Privacy In The 17th Century

Medieval people did not have the concept of privacy and there was no privacy because nobody was alone. There was no private space and houses were tiny and crowded which allowed everyone to engage in a face-to-face community. Even though it was almost impossible to get privacy, many desired it and greater riches meant more privacy. Privacy became an issue during the growth of literacy where people began using private letters for correspondence. The initial use of letters in the 17th century was not private because it was difficult to seal them. Although there was a formal post system, there were suspicions that the postal clerks were reading the letters. Some individuals deliberately wrote their letters in code to ensure they were private. Privacy was an issue and postal workers had to swear an oath not to tamper with the mail.
With the emergence of the telegraph, messages had to be passed manually and there were concerns about privacy from the onset. During this era, privacy started to be considered as a right and the government took the right to read telegraph messages if the need arose. Different states started passing laws that outlawed eavesdropping on telegraph
messages. The telephone was not originally considered as a private medium because it lacked amplification and one had to shout to get the message across. Early mobile phones were analogue and calls could be picked up on scanning radios. The emergence of digital media introduced the concept of privacy with an encrypted system that makes it almost impossible to eavesdrop. The rise of the electronic mail and the web made privacy an expectation and a right.
Although digital media allows for more privacy, it also facilitates the copying and distribution of personal information and messages more easily than before. Once a message has been sent to another person, the message can be diverted or shared without the knowledge of the sender. The onset of the internet involved a small network and there was no need to unmask its users because the anonymous use of the network was considered a norm. However, the rapid growth of the internet changed this and advertisers started to make money out of it. This is achieved through personalization of sites and registration. Cookies can also track the behavior of a user across several sites and advertisers can follow a user form one site to another.
Privacy is the right is the right to be let alone. In the modern society, the line between what is private and what is public has become blurred, and a private event can easily be made public. The issue of privacy has resurfaced in the digital era where social networking sites prompt users to be more public with their information. The evolution of the concept of privacy shows a path towards sociality at the expense of privacy. This is not new because sociality has always required the abandonment of some privacy in order to share with others. Although there has always been a balance between sociality and privacy there is more concern as privacy rests on digitally stored information and the ability to track ones social behavior. The present issue of privacy is a problem of modernity where individuals are charged with the responsibility of managing their privacy. For people who lived rural communities where communal practice was emphasized, the desire to be private was associated with something that was hidden.
The current urban environment provides a certain measure of distance that might define private boundaries. However, individuals maintain social relations where they might provide private information in order to achieve personal closeness with others. The balance between privacy and sociality has taken a new meaning with the adoption of internet-based platforms. These platforms provide their services in exchange for personal information, which has transformed the information into a form of currency while privacy has become a commodity. Accordingly, the right to privacy is traded for access to social services. Personal information is eventually commercialized and privacy, which is the right to be left alone, soon becomes a luxury. This is because privacy becomes a good that is not accessible to many and becomes disproportionately costly for an individual to acquire and retain it. In addition, it becomes inversely associated with social benefits because the social cost of not trading privacy for information places one at a social disadvantage.
A luxury good does not only have a price that is beyond the reach of an average person but also denotes a social status or an advantage.
Privacy becomes a luxury good because obtaining it means a level of computer literacy that is not accessible to an average person and is associated with high education levels, higher income and certain classes of people that reflect the dominant inequalities in society. The right to privacy as a luxury good divides users into those who have and those who do not have, therefore, creating a privacy divide. This divide is further increased by high-income elasticity of demand. People who are ore literate can afford greater access to privacy. The goal of regulations on privacy are intended to turn it into a normal good or a public good that everyone can
afford.
Making a compromise between privacy and convenience with technology is not new. It started when people traded the privacy of sealed documents for the speed of the telegraph. In the modern society, the internet of things represents a similar compromise. Backing up of photos, passwords and documents to online services such as Apple cloud is trading privacy for the security of the photos and documents. The convenience of free internet services reveals information about the user. This information contributes to the network of data that has been mined from other internet users. Hackers can use personal information shared on social networks to crack passwords. Cellular towers can be used to identify the location of a person. The push for digital transactions means that the buyers can no longer remain anonymous because each transaction can be tied to a user. The internet has created a greater compromise of online privacy for many internet users who have become accustomed to the convenience and connectivity.
Being required to carry a tracking device or provide access to communications between each other would seem unconstitutional, but this is similar to carrying a cellphone, using Gmail, SMS or Facebook. Communication devices such as smartphones and computers constantly produce a stream of personal data about the user. The digital trail is not protected against unlawful searches and the government can access information stored online, cellphone location and other information with a simple subpoena. Many internet users might not be aware that they are trading online privacy. Those who are aware of the trade might also prefer to trade their privacy for the convenience of using a social networking site. These sites will require its users to provide personal information before they can have access. The information collected from the users might not be sold directly to third parties but are used to build a detailed profile of the user thus allowing advertisers to target their advertisement to specific users. Internet sites such as Facebook, Google and Snapchat must be free in order to have a large number of users to make them valuable. Free sites tend to derive theory revenue from advertisements and advertisers will prefer to pay businesses that have information about their users because they can target advertisements to specific groups. However, most of the focus of on the trade-off between privacy and security has been on government surveillance.
The government has the responsibility to prevent crimes and protect national security. In times of crisis such as terrorism, people are asked to trade their privacy for security. Advances in technology make surveillance unobstructive and cannot burden those who are being watched. With technology, the government and other corporations have the capabilities to conduct mass surveillance of almost every communication. Government surveillance is intended to facilitate the collection of information on crime suspects. This started with the government’s authority to read telegraph messages if there was nee to read it.
The need for surveillance is a tension between the right to be secure and the right to a private life. Leaked government documents show that the government engages in large-scale surveillance and can access data held by internet sites such as Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Apple Microsoft and others. Revelations by Snowden showed evidence of government’s bulk surveillance and the government has renewed the debate over anti-terrorism efforts against privacy. It is evident that privacy faces growing threats from government surveillance that is often justified by the need to ensure national security.
To prevent potential attacks, the government uses preemptive measures to identify and neutralize potential threats before they can occur. Without surveillance, the government would not be able to assess the severity of the threats and the efforts to prevent the attacks would be difficult. Government surveillance can be useful in other areas such as theft, assault and police violence. Surveillance is useful in national security but it is important to determine the extent to which surveillance is appropriate. The recent revelations of government surveillance by individuals such as Snowden and corporations such as WikiLeaks have introduced a new type of accountability. The government and other large corporations control a lot of information including persona information and use them for their own ends. An individual has no power to demand disclosure from these corporations or the government. The new accountability has ensured that information that was previously not disclosed is made public.
Those who are against government surveillance argue that the government is more dangerous than the terrorist’s and criminals. This is because control of information yields power, which is likely to expand to a level where the government can demand access to information. Allowing the government to conduct unchecked surveillance can be damaging to citizens. Although surveillance is a necessary component in national security, there is the need to reevaluate the operations and the regulations that govern them. The mass accumulation of communications data between millions of citizens has saturated the effectiveness of surveillance programs in preventing terrorism.

Reference list
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Gryz, J. (2013). Privacy as informational commodity. Proc IACAP, philpapers. org.
Melville-Brown, A. (2014). Privacy Protection–Luxury Goods or Essential Commodity?. In Media Law and Ethics in the 21st Century (pp. 78-103). Macmillan Education UK.