Secrecy and Privacy

The Inverse Relationship between Secrecy and Privacy
Author(s): Julie E. Cohen

Source: Social Research, Vol. 77, No. 3, Limiting Knowledge in a Democracy (FALL 2010), pp.
883-898
Published by: The New School
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Julie E. Cohen
The Inverse
Relationship
between
Secrecy
and
Privacy
THE INVERSE-RELATIONSHIP NARRATIVE
WITHIN CIVIL LIBERTARIAN
DISCOURSE,
IT IS COMMONLY HELD
that there is an inverse
relationship
between
government secrecy
and
the
privacy
of individual citizens.
According
to this
inverse-relationship
narrative,
secrecy
enables and
perpetuates privacy
invasion
by shielding
government prying
from
public scrutiny.
Absent the
secrecy,
or so the
story goes,
the
public
would call
government
to account for its
misdeeds,
after which constitutional and
statutory protections
would kick in and the
proper
balance between
public
and
private
life would be restored. If we
tell the
inverse-relationship story
often
enough
and
indignantly enough,
it can come to seem as
though
we
might
achieve sufficient
protection
for
both
privacy
and
democracy simply by limiting
official
secrecy.
The
inverse-relationship story
of how
privacy
is lost and
gained
is an
appealing
one. Stories that cast
government
as the
greatest
threat
to individual
welfare,
and that envision individual welfare as
protected
precisely
to the extent that
government
is
restrained,
have
powerful
cultural resonance in American
public
discourse. One
might say
that
they
exist in our
political
DNA
-
in the
fundamentally
liberal
political
philosophy
that animates our
politics
and our markets.
Portions of this
essay
are
adapted
from
my forthcoming
book,
Configuring
the Networked
Self: Copyright, Surveillance,
and the Production
of
Networked
Space (Yale University
Press,
forthcoming).
social research Vol 77 : No 3 : Fall 2010 883
In the case of
privacy,
however,
the
story
is
wrong.
Devaluation
of
privacy
is bound
up
with our
political economy
and with our
public
discourse about information
policy
in
important ways
that have little
or
nothing
to do with official conduct. This devaluation
proceeds
in
two
opposite
but
mutually reinforcing patterns: by valorizing private
economic
arrangements organized
around trade
secrecy
and
by
elevat-
ing openness
as an ultimate
good.
There is an inverse
relationship
between
privacy
and
secrecy,
but there is an
equally powerful
inverse
relationship
between
openness
and
privacy
that for
ideological
reasons
we are inclined to resist
discussing.
And the
very
same liberal commit-
ments that
generate
the
inverse-relationship story prevent
us from
understanding
what
privacy ought
to mean.
THE POWER OF SECRECY ACROSS THE
PUBLIC/PRIVATE
DIVIDE
In the
emerging
networked information
economy,
access to
personal
information about current and
potential
customers is considered the
key ingredient
in market success. The United States has become the
center of a
large
and
growing
market for
personal
information,
encom-
passing
all kinds of data about individual
attributes, activities,
and
preferences.
Trade in some information,
such as financial and health
information,
is
subject
to
legal
restrictions,
but most other
types
of
information flow
freely among participants, ranging
from
large
finan-
cial institutions to search
engines
to divorce
attorneys
and
private
detectives. Flows of data are facilitated
by corporate
data brokers like
ChoicePoint,
Experian,
and Axciom
(Hoofhagle
2004:
600-08).
To
help
companies (and governments)
make the most of the information
they
purchase,
an
industry
devoted to "data
mining"
and "behavioral adver-
tising"
has
arisen;
firms in this
industry compete
with one another to
develop
more
profitable
methods of
sorting
and
classifying
individual
consumers.
The driver of markets in
personal
information is a kind of
privacy,
but it is the
privacy
of
private property.
Information disclosed
by
individuals
through
their commercial
relationships
becomes the
884 social research
private property
of
providers
of services and
goods,
and that
property
itself is
bought,
sold,
and traded. The ultimate
object
of this trade is
the creation of individualized economies of
attention,
in which we are
known
by
our
preferences
and habits and
captured by
our
loyalties.
