Political Privacy - Anonymous Authorship of Political Opinions

Anonymous Authorship of Political Opinions

Finally, there is the issue of anonymous authorship of opinions. The Federalist Papers, which contributed to the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, were written under the pseudonym Publius. Most peer reviewed journals employ anonymous reviewers - and some, such as The Economist, publish only unattributed views. From classic to modern times, anonymity has proven an effective counter to groupthink - ossified mind-sets that very often become politically dangerous. The more who author anonymously and "neither confirm nor deny" their authorship, this argument goes, the harder it is to confirm identity, and therefore the harder to intrude into anyone's political privacy.

Mainstream views in North America tend to weakly support this view, in contrast to very strong support for it by its nations' founders: Benjamin Franklin said that "those who give up a little liberty to gain a little security, deserve neither." Political liberties being to a degree dependent on basic rights of political privacy and expression of views without retribution, this could be applied to modern contexts to argue strongly against such measures as Total Information Awareness. Knowing the political views of the citizen and what s/he has done to oppose the state and its law enforcement, how can an administration or police officer actually behave in a neutral way?

One answer, in modern democracies, is that this is neither a function of the elected administration nor the lower-level legislators nor the police, but is solely in the hands of the independent judiciary - who are supposed to be neutral and appointed by prior administrations of all political views, and well beyond reach of political influence.