Privacy

To Be Secure in...

In line with the IdT precept that institutions must evolve in a manner analogous to that of all successful living organisms, (i.e. through a coevolutionary, ecological process) we have undertaken an exercise in "evolutionizing" the unalienable rights. We began three issues ago with observations on the three sturdy seeds of unalienable rights planted in the 18th Century by our Founding Fathers...life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. From society's understanding and practice of these three rights have grown additional insights into the conditions necessary to the achievement of a truly humane society. After much discussion, the directors of IdT agreed upon an additional ten specific unalienable rights that must now be considered as necessary parts of the human condition if further successful human social evolution is to occur.

The first of these is privacy. It begins with the individual, but extends to the family, the community and may extend even to the nation.

Birth to Death

Individuals must be accorded privacy from their birth to their death. Privacy is the benign environment in which the ego and the individual form. Privacy is the environment in which self-esteem grows in quantity and develops in complexity. Privacy is the environment where the personality of the individual is nurtured to maturity.

Privacy is the home of dignity and respect. Reverence for privacy is reverence for the individual and indicates the individual worth of human beings. The recognition of privacy is the acceptance of the integrity of the individual and is an essential characteristic of the citizen sovereign.

The difference between slaves and other people is that slaves are not in control of their own lives or their own bodies. A slave has no more rights than my dog. Slaves can be used sexually by their masters. They can be sold or they can be killed without consequence. Slaves do not have the right to privacy, (or any other unalienable right).

Invasion of Privacy

Child abuse is disrespect for the privacy and individual worth of children. Sexual molestation of a child is a violation of the child's body and is a fundamental invasion of privacy.

Rape is a violation of the privacy of the human body and is often destructive of self-worth, self-esteem, and self-respect. It destroys the very concept of individual worth that is essential to the development and maturation of self-regulating human beings. When rape is accompanied by the admonition by a male dominated society, not of the rapist but of the victim, the act is doubly destructive. Rapists are guilty of assault but they are also guilty of grievous invasion of privacy.

Routine strip and body cavity searches conducted by the police for no probable cause are violations of the unalienable right to privacy. The Washington Metro has a law against eating on the subway. A woman was arrested for eating on the subway. The subway car she was on at the time was in a Virginia suburb so the lady was taken to the nearest police station. Instead of being fined and released she was booked, stripped and body-cavity searched, as a matter of routine. It would have been easy to determine if she had a dangerous weapon on her person without a strip search. The strip search was an obvious violation of her right to privacy.

Sexual Privacy

At a social level immediately above the individual, people have a right to privacy in their sexual relations. The sex practices of consenting adults should be their business strictly. The invasion of the bedroom of consenting adults is an invasion of their privacy and a violation of that unalienable right.

The intrusion of the state in the sexual practices of married couples is unconscionable. The practice of sex and the control of conception is a matter of individual privacy. In the landmark case Griswold v. Connecticut, the U.S. Supreme Court held that married couples had a right to use contraception as a matter of their right as granted under the Ninth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. They also have the right under the Declaration of Independence, since it is inconceivable that one could list the unalienable rights among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and not include privacy. Political contention over reproductive rights has inhibited the progress over the discovery and use of advanced contraceptive techniques to the detriment of the nation. The United States now lags behind the developed nations of the world in reproductive research and the adoption of advanced, safer methods of contraception. Contraceptive methods by themselves, however, are insufficient without education, specifically the education of women. In many parts of Africa where birth rates are astronomical, the simple expediency of educating women has been enough to bring it down.

Limiting Birth and Death

Human population is exploding because technology has reduced the death rate. Population control cannot be left to predation, famine, pestilence, and war as it has been in the past. As the technology of a humane society eliminates causes of death that same technology must also be used to limit the rate of birth.

The question of abortion, which the Reagan majority of the U.S. Supreme Court has mischievously turned loose in the land, after it had been adjudicated by a former version of that same body, is tearing the fabric of the nation. The strife is the product of a vocal minority which is advancing religious morality to establish political positions. It is tyranny of the minority. Religion itself is protected by the right to privacy. Individuals and groups must be free to worship as they please, but it is immoral for them to force their particular religious beliefs on others. Abortion is not a religious issue, it is a medical issue involving the reproductive rights of women and their unalienable right to exercise those reproductive rights in private.

