Cornerstone of democratic life

Privacy is a fundamental right. It is a hard won right: won against the inroads of tyranny and autocracy, where the private lives, homes and communications of ordinary men and women – who protested against tyranny and autocracy, who were dissidents or advocated rights of the weak – were regarded as the property of the state – to be discovered and displayed and used against them whenever deemed necessary and used to capture their souls, to force them into undesired and to push them to subjugation.

People deserve a private life because private life is essential to the maintenance of human balance. Private life, respect for it, is a cornerstone of democratic life: for without it, without that right, enshrined in law and respected, the lives, above all, of the weak are rendered vulnerable. Respect for private life is an attribute of citizenship in a democratic and civil society. Men and women fought for it, and can not so easily give it away.


People have the right to private life, have the right to feel free from interpretation in the corner of their home, because privacy is essential to the peace of mind and the maintenance of human balance. There need to be spaces without intruders, for men and women to work out relationships, to overcome their fears and to restore their confidence and to care for their children and to rethink their friendships.

If they are condemned to have any or all of these made public at any moment they become areas of suspicion, where every relationship must be examined for betrayal; where every act must be combed for negative connotations, where all words must be checked and re-checked for unintended meanings – because in addition to exposure, people are subject to interpretation or worse misinterpretation. Moral and political correctness is thus enforced – by fear of exposure. .

The right to privacy should be asserted even more strongly where private life is destroyed. Where there are so many forces employed to violate privacy means that the force of the law has to powerfully counteract them. For if that right goes, if it becomes open season, our very life becomes a commodity.


Reference:
http://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/blogs