Pattern #65
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Privacy Guarantees
Credit: wk1003mike – Shutterstock
Pattern Heart
While openness is a hallmark of a wise democracy, such a democracy requires that people feel both safe to develop and express their uniqueness and also able enough to defend themselves from oppressive power. So seek to appropriately guarantee privacy while also helping people feel safe enough to be open.
Some related patterns: 10 Civil Rights 16 Consent 17 Constraints on Concentrated Power 19 Context Awareness 37 Fullness of Choice
48 Integrity and Authenticity 76 Safety First, Then Challenge
Privacy Guarantees – going deeper …
This is an edited version of the video on this page.
There’s a dynamic tension between openness and privacy.
From a collective intelligence perspective, we need people to be open in order for information to flow among them. So there’s a certain bias against holding too much information secret or preventing people from sharing all the material protected by copyright and things like that. We are trying to have things be open, but we don’t want people getting screwed because they’re being open. Being open creates a certain level of vulnerability. People can take what you have, or they can harm you, or they can know where your weak points are. Openness is risky. We need it, but it’s risky.
Centralized power can be a particular threat to people’s openness. So we especially want people to feel safe enough from oppressive power, from government power, from large corporate power, or from wherever the concentrations of power are. We can’t protect them from everything – we can’t necessarily ensure their safety from their family or neighbors, for example, without messing with their privacy – but we can manage some larger social dynamics and say “your own space is not going to get invaded and messed with by powerful forces, particularly the government.”
So that’s what this pattern is about, guaranteeing people’s safety to manifest their unique individuality. A main reason we want people to develop and express their uniqueness is to have that uniqueness as a resource for collective intelligence and wisdom. Personal uniqueness is the personal dimension of collective diversity. To the extent everybody is unique, the larger collective that they are part of is diverse. Diversity is a fabulous resource for generating and realizing wisdom and making it happen. We want to have diversity – and other aspects of this pattern language deal with how we go about using that diversity creatively. But we want to have diversity, we want to make it safe for people to be diverse, for people to be themselves with their unique gifts and perspectives, etc.
In order to do that they have to defend themselves from oppressive power, from social or governmental power that is trying to create conformity, trying to control what’s going on. So we try to find ways to guarantee their privacy while seeking to make them feel safe to be open.
Video Introduction (9 min)
Examples and Resources
- American Civil Liberties Union Link
- The Left/Right alliance against the Patriot Act
Link
Link-Antiwar.com - The Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution and search warrants Link-Wikipedia
- Edward Snowden and other challenges to the surveillance powers of the National Security Agency
- Encryption and web anonymity
Link-BBC-News
Link-Article19 - The Freedom of Information Act Link-Wikipedia
In the United States, the American Civil Liberties Union probably has the largest and most dependable history of protecting people from the government. A classic example is their defense of the US Nazi party’s efforts to march in Chicago. From most people’s perspective the Nazi ideology is despicable and the people that follow the Nazi party are very hateful. They even want to deprive other people of their civil liberties. But the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) supported their right to march. This phrase reflects the spirit of the ACLU: “I disagree with what you say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.”
The ACLU and the ACU – the American Conservative Union, the largest grassroots conservative organization in the United States – had an alliance along with other allies against the Patriot Act which had a number of passages which were very invasive of people’s privacy. So there is a funny way that the Left and the Right can come together against violations of people’s privacy, knowing that privacy is so important. They realize that the powers in the government and certain powers in large corporations are against too many guarantees of privacy. A surprising number of different political factions at the grassroots level supported the right for privacy widely across the political spectrum.
I have gone for this pattern because privacy is very important for me in my daily life. Today the technology allows to share everything very fast- Hence, the privacy gurantee has become even more important.
Personally I have made the experience, that unique ideas can be shared – however it must be the right time and the right situation to share them with the community. If the community is not open to receive some ideas beyond the general accepted principles, then it does not make sense to share them.
My conclusion is that everyone has to create his/her own privacy to protect him/herself and his/her ideas.
Good observations, Hildegard. Note that as a design guidance (all these patterns are design guidances) the appropriate provision of privacy is a matter for broad social systemic design, as well as for the attention of conveners of (and forums for) conversations and sharing. This does not distract from the need for – and value of – individuals taking care of their own privacy needs. But it certainly helps when those in charge of the social and political contexts in which people interact have also taken such care for all participants. AND if privacy is the ONLY consideration, communication and impact (and thus collective wisdom) can be severely undermined. SO here, as in so many things, discernment and balance are important.