Is privacy a thing of the past?

When any of the major marathons is being run, someone appropriately mentions the event that inspired them: how news was taken from Marathonos, 26 miles from Athens, of the defeat of Darius I of Persia when he invaded Greece in 490 BC. It was carried by a runner, Pheidippedes, one of the commonest methods of sending messages in those distant days.

Another method, as the opening scene of Aeschylus’s Agamemnon memorably recounts, is by beacon fire, visible from one hill top to another in a long chain. Beacons were swifter than runners, thus representing a technological advance in communications. Gradually, but with increasing power and pace in modern times, humanity has moved from runners, the pony express, telegraphy and airmail to mobile telephony and social media.

The instantaneity and facility of communication today—sending words, images and sound at the speed of light from one hand-held device to another or many others, and very cheaply—is many orders of magnitude away from Pheidippedes in utility. That is why we embrace the technologies that make it possible. In a flash they have become necessities. We live with our devices constantly at hand, and at any time of day or night employ them to get and give information and to make contact.

The benefits are huge. The price paid for them is even greater: these technologies have stripped us naked to the view of any public or private agency that wishes to know about us. The knowledge acquirable by eavesdropping on our communications, searches, entertainment, purchases and other activities in the electronic universe, is practically unlimited.

Privacy is therefore a thing of the past for all but those who refuse any truck with these innovations. We are now dependent on the sense of responsibility that can be mustered by eavesdropping agencies, and such restraint as Canute-like attempts at regulation can achieve.

The main reason is that the explosion in communications has created a pressing need for security agencies to monitor them. The point is insistently made that because there are people out there intent on mass murder, and because governments have a responsibility to protect citizens, pre-emptive eavesdropping on communications is a necessity. If true, this shows that our embrace of these wonderfully useful technologies is a Faustian contract: the light they shine casts deep shadows.

What can be done? It might be argued that regulation is better than no effort at restraint on eavesdropping. We might not be able to stop all eavesdropping, including that necessitated by danger, but we can limit the potential for harm by policing it to the extent possible.

The problem here is that regulation can too easily subvert the good purposes which the technologies serve. We are right to be apprehensive that China-like draconian control of communications can do damage without enhancing security. To undermine civil liberties for the sake of security, and to fail to achieve it, would be the worst outcome.

What is the principle at stake here, and would the right kind of attention to it help resolve that tension? The principle concerns the balance of liberty and security. Famously, Benjamin Franklin said that those who would forfeit their liberty for security deserve neither.

In the late 19th century, Lord Acton equally resoundingly announced that the highest duty of government is to protect the liberties of citizens. A decade or so ago David Blunkett, and other European interior ministers, published a joint letter in the International Herald Tribune claiming that the highest duty of government is to protect the safety of citizens. Reflection shows that it is Acton who is right. To keep us safe, governments would have to restrict our liberties drastically and invade all our privacies to ferret out those who intend to cause harm. Such security would not be worth having at such cost. Instead, there are two better answers: one bold, the other concessive.

The bold answer is that we have to say to ourselves, as members of a mature and civilised community, that liberties come with risks, and that we should accept those risks because our liberties are so worth having. The concessive answer is that yes, it is a high duty of government to protect us, and that means that in times of real danger we have to accept interference with our liberties, as happened in the Second World War; but the license for this must be temporary and kept under strict review, subject to short-term sunset clauses which require investigation of circumstances for renewal.

The two answers are consistent, and sensible. They do not solve the loss of privacy question, but they strike the balance that one part of the loss of privacy threatens to upset.