A Tyranny of the Minority

The Reagan majority of the Court has abdicated its role as the protector of the unalienable rights of the citizen sovereign and has advanced a religious cause held by a minority. This same majority on the Court has so mucked up the question of civil rights that the Congress is now setting about the task of preparing legislation to nullify the opinions of the Court. If the U.S. Supreme Court should overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark abortion case, I predict there will be a similar effort in the Congress to nullify the Court's ruling.

Diminished Worth

These efforts to use the U.S. Supreme Court for partisan political purposes that fly in the face of the unalienable rights will, if they continue, result in the degeneration of the Court. A Supreme Court majority that ceases to be fair, that persists in legislating religious viewpoints, that jeopardizes the basis of our Federalism, that abdicates the equal protection clause of the Constitution, and consistently ignores the unalienable rights is bound to diminish its own worth.

Women's Choice

Sexual freedom and reproductive freedom are both areas of life entitled to privacy. Consenting adults must be free to engage in whatever sex practices they choose, providing neither suffers injury and their practice is private; that is to say, the rest of society has a right to be shielded from such practices.

Reproductive freedom begins with the non-control of the sex act by outsiders; it includes contraception, conception, artificial insemination, in vitrofertilization, abortion and/or contragestion (contra = against gestion = gestation). Women simply must be free to make their own choices concerning the conception and bearing of children or contraception, contragestion and/or abortion. Women must make these decisions because the decision to bear or not to bear children is the function of women. Others can assist in the decision, but since every woman who decides to have a child places her own life in jeopardy, it must be her decision to take the life-threatening risk or not. A wise woman will consult her doctor before, during and after the event. If men can bear children then the same right of privacy must extend to them.

Parthenogenesis

It is possible for the female's oocyte (diploid precursor to the egg) to grow up without fertilization. This is parthenogenesis (partheno = virgin, genisis = birth) and the result is always a female, the same sex as the mother, since that is the only source of the sex chromosome and the female has only one kind. (In a male, either sex would be possible since the male has both kinds of sex chromosomes.) Parthenogenesis is not easily detected since sexual activity is so prevalent that an unfertilized birth could easily go undetected. The offspring would be an "identical twin" of the mother. Parthenogenesis is rare.

A Woman's Thing

In the normal conception, the male sperm fertilizes the female egg. Fertilization occurs while the egg is on the way from the ovary to the uterus in the fallopian tube. The fertilized egg is not capable of an independent existence and unless it imbeds in the uterine wall and a capillary bed forms around it, it will die. The uterine wall swells and engorges with blood in anticipation of the egg's arrival and if the egg does not arrive or is not fertile the uterine wall sloughs off in the regular menstrual cycle. If the egg is fertile and imbeds, the pregnancy cycle begins. The fertilized egg becomes an embryo, which in turn becomes a fetus. The fetus together with umbilical cord and placenta become part of the mother's body, receiving all sustenance from the mother. Without the mother the fetus cannot survive. The fetus, in effect, becomes a detachable organ of the mother. If detached too early in development death of the fetus ensues. If detached at the proper stage of development independent life for the fetus can occur. Aside from the genetics of the fetus to which both father and mother usually contribute, the physical being of the fetus is the result of the nutrition and protection it receives from the mother. The fetus is parasitic on the mother until its birth and possibly longer.

The fetus is the female's thing. It is her choice to continue to gestate it or abort it. Since humans are social animals, it would be hoped that she would consult loved ones, her doctor etc. In the end it is her choice. To deny her that choice as states and territories are now doing, following the lead of the U.S. Supreme Court, is to deny her the unalienable right to privacy.

Are Women Slaves of Birth?

Some states claim they have a right in the life the woman bears in her womb. What kind of right could the state possibly possess? Without the woman there is no life. The life is an integral part of the woman's body, detachable but integral, which will not be capable of independent life until enough development takes place to sustain life. To demand an interest in the life of the fetus and press that demand to the extent that the woman loses control over her own body reduces her to slavery. No state has the right to assume the control of a citizen sovereign's body. No state can stop a woman from using some tygon tubing or a clothes hanger in her own bathroom. No state should deny a woman medical assistance for something she can do herself. To deny, as many religious groups would, the basic information on human reproduction in order to reduce the options of child-bearing-age women is an insult to the integrity and intelligence of the human species and can in no way qualify as humane behavior. It is immoral and unethical as well.

