Privacy, protests, power & the pandemic

This post in an edited down version of a longer article first posted on Medium.

Privacy: from its historic roots to current day in the eye of a political, legal and cultural storm

The right to privacy

Privacy. A fundamental right to be let alone. A concept intimately anchored in what it means to be human, and what it means for nation states to have self-determining citizens.

A deeply personal and cultural construct, our own views on privacy are informed by our individual life experiences; privacy relates to our sense of self, our nature (how introverted or extraverted we are). Privacy can allow us to establish and manage boundaries, to find space and solace, to retreat to our private realm.

In other words, privacy matters.

Privacy in a pandemic

Now, amid a global public health crisis, privacy has taken on new significance. We’ve never been more connected, yet never more isolated. The power imbalances between the state and the individual, between big tech and nations, between those who have access to trusted information and those who don’t, has been brought into sharp focus. The right to privacy can help the individual redress some of these global power shifts.

A brief history of privacy

The genesis

The history of privacy encompasses the evolution of civilisation, and our concepts of public and private spaces in our bodies, minds, cities, architecture, families and homes. Privacy has tracked our own history, as mankind has shifted from very public existences to build internal walls, have solo beds, read in silent contemplation and have locks on our bathroom doors.

The evolution of life from public, towards one with more private spaces was influenced by factors such as the Black Death and changing attitudes to public health and hygiene, security and material wealth.

History of data protection regulation

In Europe, the origins of data protection legislation is rooted in addressing past injustices in Europe.

In the 1930s in Germany under the Nazi regime, state control of Information Technology meant that personal data census collection was used and abused as part of a systematic approach relating to the atrocity of the Holocaust. The building blocks of today’s European institutions were laid in post World War 2 peace time cooperation, as part of European efforts to address these grave injustices.

Recent history

More recently, specifically in the last half century, Europe saw laws in the 1970s and in 1995 the European Union (EU) Directive on Data Protection arrived, which was created as an essential element of EU privacy and human rights law.

As the global digital economy, IT environment and cyber threat context became more complex with increasingly frequent attacks, so did the need for tighter regulations.

GDPR: a new global baseline

There was a sea change when the GDPR was adopted in 2016, coming into force on 25th May 2018. The GDPR set a new legal framework and tone for data protection, not just for Europe but beyond, as the ‘new standard’.

Surveillance, breaches, ethics and big data

We have seen seismic technological changes this century, with Google and then Facebook’s arrival and a fundamental shift to software business models, mass adoption of social media, smartphones and data driven economies and societies.

Globally, people have traded their personal information, their privacy, for convenience, usability, or fame. We may now be at an important ethical, legal and societal inflection point for corporate and state surveillance.

2021: where are we now?

Privacy, protests, the press and the pandemic

In the fight to bring the COVID-19 virus under control, the crisis has brought trade-offs between public health and privacy.

We have seen those tensions play out most notably in the Black Lives Matters protests where police used social media content and drones to track down protestors (source), or recently in the UK with the right to protest in sharp focus. Privacy is also a feature of recent high profile celebrity disputes with the press, and can often seem at difficult to reconcile with ‘confessional culture’.

Privacy: in the eye of the storm

Privacy has many layers: it’s a right, it can be an emotional feeling or physical place, it interweaves with personal fears, boundaries and experiences. It’s grounded in our individual, societal and cultural psyches.

There are equally many intersecting levels to the privacy debate: the legal layer (which sits at the nexus of data protection, social media and tech regulation, freedom of speech and information laws), the ethics of tech innovation, and cultural norms and freedoms. To be understood, privacy needs to be viewed from a macro political, societal and historical lens, as well as a personal one.

The history of privacy is a long one, and in 2021 after a year where we retreated from public to our private spaces in the wake of a global public health crisis, privacy is having its moment. This complex but vitally important concept is right at the centre of a global political, tech, media and legal debate, at the intersection of power fault lines between the state and individual freedoms.

2021 is just the start of a re-framing of what private and shared means online, and how that plays out as we reclaim our public spaces. It’s just the beginning of privacy taking centre stage.