In the UK this week the Times Higher Education magazine has published two book reviews that provide a great insight into the way privacy theory is developing along with the law of online (or otherwise published) defamation.
The work Why Democracies Need An Unlovable Press sees the
author, Michael Schudson, outline a theory of how good online
journalism can transform participative democracy even in the face of a
growing panopticonic culture in society.
In the words of the reviewer, Tim Luckhurst, "[the author's] six primary functions for journalism in a democracy - information, investigation, analysis, social empathy, provision of a public forum and service as an advocate of political programmes - should be taught and debated by all ambitious students and teachers of journalism. [The author's] seventh, the duty to publicise and promote representative democracy, is an important step forward from the foundation-level ideal that reporting should simply facilitate the free exchange of ideas."
In the same issue of the THE this week a book by Daniel J. Solove: The Future of Reputation: Gossip Rumour & Privacy on the Internet. Steven Poole of The Guardian describes how Solove believes our right to privacy can be best protected and promulgated by a limiting of the information our social networking sites can put out into the world about us; i.e. make them more responsible for the information they 'demand' we share.
Court decisions in the UK, most notably including the rulings in Campbell, Douglas, and Mosley see us better protected from the sections of the press who might seek to profit from unfair intrusions into our personal lives. This growing doctrine of privacy is our shield against at least some of the panopticonic measures of the State; being able to utilise freedom-of-speech and new technologies and the Internet to communicate and debate is our 'sword'.
We can only hope that the digital divide' will lessen and that only comment will grow into a national and international habit that will foster better understanding between groups of society. If the State observes this activity - so what? It is to be the 'democratisation' of the Panopticon - we are all observed, if we all engage in the Information Age, at least we're all in it together.
The UK government will, most likely in February 2009, release a
'Digital Britain' green paper - what impact will this have?
The report itself has been delayed - as it an economic analysis of the digitally-driven knowledge economy' in Britain - no doubt due to substantial re-writes caused by shifting financial sands in the sector during the onset of a recession.
I'm glad there's a sense of discussion in the UK, Jamie. It seems in the USA that we just have to take the invasion and there's no need to discuss the matter.
What concerns me most about our debate here in Britain though David is the tendency of the public-sector watchdog, the Information Commissioner's Office, to focus selectively on issues of information and surveillance risk e.g. it will commission a report criticising 'dataveillance' in society; but fail to highlight the risks of the Government's own moves to increase spending and dependence on fairly risky 'database-driven' e-governance.
I think that's a fair and meaningful concern, Jamie.
In the USA we're currently dealing with FISA ramifications and the automatic data collection of every single thing that flows through the internet. I don't think that sort of catch-all surveilling is appropriate because it's too easy for the unprovoked utterance to be given too much weight in the system for flagging.
Doesn't seem to be much of a way to hide, does there?