Privacy in public and the contextual conditions of agency

Abstract

Abstract:As traditional public spaces rapidly change the question arises whether pervasive surveillance is actually compatible with the nature of individual agency. It is known that new and largely unregulated technologies often both erode old de facto limitations of access, and erect new asymmetric barriers of knowledge, but how should we understand the harms of these new contexts? Based on our psychological and biological knowledge of social perception, embodiment and action choice it seems that these conditions present a toxic mix for our ability to gauge what I call our "relational privacy", and thereby for our autonomous and purposeful action planning. If this functional analysis is right then boundless surveillance of our bodies and behaviors threatens rather than supports basic personal freedom and responsibility. However, in contrast to this analysis, the private-public dichotomy often implied in existing debates assumes that privacy concerns can be theorized without much attention to the functional and relational dynamics of our embodied agency. Building on among others Nissenbaum and Reidenberg's work, this chapter seeks to counter this tendency. Two conclusions stand out: Firstly, it seems that our action choices depend on the existence of limited contexts also in public, and thus actions in what we might term "unbounded contexts" are typically performed through some kind of denial. Secondly, abundant availability of data traceable to persons can not only undermine and coerce our choices, but even to a large extent completely bypass our current volitional action choices. Thus it seems that the contextual nature of our agency should be of utmost importance to political and legal privacy issues, and could usefully guide attempts to re-create more bounded public spaces.

Incorporating ‘Fashion Identity’ Into the Right to Privacy

“…Surveillance and tracking practices expose an individual to the identification and observance of behaviour in unprecedented ways. 41 From surveillance cameras to the smart assistant, surveillance and profiling technologies challenge the shape of the spatial context of privacy discourse. 42 The rise of networked environments certainly challenges our expectations of boundary management within the 'nonintimate' spheres.…”

Migrants, State Responsibilities, and Human Dignity

“…Let me suggest that the distinctive capacities of prospective agents include being able (a) to freely choose one’s own ends, goals, purposes, and so on (“to do one’s own thing”); (b) to understand instrumental reason; (c) to prescribe rules (for oneself and for others) and to be guided by rules (set by oneself or by others); and (d) to form a sense of one’s own identity (“to be one’s own person”). Accordingly, the essential conditions are those that support the exercise of these capacities (Brincker 2017; Hu 2017). With existence secured, and under the right conditions, human life becomes an opportunity for agents to be who they want to be, to have the projects that they want to have, to form the relationships that they want, to pursue the interests that they choose to have, and so on.…”

Law, liberty and technology: criminal justice in the context of smart machines

“…Rather, the concerns expressed by Bowling and Iyer, by Lynskey and by Macdonald, Correia and Watkin relate to our agential interests and, in particular to our interests in privacy, in the fair collection and processing of our personal data and in access to (and the integrity of) the informational eco-system. Increasingly, it is being recognised that such interests are 'contextual' not only in the sense that their demands might vary from one context to another, but in the more fundamental sense that we have a common interest in a context that enables our self-development (Hu, 2017;Brincker, 2017). This is nicely expressed in a paper (discussing data governance) from the Royal Society and British Academy:…”