Personalization also
plays
a
key
role in the vision of the future of the
Internet as a "semantic web"
(Berners-Lee
et al.
2001)
that connects
people,
information,
and
things.
The
interactivity
of the
emerging
semantic web is
comprehensively
mediated
by
information about indi-
viduals'
preferences
and transactional histories.
To be
sure,
government
is an
important
customer of
private
sector data
processors.
In the United
States,
a number of federal
agen-
cies have awarded multimillion dollar contracts to
corporate
data
brokers to
supply
them with
personal
information about both citi-
zens and
foreign
nationals.
Privacy
restrictions that limit the extent to
which the
government
can itself collect
personal
information
gener-
ally
do not
apply
to such
purchases
at all
(Hoofhagle
2004:
622-23).
The
government
has
deployed secrecy
to
great
effect where these initiatives
are
concerned,
with the result that we still understand too little about
many
of them.
Legal regimes purporting
to
guarantee
official trans-
parency
are in fact indeterminate on how much
openness
to
require.
For
example,
the federal Freedom of Information Act
(FOIA)
mandates
far-reaching
disclosure of information about
government
actions and
processes,
but
exempts
classified information and information about
law enforcement
techniques
and
procedures
if such disclosure would
"risk circumvention of the law" or create risks to life or
physical safety
(552(b)(7)).
Even
so,
most
government
uses of
personal
information,
whether
collected
directly
or
acquired
from
private companies, ultimately
are
subject
to
transparency requirements, including
those
imposed
by
the
FOIA,
and
they
are
subject
to the
supervision
of courts. In the
United
States,
the same
requirements
do not
apply
to most commer-
cial
data-processing operations.
The
guidelines
on fair information
practices adopted by
the
Organization
for Economic
Cooperation
and
Development (OECD) (1980)
and enacted as a directive
by
the
European
The Inverse
Relationship
between
Secrecy
and
Privacy
885
Union
(EU) (1995) require parties
that collect
personal
information to
provide
disclosures
specifying
the
purposes
for which the information
will be used and
any potential recipients
other than the
original
collec-
tor.
They
also must afford data
subjects
a
meaningful opportunity
to
examine and correct the information. In the United
States, however,
the OECD
guidelines generally
have not been
applied
to most
private-
sector uses and transfers of
personal
data; instead,
such activities are
regulated only by background prohibitions against
unfair and
deceptive
trade
practices.
Most
reputable
firms that deal
directly
with consumers
do disclose some information about their
"privacy practices,"
but the
incentive is to formulate disclosures about both
purposes
and
poten-
tial
recipients
in the most
general
terms
possible.
This
practice
in turn
shields
secondary recipients
of
personal
data,
most of whom do not
disclose information about their activities at all.
Even the
highly granular purpose
and
recipient
disclosures
required
under a strict
interpretation
of the OECD
guidelines,
more-
over,
would not
necessarily
shed
light
on the
operational significance
of collected information.
Telling
someone what
pieces
of information
were considered for the
purposes
of
making
decisions about credit or
medical
coverage provides
no information about how that information
mattered. It reveals
very
little about the other
assumptions
used to
construct the
operational
heuristic,
nor does it indicate how different
information would have
changed
the result.
Efforts to
gain
access to
operational
information about
private-
sector uses of
personal
information run into the first of the two
discourses of information
policy
that I mentioned at the start of this
essay:
the discourse of economic
secrecy.
Economic
regimes
of trade
secrecy
have as their
principal purposes
the
protection
of innovation
and
competition.
Such
regimes reproduce
as a matter of course
many
of the
patterns
of nondisclosure that we find so
threatening
when
they
manifest within
government.
Within trade
secrecy
law and
practice,
it is not
only
normal but also and more
fundamentally
desirable that
information should be made available
only
to those authorized to
know it.
Although
we do not
typically acknowledge
this,
trade
secrecy
886 social research
and state
secrecy
are
equally important aspects
of our national infor-
mation
policy.
Government disclosures
typically
are structured so as
not to
disrupt patterns
of trade
secrecy,
and this is
legally
sanctioned:
the FOIA
(552(b)(4)) exempts
trade secret information from disclosure
in most cases.
