What price privacy? (Venue A: Caffè Nero)

Details

THE VENUE: Caffè Nero

Rain is currently forecast for Sunday but things may change. So, the default is to meet indoors but please look out for updates before you leave home.

When we meet inside, we run the same event in two locations: Caffè Nero and Starbucks, so as to provide capacity for as many people who would like to attend. Thus, there will be two events published, and you can choose which one to attend. Please don't sign up for both. This event is for the Nero location.

We meet upstairs at Caffè Nero. An organiser will be present from 10.45. We are not charged for use of the space so it would be good if everyone bought at least one drink.

An attendee limit has been set so as not to overwhelm the venue.

Etiquette
Our discussions are friendly and open. We are a discussion group, not a for-and-against debating society. But it helps if we try to stay on topic. And we should not talk over others, interrupt them, or try to dominate the conversation.

There is often a waiting list for places, so please cancel your attendance as soon as possible if you subsequently find you can't come.

WhatsApp groups
We have two WhatsApp groups. One is to notify events, including extra events such as meeting for a meal or a drink during the week which we don't normally put on the Meetup site. The other is for open discussion of whatever topics occur to people. If you would like to join either or both groups, please send a note of the phone number you would like to use to Richard Baron on: website.audible238@passmail.net. (This is an alias that can be discarded if it attracts spam, hence the odd words.)

THE TOPIC: What price privacy?

This week's topic has been set by Duncan.

We seem to value privacy very highly but we might struggle to define precisely what it is. It may be a case of 'I know it when I see it' (or it is threatened).

Philosophers disagree as to whether privacy exists as a thing in itself and should be valued for its own sake, or whether it's just a name we give to a bundle of other valuable goods (e.g. intimate relations, the body, freedom, autonomy, or dignity). This is the intrinsic vs. instrumental debate. If we take an instrumental view, we might disagree about which goods matter to each of us individually but nonetheless all claim that we value privacy.

This matters when laws are enacted to protect - or that threaten - privacy, because we demand the legal system have a sound moral and logical basis.

Some non-human animals exhibit a desire for privacy. This raises an ethical claim that we should not intrude upon this privacy when studying their behaviour.

The history of privacy for humans has tracked the development of both technology and social relations. It was originally focused on the home (the 'private realm') as distinct from the 'public realm' of work and other places of social interaction. As such, women (as caregivers and homemakers) and children were historically confined to the unseen private realm, whilst men were able to move freely between the two.

As technology and methods of communications developed, so new threats to privacy were identified. For example: photography, newspapers, the post, the telephone and more recently, GPS, the Internet and mobile devices. We became aware of the many more ways that data about our activities, speech and writing may be observed, recorded and misused, without our knowledge or permission.

Encrypted communications have been employed by individuals, government and armed forces for centuries. Indeed, one of the first applications of modern electronic computers was 'code-breaking' - deciphering the enemy's encrypted communications.

More recently, methods of encrypting our electronic communications have become available for everyday use, e.g. end-to-end encryption (E2EE) in WhatsApp, Facebook and various Apple services. This technology prevents the interception of messages or conversations by anyone else without gaining control of the devices being used. Not even the service provider can view the messages as they pass through its systems.

Governments have claimed this enables criminals to evade detection, citing examples such as terrorists, drug dealers and sexual predators. They further claim that the prevention and detection of crimes takes precedence over personal privacy and have demanded that service providers create a 'backdoor' or 'master key'.

Service providers in turn have tried to explain the technological impossibility of this, as well as the risks of access falling into the wrong hands. They also point to how encryption protects journalists, activists and political opposition living under authoritarian regimes.

So then: