The privilege of privacy

There are some things in today’s society that we take completely for granted. We feel entitled, more so than ever before, to these certain privileges, and we expect the government and the people around us to bend over backward in deference.

Now I’m not talking about financial entitlements, about welfare and “handouts” and various other things that feed young children and send young adults off to school. I’m talking about something that might seem a little inconsequential in comparison: privacy.

People talk about it today as if it is a basic moral right, constantly being threatened by corporations and journalists that want to learn your creepiest, juiciest secrets.

People should be able to live life free from excessive intrusion or obstruction, unlike, for example, how many celebrities are forced to live.

But is there really some kind of universal human right to be able to keep secrets and hide my retail preferences from friends? And can we really hold the government responsible for protecting it?

We obsess over Facebook and Google and the way they sell data and scan our emails, but this seems to speak more to an irrational fear of Terminator-esque computer domination than a real problem of individual privacy or security.

Perhaps people are creeped out by targeted ads and the idea of a robot reading their intimate Facebook chat conversations, but does this really infringe on their rights? How do targeted ads limit their freedom, and what’s the problem with a computer in China knowing if my uncle has breast cancer?

If the targeted ads sometimes expose things I’d rather them not, that’s my own problem. I do not and should not have a constitutional right to subscribe to an exotic porn site without any chance of someone finding out.

I do understand why people like privacy; I understand the appeal.

But we put so much of our personal energy into fighting for it and our government energy in protecting it, that we overlook the fact that so many — both inside and outside of our society — are deprived of fundamental human rights like food and shelter.

Our priorities could not be more backward. And even as we irrationally insist upon privacy for ourselves, we feel no qualms about hypocritically depriving others of it. Privacy, which in practice is more of a socioeconomic privilege than a right, is the first thing that we strip from people when they slip down the social hierarchy.

Without property, these neglected individuals, already victimized by our twisted priorities, are left with no private space in which to live and consequently no real privacy to speak of. Thus we leave these individuals on the street as if on display.

What kind of society has a federally guaranteed and safeguarded right to have petty family squabbles in private but doesn’t properly feed, shelter or educate all its children?