The nexus between state
secrecy
and economic
secrecy
has not
gone
unnoticed in information
policy
debates. Scholars like Danielle
Citron
(2008)
have
pointed
out that
regimes
of economic
secrecy
forti-
fied
by
the FOIA trade
secrecy exemption may operate
to shield
newly
privatized, formerly public
functions such as the
design
of electronic
voting processes
from
public scrutiny.
Citron
argues
that due
process
protections against arbitrary
state action should extend across the
public/private
divide to reach the actions of the
nominally private
actors now
performing
such functions. The
larger problem,
however,
goes beyond
the transfer of
public
functions across the
public/private
divide. The more
important question
is
why
the
public/private
divide
should
presumptively
insulate the
information-processing practices
of
other
private
actors from
public scrutiny. Regimes
of
secrecy
fortified
by
intellectual
property
law
operate
to
deny
us access to
large catego-
ries of decisions that have real and immediate effect on
every
facet of
our
day-to-day
lives,
ranging
from decisions about access to credit and
insurance to more mundane decisions about the information that we
are shown.
They
are therefore a
legitimate
and
urgent subject
of
public
concern.
THE IDEOLOGY OF OPENNESS
The obvious
remedy
for too much
secrecy,
of
course,
is more
openness.
So,
for
example,
some have
argued
that the best
way
to
equalize
the
power disparities resulting
from
regimes
of state or
corporate secrecy
is
to
give everyone
access to the same information that
governments
and
corporations
have
(Brin
1999;
Mann et al.
2003).
If surveillance feeds
and search
strings
alike were
public property,
or so the
argument goes,
their
ability
to underwrite
public
and
private
assertions of
power
would
be
greatly
reduced.
The Inverse
Relationship
between
Secrecy
and
Privacy
887
Here we encounter the second of the two discourses of informa-
tion
policy
that work to devalue
privacy.
If
sunlight
is the best disinfec-
tant and free
expression
the foundation of our
democracy,
then it seems
only logical
to think more
sunlight
and more information will make
our
public
discourse
purer
and more democratic. As for all of the incon-
venient,
embarrassing
bits of information that are
suddenly
networked
and
searchable,
we should all
just
learn to
get past
the awkwardness
and enter a
postprivacy
era
(for example,
Zittrain 2008:
228-34).
The
alternative
-
making
distinctions
among
the Internet's information
flows and
regulating
some of them
-
would threaten cherished free-
doms of
speech
and
inquiry.
On that
reasoning, secrecy
and
openness
are
complementary
halves of a
binary
that is
thought
to contain within
it all of the
possible responses
to information
policy problems.
From a
privacy perspective,
neither
argument
follows.
First,
the information
policy
discourse of
openness
is extraordi-
narily
resistant to
recognizing
that the
"openness" practiced by
ordi-
nary people,
both online and
off,
is a matter of
degree.
The
design
of
most networked information services mirrors this
insensitivity.
When
Facebook announced a commercial
arrangement
called the Beacon
program,
which would
notify
members of their friends'
purchases,
it
assumed users would be
delighted.
When
Google
introduced its new
networking
service,
Google
Buzz,
automatically
enrolled all Gmail
customers,
and
publicly
listed their
top
Gmail
correspondents
as
their
"friends,"
some wondered
why anyone
would
object.
The
public
backlash that followed each of these
incidents,
and
many
others,
was
entirely unsurprising.
There are
many
reasons that one
might prefer
not to share information about all of one's
purchases
or all of one's
private correspondence
with all of one's friends. The
designers
of
Facebook Beacon and
Google
Buzz
betrayed
a fatal
insensitivity
to the
fine contextual distinctions that we make all the time in our interac-
tions with the world,
and to our reasons for
making
them.
The
everyday practice
of life involves the creation and
manage-
ment of boundaries between different activities and
relationships.