Rights of the Newborn

Now the state has an obligation to provide the newborn with its unalienable rights. If for some reason the parents are unable or unwilling to provide properly for the newborn, it is the obligation of the state to become the loco in parentis and to provide the unalienable rights. States have been remiss in this and in some instances looked the other way when disadvantaged children were permitted to starve to death, as in the case at Johns Hopkins University Hospital, where parents refused to allow a routine operation to unblock a newborn's gut because it was born with Down's Syndrome (mongolism). The University was remiss and the State of Maryland was remiss. Parental rights should have been terminated and the baby should have become a ward of the state. The operation should have been performed and the baby placed in foster care pending permanent placement when it was fit to be placed. The parents and the hospital should have been charged with child abuse and neglect if not outright murder.

Rights of Minor Women

Many antiabortion advocates consider that minor women should get parent's consent before an abortion is performed. Many states still have laws that set the age of consent as low as 14 or 16. That is to say, if the woman is at or above the age of consent, the man who has sexual intercourse with her is not guilty of statutory rape. Below that age he is guilty. It seems reasonable that if the woman has the authority to consent to an act that could get her pregnant, then she should have the same authority to determine if she needs an abortion. She did not get parental consent to get pregnant, why should she need parental consent to get an abortion? If she is below the age of consent, the act was statutory rape and an abortion should be available on those grounds if needed.

Religious Privacy

Religious freedom and freedom of conscience are synonymous and both entail the right to privacy.

Freedom of religion is one of Franklin D. Roosevelt's "Four Freedoms." Many people came to America seeking freedom from oppressive government and oppressive religions. They came to the New World to freely worship God. The Quakers, while seeking freedom for themselves, never did discriminate against believers of other religions. Unfortunately that cannot be said of many other religions. Freedom of religion is obliquely covered by the U.S. Constitution in the separation of church and state doctrine.

Breaking with the Roman Emperor

To say, as many people do, that we are a Christian nation is not correct. The United States in a nonreligious state that tolerates all religion including Christianity. Some of the folks who settled this nation may have been Christians, but they established a government that is tolerant and supportive of all religions (tax breaks). Even if we were to look just at the mainline religions, we would have to say ours is a Shamanistic-Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition at the least. The United States has Buddhist and Hindu temples and it probably has representatives of all the major religions of the world. The United States, in breaking with the tradition of church and state partnerships, broke with the Roman tradition where the Emperor was the Maximus Pontiflex and where the pope was the Patriarch of Rome.

A Matter of Individual Conscience

Religion in the United States is taken to be an individual function, not a state function. When religious leaders exhort U.S. politicians to adhere to a church doctrine they are acting against the separation of church and state tradition and they undermine democracy and everybody's freedom while they try to gain a doctrinal advantage. Recently a cleric of the Roman Latin church admonished a governor of a prominent state to hold a certain position on abortion or suffer the consequences of going to "hell." In the old days this cleric would have been guilty of hubris, that is of presuming to know the will of the gods, in this case of presuming to know the will of God. He would have been punished accordingly, in the old days. Freedom of conscience or religion cannot be constrained by tradition or orthodoxy. Freedom of conscience or religion cannot be constrained as long as it is an individual expression that in no way threatens harm to others. To demand obedience to religious dogma is counter to democratic principles. Religion is after all another form of voluntary association, (with emphasis on the voluntary). When it becomes more than voluntary it is oppression, and when religions attempt to make their dogma the law of the land they undermine democracy.

Ecological Competitiveness and the Common Good

In a democarcy, the the best antidote to religious intolerance is the competition of religions. Our democracy will remain strong and we will not be susceptible to religious intolerance as long as we have a number of competing religions. Throughout history monolithic religion obeyed Lord Acton's dictum of "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely." To maintain and sustain our freedom of religion we need multiple forms of religion, and we need to maintain the separation of church and state. Religion, with the power of the state, is not religion. It is the use of religion to govern in an authoritarian manner not the use of religion to save souls. It is invariably oppressive. Freedom, democracy, voluntary association, and privacy are the perfect environment in which religion can survive and thrive.

Sanctity of the Home

At the next level of privacy the sanctity of the home is the prime consideration. Persons have the Constitutional guarantee of freedom from unlawful searches and seizures. Property is alienable under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Papers and other belongings may be seized under the Fourth Amendment with "probable cause" that a crime has been committed. The Constitutional guarantees are alienable if a crime is thought to have been committed, but in the absence of probable cause, you even can kill an intruder breaking into your house. A lawyer friend of mine says, "Make sure the body falls into the house and not into the yard." In another case, in a Virginia suburb of Washington a retired Army Colonel waited until all three intruders were squarely in his house and killed them all.

