My feelings about the privacy issue run contrary to those of just about every person I've met. If I thought the idea of living forever was contentious, this is an even hotter potato! All I have to do is suggest that maybe we'd be better off in the near future without any form of privacy at all and, before I've had a chance to explain what I mean, the knee-jerk reactions kick in and I'm suddenly trying to defend what is really only an idea worth exploring, not a fundamental statement of belief on my part. The belief that Privacy is Good, on the other hand, is hammered in so hard that the slightest deviation, under any circumstances, must be Swiftly Dealt With.

My thoughts are these: we are heading toward a world inhabited by more than 10 billion people. That sort of population pressure is unimaginable to those of us in the affluent West -- especially Australia, where urban sprawl has been largely uncontained and the dream of owning a home is still considered to be quite reasonable -- and measures must be taken to accommodate the change. If we double the world's population and expect to maintain some sort of coherent society, then there are concessions that will *have* to be made. One of them will be to maintain order. Without order, a world containing that many people will easily spiral out of control. (I'm not talking about order and control in dictatorial terms, btw. I'm talking about keeping the power on, delivering fresh water, ensuring people are fed and educated, etc.) Ensuring that the law is adhered to -- and that justice is done when it is not -- is an important part of maintaining that order.

We are already seeing that observing public places by means of closed-circuit TV cameras in England has a perceived effect on crime. Even if it only makes people feel safer, then that is a positive result.

We also know that, in some types of crime like child abuse, most of the occurrences are in the home. If our goal is to ensure the safety of our citizens (and to prevent psychological damage that might result in destabilizing anti-social behavior at a later date) then watching for such crimes and preventing them before they occur seems a reasonable goal. The only way to do this, of course, is to stick cameras in every home. Obviously these cameras could not be observed 24 hours a day -- otherwise we'd end up with the absurd situation wherein half the population watches the other half sleeping -- but we're not far from having autonomous programs or even AIs which can observe human behavior and flag anything aberrant for a human supervisor to take a closer look at. While most people would object to such an intrusion into our private lives on any grounds, I think there's a case for it. I don't mind offending the modern sensibilities of the average person by taking away some of their privacy in order to ensure the safety of a minority of the weak and vulnerable. In short, I'd rather be protected against a predator wielding a knife than one wanting to steal my credit card number.

To me it's a clear case of priorities. The population increase is coming, and we have to sacrifice something in order to deal with it. I'd rather lose my privacy than live under a police state. Having one does not necessarily mean the other -- although most people seem to assume that it does.

The fact that information can be abused does need to be addressed. There are ways this information could be controlled. In one obvious scenario, only the government could gather the information. Any information gathered about me could only be used with my consent, unless such info showed that I was behaving in an illegal manner, in which case I lose any residual rights to privacy. Privacy, therefore, becomes a privilege, not a right, and I would lose it as soon as I demonstrated that I did not deserve it. This is the scenario most people think of when they imagine a world with reduced privacy.

My preferred alternative is one in which the information is be completely open: ie. there is no privacy left at all. Anyone can watch anyone. This is the case with everyone on the planet, so I am not a special case. Would paranoia be eased by the knowledge that we are all watched equally? Maybe. But remember that, under this complete freedom of information assumption, you can tell not only IF you were being watched at any given time, but WHO was watching you. Would *that* make a difference? I think it would. Instead of faceless strangers, your observers would be real people -- who you could observe back, or simply ask to move on, as there are billions of other people in the world that are bound to be at least as, if not more, interesting. *This* is the world I would be prepared to live in.

Is it utopian and therefore fundamentally non-viable? I don't think so. The system isn't imposing an unnatural order on all-too-natural humans. It is simply taking away the restrictions on information flow and letting people themselves deal with it. If someone is being stalked, they will know who is behind it and can contact the authorities. If data is being altered, the perpetrators will be under constant surveillance (like everyone else) and their crimes will not go unnoticed. If someone is watching me while I take a shower, so what? I can watch them right back, if I want to. Or I can ignore it and get on with my life.

My feelings are that our present views on privacy reflect a world in which our physical territories are shrinking, leaving only emotional/intellectual spaces to defend. What are we protecting these spaces against? Nominally we are protecting these spaces -- which we equate with ourselves -- against abuse by other parties, but this abuse is only *potential* abuse. It is not guaranteed. We are, I think, reacting in a genetically programmed way to a threat that does not necessarily exist. We are apes hurling feces to stake out our territory; why else do people get so upset when we challenge the idea that underpins it -- that of privacy as a right? It strikes us at the very core of our (animal) being. If we can get over that programming and look at the issue objectively, I think there is a case for changing our current perception of privacy and the degree of it in our every day lives.