To an
extent,
these
processes
of
boundary management
are
implicitly recog-
888 social research
nized in Alan Westin's
pathbreaking
and influential discussion of
privacy
interests,
which identified "reserve" as a critical
aspect
of
privacy (1967:
37-42). Ultimately,
however,
reserve is too one-dimensional a notion to
be useful in
characterizing
the
range
of social
processes
that result from
selective
withholding
and selective disclosure. A richer
conceptualization
of the differential control that social
processes
entail is social
psycholo-
gist
Irwin Altman's model of
privacy
as a dialectical
process
of
boundary
regulation (1975).
While Westin
presented
a
relatively
static
taxonomy
of
types
of
interpersonal separation,
Altman crafted a
dynamic
model
designed
to
encompass
the
range
of
processes by
which
privacy
in its
various forms is created and maintained. Altman characterized
privacy
as
"a central
regulatory process by
which a
person (or group)
makes himself
more or less accessible and
open
to
others,"
and identified "the
concepts
of
personal space
and territorial behavior" as the
principal regulatory
mechanisms in the
process (1975: 3).
He observed that the
concepts
of
personal space
and territorial behavior inform a
range
of
privacy-regulat-
ing
behaviors;
together,
those behaviors constitute a coherent
system
for
personal boundary management
that
responds dynamically
to
changing
circumstances, needs,
and desires.
Importantly,
while the term
"privacy"
carries with it
specific
cultural
baggage,
the
processes
described
by
Altman have a more
universal character.
Although
different cultures have different conven-
tions about
personal space
and
territory, people
in
every
culture use
personal space
and
territory
to
manage interpersonal
boundaries
(Altman 1977).
Those
processes
mediate human interaction both
physi-
cally
and
conceptually;
our
understandings
of selfhood are
shaped by
the habits of
boundary management
that we
develop. Widespread,
undifferentiated disclosures threaten our
ability
to
manage
our bound-
aries,
with
potentially
drastic
consequences
for the
processes by
which
we articulate our
identities,
define our
beliefs,
and formulate our
poli-
tics. As Helen Nissenbaum
(2009) explains,
such disclosures
destroy
the contextual
integrity
to which we have become accustomed. And
as Altman's model makes
clear,
we
require
some
ability
to
manage
contextual
integrity
in order to function in
society.
The Inverse
Relationship
between
Secrecy
and
Privacy
889
Second,
the information
policy
discourse of
openness
is almost
willfully
blind to the economies of desire that exist in information
markets
-
economies that the
ideology
of
openness
itself
helps
to
create.
Jodi
Dean
(2009)
identifies a tension between secrets and
public-
ity
that exists at the heart of our
political economy,
within the core of
a set of
practices
that she terms "communicative
capitalism."
Within
communicative
capitalism,
the economic
logics
of information markets
are fortified
by
a media culture that
prizes exposure
and an intellec-
tual ethos that
assigns
that media culture
independent
normative
value because of the
greater "openness"
it fosters.
Building
on Dean's
framework,
surveillance theorist Kirstie Ball
(2009: 641-45) argues
that
voluntarily
disclosed information circulates in twinned economies of
authenticity
and
perversity;
disclosures are called forth
by
manufac-
tured norms of
participation
but
they
also take on fetish value
exactly
because
they represent
slices of authentic
reality.
Emerging practices
of
self-exposure align neatly
with
processes
of
personalization
that
operate
in information markets,
and that fuel
the
emerging
semantic web. The
point
here is not that
giant corpo-
rations extract information from us
against
our will or in
ways
that
overtly telegraph
economic or
political
subordination;
it is
precisely
the
opposite.
The individualized economies of attention that charac-
terize the
emerging
networked information
society depend critically
on our
willing participation.
In the networked information
society,
we
are all in the
personal-information-processing
business. Basic network
economics dictates that
platforms
like Facebook and
Google
have value
only
to the extent that
enough
of us
voluntarily provide
them with the
raw material. The rub is that those activities have value to Facebook
and
Google only
to the extent that
they
can be monetized. Flows of
information within the semantic web constitute an interlinked series
of "surveillant
assemblages" (Haggerty
and Ericson
2000): heteroge-
neous,
loosely coupled
sets of institutions that seek to harness the raw
power
of information
by fixing
flows of information
cognitively
and
spatially.
