David Brin has an article in the December issue of Wired arguing that privacy is obsolete and was never that great an idea in the first place. I corresponded with him a few years ago when he was working on a draft of a book which would develop this idea. Needless to say, I disagreed with many of his views. Here is an excerpt from a letter I sent to him where I defended the notion that privacy is valuable: === You suggest that the main motivation which someone might have for protecting privacy is that they are engaged in some illicit activities: page 45: "Why should I really care if someone sees this? I have nothing to hide." But aren't exceptions to this quite common in real life? What about the gay man who doesn't want to come out of the closet? What about the environmentalist who works in the clerical department of an oil company with little tolerance for such beliefs? What about the closet atheist in the fundamentalist Midwestern town? Maybe you'd say that all of these people should expose their secrets, or have them exposed for them, and that the world would be a better place. (Actually, you do seem to say this, and I'll discuss it later.) But I think this assumes a certain level of tolerance on the part of society. What if this is wrong? What if society, or just your neighbors, or your boss, is not so tolerant? What if you lose your job, or get hounded from your neighborhood, once these secrets are exposed? I really don't think we have any right to second-guess the decisions people have made about what they will reveal and what they will keep private. They are the ones who have to live with the consequences. They are the ones who should make the decisions. For you to say that people should have "nothing to hide" is awfully facile. If you had admitted in your book to be a pedophile or a white supremacist, coming out of the closet as a demonstration of your faith in the values of openness, that would at least indicate that you had experienced that of which you had written. But of course even that would not give you the right to presume to tell others to follow the same course. In my opinion. Furthermore, there is a long tradition of anonymity and pseudonymity in literature. Probably the most prominent examples are the Federalist Papers, published anonymously due to fear of political retribution. The whole area of politically-inspired anonymity is another counter-example to this notion that people only want privacy for evil purposes. How can you look back at the history of even this country, which probably has one of the best records in the world, and feel confident that no one will ever be wiser to express an unpopular view anonymously? Even if you feel safe about it in the U.S., your suggestions would have world-wide impact. There are many countries in the world where criticizing the government will have to be done anonymously if it is done at all. This raises the point that anonymity may promote criticism. You go to some lengths to praise the value of critical commentary as a route to the truth. Yet in real life political considerations are one of the most potent blocks to criticism, and these often apply most strongly to those who are in the best position to criticize. It is only through anonymity that much of the most useful criticism can arise. This is why we have our "whistle-blower" laws, anonymous informants, etc. Yes, anonymity can be easily misused in this regard. Information supplied anonymously needs to be carefully verified before it can be relied on. But I don't see the value in stripping the shield of anonymity from people who would like to expose some injustice but are afraid of the personal consequences. === Hal