When you make a call on your cell phone, do you move away so that other people can’t hear your conversation?
At night, do you close the shades on your living-room windows? Would it bother you if your friends knew your annual income?
If you answered “yes” to all those questions, you probably place a high value on privacy.
Many people feel as you do. Many others don’t. They’re the ones who appear on the Dr. Phil and Jerry Springer shows.
They have little regard for privacy. They readily display their dirty laundry to the world.
In exchange, they receive fame. Or notoriety. Whatever its name, it lifts these people out of obscurity for a few brief, tawdry moments.
Maybe I’m over-simplifying things with these generalities. If so, please forgive me.
I’ve had a lifelong fascination with the diverse and contradictory ways people behave with regard to privacy and its opposites.
Privacy holds both charm and confusion for anyone who explores it.
For openers, no agreed-upon definition of privacy exists.
The U.S. Constitution does not guarantee a right to privacy. Even if it did, the courts would surely have a hard time spelling out the border where privacy stops or starts.
Some thinkers say that privacy is simply the right to be left alone.
I like that idea. That’s why I seldom respond to telephone sales pitches or surveys. I also object to the commercial pop-ups that infest my computer screen. I resent the thousands of radio and TV ads that flood the public awareness each day.
Each one is an unwanted invasion of my privacy.
The healthcare industry spends millions each year to guarantee that our personal medical records are kept confidential.
That’s good. Although few people would be outraged if the world knew of a recent appendectomy, disclosure of other medical procedures could bring severe consequences.
If a prospective employer should learn that I once had a heart attack, he may not hire me. If Sarah’s friends find out she had an abortion 20 years ago, Sarah’s name may become mud in her social circle.
Privacy sometimes gets a bad name. For example, a person’s insistence on privacy can actually be a cover for a cocaine operation.
Some feminist groups have pointed out that an abusive husband’s obsession with privacy can hide the fact that he beats up on his wife every weekend.
As time passes, it’s harder for any of us to maintain our privacy.
A major reason for this is the Internet. With the click of a few computer keys, we may be able to discover your home address, your age and the market value of your home. And whether you were ever convicted of a felony.
This leads to the question of where privacy must yield to the demands of public record-keeping.
Once we’re issued a Social Security number, do we own it? Security experts advise us never to reveal our SS number. But if we refuse to do so, we may not be able to open a bank account or buy an airline ticket.
Our refusal could mean the words “Possible risk” may be entered on our permanent record. Is maintaining our privacy worth this?
In my lifetime I’ve seen the growth of the idea that the general public has the right to know almost everything about everybody. This malicious and destructive notion has been aided by the news and entertainment media, some of whose members will stoop as low as necessary to beat their competition.
More and more, invasion of privacy is not only tolerated but welcomed.
Today, if bank guard Bill Jones is killed in a hold-up, odds are strong that within a few hours his sobbing widow will have called a press conference to display her grief to the world.
She has the right to do this (freedom of speech, you know).
But each time it happens it reinforces the obscene idea that an army of gaping, gum-chewing strangers is entitled to view or read about the most intimate details of my life. Or yours.