Of critical
importance
within
Haggerty
and Ericson's frame-
work,
the surveillant
assemblage operates upon
its
subjects
not
only
890 social research
by
the "normalized soul
training"
of Foucauldian
theory (614-15),
but
also
by
seduction. The surveillance
society
is not a
grim dystopia;
to the
contrary,
flows of information within the surveillant
assemblage prom-
ise a
cornucopia
of benefits and
pleasures, including price
discounts
and social status. In return for its
pleasures,
however,
the surveillant
assemblage
demands full
enrollment,
which cultural and
political
norms of
openness
and
"sunlight" help
to elicit.
PRIVACY AND LIBERAL ANXIETIES
Why, though,
should we think that
any
of this is a
problem?
After
all,
we have chosen
it,
or so the
story goes,
and we choose it
again
and
again every
time we
buy
music,
or
groceries,
or airline
tickets,
and
every
time we share
updates
with our friends. This is the
point
at which
the foundational commitments of liberalism
get
in the
way. They
tell us
that the choices that individuals make about
disclosing
information are
definitionally
autonomous and therefore
presumptively
efficient,
and
that
aggregated,
accurate information
promotes truth-discovery.
One
can
imagine
two reasons to be
skeptical
of these answers. One is that
information
processing
is
good
for far less than we think. The other
reason is that
privacy
is
good
for far more. Both
possibilities
warrant
our
careful,
critical attention.
Let us
begin
with the first
possibility:
What
exactly
is informa-
tion
processing good
for? What social
goods
would
protection
for
privacy prevent
us from
achieving?
The conventional answer has two
parts:
information
processing gives
us what we
want,
and information
processing
advances the
pursuit
of
knowledge
and truth. We should see
immediately
that the first answer is
question begging.
Wants can be
manufactured,
and can be self-destructive. A hallmark of civilization
is
precisely
the
capacity
for both individual and collective
discipline
in
the face of excessive and
potentially
self-destructive wants.
Perhaps surprisingly,
the account of information
processing
as
inevitably truth-enhancing
fares no better. That
account,
which I have
labeled the
"information-processing imperative" (Cohen forthcoming,
chap. 3)
comes to us
directly
from the
Enlightenment;
it is
grounded
in
The Inverse
Relationship
between
Secrecy
and
Privacy
891
a view of information
gathering
as
knowledge discovery along
a
fixed,
linear
trajectory
of forward
progress.
Within the framework defined
by
the
information-processing imperative,
the interest in
getting
and
using
more
complete
information is
presumptively
rational and of the
utmost
importance.
The truth value of the information is assumed and
elevated to a level
beyond ideology;
as a
result,
the other work that
information
processing
does
goes
unaddressed and
usually
unacknowl-
edged.
Information
processing
is not a neutral
activity,
however;
it
requires
choices about
categories
and
priorities
that are
open
to interro-
gation (Bowker
and Star
1999). History
is rife with
examples
-
ranging
from
genocide
to invidious discrimination to banal tales of bureaucratic
excess
-
of the
ways
that
precise, granular
information about individu-
als and
groups
can be turned to
unjust
and sometimes horrific ends
(for example,
Black
2001).
Imbued with the values of
Enlightenment
rationalism,
we tend to
regard
these
episodes
as unfortunate anoma-
lies,
but we should not. As Frederick Schauer
(2003) explains, opposi-
tion to entrenched societal discrimination is hard to reconcile with
commitment to the truth value of information;
the line between useful
heuristics and invidious
stereotypes
is
vanishingly
thin.
Sorting
and
discrimination are
synonyms;
the one entails the other
(Gandy
2009:
55-74). Privacy
theorists tend to think that the solution to
problems
of invidious discrimination is better
(information-based)
metrics for
separating
the invidious frameworks from the truthful ones.
Thus,
for
example,
Lior Strahilevitz
(2008: 376-81)
contrasts valuable "informa-
tion" with wasteful
"signals,"
and
argues
that
privacy policy
should
encourage
use of the former rather than the latter. That seems reason-
able
enough,
but it assumes an
ontological
distinction between the two
categories
that does not exist.