Absent child and spouse abuse, kidnapping and holding of hostages, what goes on in private houses is private or should be.

At the consent of the owner, messages can come into a house that would by any standard be considered adult entertainment. Sexually explicit movies may be purchased on cable TV and for fairly sizable charges per minute, sexually explicit messages may be dialed up on the telephone. Ads for the telephone service are run on ordinary television. Adult TV entertainment is available in hotel rooms in major cities. (A hotel that eliminated adult movies from its in-house TV programming suffered substantial fall-off in bookings. The hotel re-instated adult movies.) In all cases, the customer volunteers to receive the service and pays for it.

The Intrusive Telephone

The telephone company is now offering a service to its subscribers whereby the person receiving a call can refer to a readout of the number calling. The person calling loses the anonymity of the place of origin of the call. The phone company claims, and probably rightly so, that the number of crank and obscene phone calls is remarkably reduced in areas where caller ID is in use. The use of caller ID also blows the cover on unlisted numbers since to use an unlisted number is to reveal it. It places certain classes of callers in jeopardy, since it may be life threatening to certain persons to reveal their whereabouts to dangerous spouses or relatives. To the significant number of persons who do not want their numbers revealed, the phone company says, "Not to worry." For a fee the phone company will disable caller ID. The phone company gets the fee either way—for providing the service or for not providing the service. Caller ID is an invasion of privacy.

Do We Need Electronic Privacy?

With the advent of computers, especially of large computers, retail credit associations have compiled credit profiles of millions of persons who inadvertently have contributed to these users records by the routine use of credit-credit cards, auto loans, home mortgages, department store purchases etc. These records have become the bane of many people when the records come to have faulty or misleading information that seriously affect credit ratings. The records are compiled without the permission or even the knowledge of the average person on the list and they are used in ways not revealed to the listee. It is as if a dark and mysterious force were influencing our credit lives — a force over which we have no control. One of the largest lists is managed by the TRW Corporation. I recently received a flyer from them asking me if I were interested in subscribing to their service, which for a little less than $35.00 per year, would send me monthly reports on the content of my file and such information as to whom it had been supplied lately. I was not invited to add anything to it, or to correct it, but I could examine it. I could also use their list of credit sources to find the cheapest money to borrow. I somehow do not feel secure in the knowledge that I can purchase the right to examine a file on myself that I am not sure the retail credit people should have in the first place. As the computers get bigger and faster it can be expected that our files will increase in length and complexity and will be used for more things than just credit ratings. This is a major problem awaiting solution, in the form of legislation regulating the use of information gathered in the course of commerce. Is that information like my garbage, in the public domain, as soon as I put it at the curb or is that information to be kept inviolate? If the latter, we must find other ways to safeguard the privacy of the buying public?

Privacy in the Workplace

To what extent are we secure in the privacy of our offices or our work stations? Do we have rights that would prevent our employers from going through our desks or our file cabinets? For the most part, the furniture, the files, and other accouterments of our offices and work places belong to our employer. At work only personal possessions we may have are the clothes on our person, our briefcase, (if the employer didn't buy it), and purses and the like. Employees should understand when they go to work that the environment furnished them while on the job is not private. If you must have them, take copies of your important personnel papers home, and within the bounds of any security rules you have agreed to, take only copies of your work papers home.

The Waste of Presidential Libraries

In the past, Presidents of the United States took possession of their state papers when they left office. This was apparently an informal, traditional practice, since when President Nixon claimed executive privilege for his papers during the Watergate affair, the courts ruled the papers were really the property of the United States. I believe that the American people lose when the ownership of the Presidential papers are relinquished. At the same time I think it is a waste of taxpayers and contributors money to keep building presidential libraries. We get a new president every four or eight years. We could have dozens of presidential libraries. A better solution would be to charge the National Archives with the responsibility of developing, at government expense, the procedures for compressing the presidential files to CD ROM or equivalent. This is a readonly digital storage device that permits literally hundreds of thousands of pages of written material to be placed onto a single 5-1/4 inch disk...precisely the kind of disk used to record music. Computers and programs are already available to permit rapid searches of such material. The disks, after proper national security measures are taken, should be available to the public at cost—no more than a few dollars per disk.

Storing, retrieving and using CD ROMS or equivalent will be readily accomplished with inexpensive equipment even the casual user can afford. The President should have the same kind of privacy in his office that I have in mine, excepting for materials that truly deserve protection for reasons of national security.