1. How do you see the issue of privacy - and the idea that we will lose - it affect us on a daily level in the future?

In my novel THE RESURRECTED MAN I created a world in which data about people is collected and stored by an AI network, but is only accessible piecemeal at any one time. Ie., investigators might know your bank account number but not how much money you had (or vice versa); they might know your age but not your date of birth (or vice versa); they might know your birth place but not your nationality (or vice versa); etc.

In other versions of the future, privacy could be bought in terms of increased taxes or reduced rights in other areas. Would you sacrifice the right to vote in order to have privacy in your home? I see this as a possibility because, by opting out of the data-collection network that helps maintain society, you are in a sense opting out of society itself, so why should you retain the right to contribute to the decision-making process?

I have trouble imagining a world devoid of privacy since I have been raised in an affluent Western world. Sometimes I imagine that it might be like Japan, where privacy is very difficult indeed to maintain. The culture there survives by virtue of a conscious blindness. As long as something isn't talked about, it remains private, even if everyone knows. (A friend of mine once worked in a private Japanese university in which everyone knew the chancellor was having an affair with his secretary. Nothing was ever done about it until a Westerner brought it up. Once the secret was voiced, it had to be dealt with, but until then the consensual view was that the indiscretion hadn't happened.) Maybe we'd become something like that.

2. How do you see privacy - or the lack of it - affecting us positively?

Ideally, the positive benefits would be reflected in a lowering of the crime rate -- both in the short-term, because criminals would be caught in the act or convicted after thanks to electronic evidence, and in the long-term, by virtue of the prevention of psychological damage resulting from abuse, trauma, etc. I'd certainly sleep a lot better at night knowing that my house couldn't be broken into without the police instantly knowing!

Negatively?

The absence of privacy (in my humble opinion) would only work in a world in which information flowed freely. The option above, in which not only is information gathered about everyone *and* everyone has the right to know how that information is being used (and by whom), is the only one that could possibly sidestep the issue of information abuse. Under any other system, no matter what safeguards were in place, there would always exist the chance that someone could misuse your information -- by spreading *mis*information or blackmail or through numerous other means. This is the problem with our present system -- and this is why, when I think about privacy and weigh the various pros and cons, I keep coming down on the side of no privacy at all. We will never have a completely equitable justice system while people can keep or exploit secrets.

A totalitarian regime always tries to ensure a one-way flow of information from its citizens. When people imagine a world without privacy, this is always the sort of government they imagine in control. Why should that be the case? Why can't we imagine a government that is perfectly transparent, where we can see it as well as it can see us? Would that changes things for the better, and why are we so unwilling to consider it?

3. How do you people knowing a lot about us will be abused?

The obvious crimes are credit card fraud, peeping, blackmail, and stalking. (Note that all these crimes are being conducted today.) If you offended someone in the government, it is conceivable that your personal information could be changed in order to use it against you. (This also could happen now, a la the movie "Enemy of the State" or "The Net.")

Again, in a perfectly transparent state, it would be impossible to conduct these crimes against someone else without being seen yourself. Could such a utopian state exist? I don't know -- but I don't know why people happily assume that the opposite (dystopian -- in which the workings of the state are perfectly invisible) world will come to pass. Maybe it's that primate territorialism at work again ...

4. Where are areas it might affect us that we might not be able to see now?

As above, I hope that the reduction on crime and victimization would have a powerful effect on society. Imagine being perfectly safe anywhere! How would that change the way we view our fellows?

Speaking purely for me, I would quite happily trade the feeling of being watched for a sense of greater security -- and I'm sure that after a while any sense of "invasion" will disappear, as what might once have seemed intolerable becomes perfectly tolerable.

5. Where is an area that most people wouldn't even consider - like cyber stalking - that would blow them away?

Who are these cyber-stalkers, and how are they so different to us? The popularity of reality TV -- "Big Brother" in particular -- suggests that there's a little of the stalker in all of us. Maybe unfettered access to information on anyone, any time, might help to erode the prurience that infects so much of our society. So what if President Clinton has an affair? Who cares if Tom and Nicole broke up over an impossible pregnancy? There are more important things to things about -- like keeping a world full of people in one piece, or at least stable. Over-exposure might finally begin to cure us of gossip! (At the very least, it might cure the world of reality TV. <g>)

6. Anything else you might like to say?

Okay, I'm being a bit glib about the need for privacy stemming from primitive territorial urges. It might arise instead out of higher social programming: the fear that we will be found out, that we will be shown (in the phrasing of Robert Anton Wilson) to be "no-good shits." To descend into cliché: if we don't have anything to hide, why do we feel guilty? And if we *do* have something to hide, then that only validates the anti-privacy debate! If you're using bootlegged software on your computer and you want to keep using it, don't campaign against reduced privacy: campaign for cheaper software and fix the actual problem. If, on the other hand, you're looking at child-porn, then I think society has every right to erode your rights in order to catch you.