Faith in the truth value of information reaches its zenith in
processes
of risk
management,
but the
relationship
between infor-
mation
processing
and risk is much more
complicated
than the infor-
mation-processing imperative acknowledges.
Events in the
post-9/11
world reveal a dialectical
relationship
between new
technological
892 social research
methods of
managing
risks and risks that new
technological
methods
create.
Large-scale
data
mining
and
complex,
automated
systems
for
managing
critical infrastructures and activities
rely heavily
on
algo-
rithms that
align
and
systematize
the
meanings
of data about
people
and events.
Formally,
such
systems approximate
the
requirement
of
logical completeness,
an
approximation
that becomes
stronger
as
more and more data are collected. Much evidence
suggests,
however,
that
relying
on such
techniques
to the exclusion of human
judgment
does not eliminate the risk of
system
failure,
but instead
magnifies
the
probability
that
system
failures will be
large
and
catastrophic.
So,
for
example,
the U.S.
government's development
of a
profile-based system
for
screening
airline
passengers inspired
the "Carnival Booth"
study
(Chakrabarti
and Strauss
2002)
in which a
pair
of MIT-based researchers
demonstrated how a terrorist
group might
defeat the
screening system
by hiding
its
agents
within
designated
low-risk
groups.
The recent and
still
ongoing
meltdown of the
global
financial
system
was
precipitated
by
the toxic combination of reliance on
automated,
logically complete
financial models and
regulatory
deference to those models
(Bamberger
2010).
In debates about
privacy
and information
processing,
we would
benefit from
acknowledging
that information
processing
is
always-
already
the
subject
of someone's
regulatory agenda.
The
logics
of infor-
mation
processing require (and already receive)
external
discipline.
Exercising
that
discipline
with care for
justice requires making
norma-
tive decisions about the conduct of information
processing
and its
appropriate
limits.
What about the second
possibility:
What is
privacy good
for? We
tend to think of
privacy
as
sheltering
the
fixed, autonomous self
against
the vicissitudes of
technological
and social
change.
That view of the self
derives from the tradition of liberal
political theory,
and it
explains
a
great
deal about the
way
U.S.
legal
scholars and
policymakers respond
to information
privacy problems.
If one takes the
autonomous, ratio-
nal liberal self as the
descriptive
and normative
baseline,
it becomes
very
hard to understand what a
generalized
entitlement to
privacy
with
The Inverse
Relationship
between
Secrecy
and
Privacy
893
respect
to our
everyday
behaviors and transactions
might accomplish.
Except
for information about a handful of
concededly
sensitive
topics,
it is hard to
imagine
mere disclosure
altering trajectories
of behavior
that
presumptively
flow from our free will. Because the liberal self
exists outside of
any particular
context,
it is hard to understand
why
changing
the context of a disclosure should
change
its
privacy impact.
Some commentators
argue
that
privacy
serves a
dignitary
func-
tion
-
worth
preserving
not because it affects our decisions or
actions,
but because it
spares
our
feelings.
Within our
political
culture, however,
dignitary
interests are considered anemic relative to
liberty
interests. If
the disclosures enabled
by
new
technologies
are
thought
to serve inter-
ests in market and
expressive liberty,
it is
easy
to conclude that
liberty
interests should
prevail. Privacy
comes to seem both
unnecessary
and
vaguely retrograde,
a doomed
attempt
to hold back the inexorable tide
of
progress.
What
if,
though,
it is not the idea of
privacy
that is the
problem?
What if the
problem,
instead,
is the idea of the
autonomous, rational,
decontextualized self that
privacy theoretically protects? Although
legal
and
policy
discourse
clings
to
it,
as a
descriptive
matter the model
of liberal selfhood is
increasingly
discredited in most other areas
of
contemporary thought, ranging
from
philosophy
to
sociology
to
cultural studies to
cognitive theory.
For most
contemporary
thinkers,
it makes far more sense to
speak
of an
emergent,
relational
subjectivity
that is
continually shaped
and
reshaped by everything
to which we are
exposed.