If the records of the rest of the government were treated accordingly we would not need the vast storage space of the Federal Record Centers, we would not need to throw everything away after seven or so years, and the curious public would have the ultimate in information about their government. The National Archives could be assisted in this task by the Central Intelligence Agency (whose name should be changed to Central Information Agency) and the Library of Congress.

Privacy on the Streets

Neighborhoods and communities have a right to peace and quiet, particularly at night, and disturbing the peace is an invasion of privacy. Cairo, Egypt, has so much street noise that an estimated 62% of the population uses some form of chemical sedation to sleep. Daytime noises are at levels that damage ears physiologically. By any standard, that is not healthy living. We all have the right to live in a quiet peaceful neighborhood, and we have the right to a good night's sleep. Persons who disturb our tranquility are disturbing our privacy.

Private Trash

Do we have the right to expect that the state will not go through our trash in search of private information? I believe we do although federal courts have held that once the trash leaves the premises it is no longer private. What recourse or options does an individual have who wishes to have anonymous trash? In most places individuals may not burn trash at their homes, so trash must be taken to a central incinerator to be burned. On a farm, a person can bury the trash, but that option is not available in town. It's probably against the law in the country as well...land fill permits and all that.

A newspaper columnist used to go through J. Edgar Hoover's trash. Hoover was the long time head of the FBI and a strict law and order man. It was pure harassment to publish what kind of scotch he drank and what kind of TV dinners he ate, etc. The columnist made his point but he did not get the law changed.

There is no recourse except to separate the trash, and I suspect that is what the lawbreakers do, at least the smart ones. The rest of us have to be content with the fact that our garbage is not of interest to law enforcement officials or curious newspaper columnists.

Privacy of Nations

Do nations have a need for privacy? In England where a particular individual is the sovereign, the sovereign has rights that ordinary mortals do not have. The Parliament acts on behalf of that individual—these days the Queen. The armed forces are Her Majesty's armed forces and the courts dispense the Queen's justice. The Queen's right to privacy is protected by the Official Secrets Act. (Her person is protected with the usual guards etc. of sovereigns and heads of state.) The Official Secrets Act can mete out some pretty stiff punishment for its violation.

Does the United States have the need for an Official Secrets Act? The Act in England protects the rights of the sovereign. In the United States the sovereign is not a person but all of us. Our need, quite to the contrary, is for information and more information. While England has the Official Secrets Act, in the United States we have the Freedom of Information Act.

The United States Government does have a need for secrecy and discretion. The President and his administration and the Congress especially have to be able to work with discretion on many matters that come before them. Internal memoranda, negotiations of sensitive issues, preliminary drafts of bills, as well as personnel files, require a measure of discretion and privacy. The most obvious need for privacy is in national security. Except where the national security is at stake, the need for our sovereigns is openness. Freedom of information rather than official secrecy is what is necessary for the citizen sovereign to have in order to participate in the affairs of government, and that flow of information should be sure and steady. Citizens should not be in doubt about their government, and no President, Congress, or Supreme Court can take the position that it is their government and theirs more than it is anyone else's. It's the President's administration (obligation) not his government (possession). The secrecy needs of the United States should be limited to national security and administrative discretion, not secrecy for its own sake. The people have a right to know.

Conclusion

Both the autecological and synecological properties of privacy are necessary for the health and welfare of individuals, communities and the nation. All the facets of our collective behavior can be assembled and processed into working systems because we do have privacy. Because we have privacy we can behave and work as individuals, lending our collectiveness on a voluntary basis for systems that are larger than ourselves and our immediate families. Through privacy we gain our identity and through privacy we chose the way in which we contribute ecologically to the synecological system of which we are a part.

At the community level we have control over the integrity of the community by our ability to insulate it from the hubbub of externalities. Communities that are peaceful and quiet can be abrim with intellectual activity, as peacefulness and quiet stimulate thought and mental process. A quiet community is simply not given to outward and external commotion, and this lack allows for inner being synergy and creativity: We need time to smell the flowers and to watch the river go by for we re-create ourselves in such settings.

We have public sides to our lives and it is a dereliction of our duties as citizens not to participate in the public life of the community. Community celebrations, festivals, sporting leagues, restoration societies, concerts in the parks, all contribute to our community being and we should celebrate and support. We also live private lives, and the community and the nation owe us the right to live such lives. The unalienable right to privacy gives us that right.

...Ted Sudia...

© Copyright 1990
Institute for domestic Tranquility