consumes our data as a matter of course. Our privacy will be ever more vulnerable as the digital economy continues to envelop us. The task of protecting privacy—for the individual consumer—will only get harder. Much harder. Such that protecting privacy will be (or already is) a non-starter for many of us. Digital citizens, who are accustomed to exposing themselves on social media, and sharing data with retailers in exchange for services, will not be inclined to conceal themselves; besides the fact that they could hardly do so if they tried.
Privacy advocates recommend stronger regulations, which give us more power to control our data, and share it as we wish. But we have no idea what information our spies want, and why—the science of data analysis is so far beyond comprehension for most of us. Who knows, for example, that retailers have determined that buying felt pads for your furniture is a preeminent marker of creditworthiness? And who knows that Facebook can tell from our ‘likes’ and the patter of our posts if we are falling in love or breaking up? It is increasingly clear that lone individuals, even if bolstered by privacy regulations, stand little chance against the vastly powerful data industry that aims to analyze and influence us.
This is in keeping with a recurring theme of my writing: the relative impotence of the individual citizen, reliant upon him or herself. My first book, Do Guns Make Us Free? studied the radical gun rights movement, the strongest expression yet of American individualism, which holds that armed citizens are empowered to better protect themselves and exercise liberty. By contrast, I argued, a mass of unaffiliated armed individuals endangers us all, and makes us less free to inhabit any public space. Martin Luther King, Jr. demonstrated that non-violent citizens are eminently powerful when they cohere and coordinate efforts in concerted public demonstration.