That
understanding
dovetails with Altman's model
(1975)
of
privacy
as a dialectical
process
of
boundary regulation by
which under-
standings
of selfhood are constructed over time.
In
general,
U.S.
privacy
scholars are
deeply
resistant,
even
hostile,
to the idea of the
socially
constructed self. As
Jeffrey
Rosen
(2000: 166)
puts
it,
"I'm free to think whatever I like even if the state or the
phone
company
knows what I read." That
argument
is a
product
of the liberal
conception
of
autonomy, pure
and
simple;
it
posits
that choice
negates
social
shaping
and social
shaping negates
choice. That
understanding
of social
shaping
is far too
binary,
however;
social
shaping
need not
894 social research
entail the
negation
of self. Other scholars conclude that
"privacy"
is
itself an artifact of liberal
political theory. According
to Peter Galison
and Martha Minow
(2005: 277-84), rights
of
privacy
are
inseparably
tied
to the liberal
conception
of the
autonomous,
prepolitical
self.
They
argue
that
privacy
as we know it
(in
advanced Western
societies)
ulti-
mately
will not withstand the dissolution of the liberal self
diagnosed
by contemporary
social and cultural
theory.
But the
understanding
of
privacy
as tied to
autonomy represents only
one
possible conception
of
privacy's
relation to selfhood.
If
boundary regulation plays
a critical role in
processes
of self-
constitution,
then the
relationship
between
privacy
and selfhood
is more
complex
than either liberal
optimism
or liberal
pessimism
suggests.
I have
argued
that
One can choose to understand the autonomous liberal self
and the dominated
postmodernist subject
as irreconcil-
able
opposites,
or one can understand them as two
(equally
implausible) endpoints
on a continuum
along
which social
shaping
and individual
liberty
combine in
varying propor-
tions.
Taking
the
latter,
more realistic
perspective,
more-
over,
it is
possible
to meld
contemporary critiques
of the
origins
and evolution of
subjectivity
with the more tradi-
tionally
liberal concerns that have
preoccupied
American
privacy
theorists. Postmodernist social and cultural
theory
seeks to cultivate a critical stance toward claims to knowl-
edge
and
self-knowledge.
In a
society
committed at least to
the
desirability
of the liberal ideal of
self-determination,
that
perspective
should be an
appealing
one
(Cohen
forth-
coming, chap. 3).
It is
precisely
in the
malleable,
unfixed nature of our
subjectivity
that
we can locate the
possibilities
for
meaningful
self-actualization and
social
"progress"
that
traditionally
have been
among
liberalism's cardi-
nal
aspirations.
The Inverse
Relationship
between
Secrecy
and
Privacy
895
On this account of
subjectivity, privacy
is
suddenly
far more
important
than we as a
society
have been
willing
to admit. This is so
not because
privacy
shelters
fixed,
autonomous selfhood from the
pres-
sures of
change,
but because it does
exactly
the
opposite:
it shelters
emergent subjectivity
from external efforts to render it
orderly
and
predictable. By preventing
dissolution of the boundaries that
separate
contexts and
spaces
from one
another,
privacy
counteracts the informa-
tional and
spatial logics
of
surveillance,
which seek to
impose
a
grid
of
fixed,
stable
meaning
on human
activity. Privacy
widens the interstices
among processes
of social
shaping, furnishing emergent subjectivity
with room for
play.
This enables the
development
of critical
perspec-
tive,
and creates the conditions for both
personal
and social
change.
CONCLUSION
Open
access to information is an
important underpinning
of our
politi-
cal culture,
but critical
subjectivity
also is a
good
that we cannot do
without. If
so,
then
privacy
-
and the
necessary possibility
of limits
on
knowledge
-
should not be
lightly
surrendered. The
pursuit
of our
liberal
aspirations requires
that we do
precisely
that which our stron-
gest
liberal instincts forbid:
interrogate regimes
of
secrecy
that exist on
both sides of the
public-private
divide,
and scrutinize with
equal rigor
our
ideology
of
openness.
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The Inverse Relationship between Secrecy and Privacy

Author(s): Julie E. Cohen

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