Political Privacy - Government Encroachment On Political Privacy

Government Encroachment On Political Privacy

Radical or extreme political opinions that do not achieve expression to a satisfactory degree within a formal electoral system or legal system present a special problem: while all of the above concerns remain, they must be balanced against the concern that the system itself will be directly and violently opposed by those of such views, relatively disadvantaging those who work within the system for change.

A typical issue of this sort is the wearing of masks during protests and demonstrations, e.g. in the anti-globalization movement. The hiding of identity as radical views are expressed, e.g. favoring some form of anarchism, has long been considered a fundamental right:

In England, it is a longstanding tradition to dress as Robin Hood when protesting privileges of the rich or exploitation of the poor, and more recently when protesting destruction of natural ecology.

Although technically this is a disguise, and demonstrators often break one or more laws during a protest or blockade, historically, there has been broad tolerance of the right to express such political views without necessarily being subject to legal or social retribution. To a degree, this recognizes the need for some means of "blowing off steam", or the system itself demonstrating its power and confidence by choosing restraint. Many nations, however, have now passed laws against masks in protest and demonstration contexts, despite the fact that police in such circumstances very often appear masked and without badge numbers.

Most privacy advocates view such measures as typical of a carceral state - where the state itself knows everything, and there is neither political nor consumer privacy nor even much medical privacy - a special concern is the gathering of biometrics. This may enable identity theft by the state itself, framing citizens whose political views it finds offensive.

The more political privacy is violated, the easier it becomes to frame an innocent person using credible-sounding variations of their views and fabricated recordings. In 2001-2003 these concerns became relevant on the global diplomatic scene, as the reputed capture of recordings of Osama bin Laden boasting about the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and reputed intercepts of Iraqi Republican Guard officers conspiring to hide evidence of weapons of mass destruction from United Nations weapons inspectors, was challenged, especially in the Muslim world and especially Iraq, as being "well within the capabilities of the CIA to fabricate."

Credibility of anything other than first-hand evidence being difficult to establish, but motivations for believing hearsay and evidence 'found' without first-hand corroboration from those who were actually there, not to mention probability of torture being used in gaining confessions or other 'intelligence', makes it all but impossible to rule out the conspiracy theories. Accordingly like many political matters it boils down to a question of who is ultimately trustworthy.

Within the United States itself, political privacy of citizens has come into open question, with the government having prepared so-called No-fly lists of individuals with no history of advocating violence or hijacking, but who strongly opposed the Bush Administration and its ideology. While few individuals were detained for long, many were denied access to flights and thus economic or political opportunities, including prominent members of the Green Party and the Libertarian Party, wholly peaceful organizations with no ties to terrorism.

It is such political harassment and overt singling-out of persons with unpopular views that tends to characterize the first stages of any police state. Accordingly, civil rights advocates have little patience for the excuse that these measures "ultimately protect" the citizen. Political privacy may be more of a concern in the future as the capacities of persuasion technology improve, enabling pitches to be tailored to appeal to one's most fundamental personal beliefs - with or without human labour - making telemarketing scams easier, and making it extremely easy to slant opinion polls to get a desired result. It may also become harder to defend political privacy, where extreme views and strong challenges to the dominant political system are beginning to threaten the power of dominant cliques in society - who tend to prefer in general a zero-accountability carceral state.