Report of the Independent Surveillance Review
31
2.8
The variety and volume of data we now create daily could be used to damage or violate
rights to privacy. But laws and technologies also can be designed in ways that can create
boundaries between privacy and security measures. The rights of the person require
protection, and thus some form of state law-enforcement and security activity. At both
the domestic and the international level, there are strong justifications for providing, by
law, the capability for intrusive investigation and surveillance; even those in favour of
stronger safeguards for privacy expect to negotiate their level of privacy against other
needs in practice.5
2.9
Frequent polling and surveys conducted in the UK show respondents, when asked to rank
the most serious social issues, cite the NHS, preventing crime, and national security in
their top three. Only just over a fifth – 21 per cent – of people asked rank the protection
of personal information as a major concern.6 This should not be taken to mean that
British citizens think less of privacy than others, but that their understanding, concerns
and feelings about privacy are highly contextual and vary across the UK. Although
conceptions of privacy vary, all societies draw some distinction between that which it
is conventional and acceptable to do in public and that which is to be kept to a private
sphere (whether personal or familial), or in some less-than-fully open context (for
example, professional, collegial or commercial confidentiality). Privacy, to use a wellknown phrase, is about the ‘management of identity’, and violations of privacy are seen
as leading to vulnerability and to shame. Privacy is an important right because it gives
some protection to each individual’s ability to control how others see and treat them.
2.10
Privacy is also a pre-requisite for democracy. It gives people the freedom that is needed
to be personally autonomous, to seek out alternative sources of information and to
question the status quo. Totalitarian states are characterised by their lack of respect
for individual privacy, so that citizens are inhibited from voicing any opposition to the
state. Those who challenge the state – through journalism or legal advocacy, for example
– need to be confident they are not spied upon, otherwise they cannot do their jobs
effectively, and such jobs are an acknowledged part of a functioning democracy
2.11
Some – like Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook – have claimed privacy is dead.7
As technology makes more information more accessible, it also threatens to expose
information that is not intended to be shared. However, others in social media – such as
Danah Boyd of Microsoft Research – believe people do still care about privacy, and that a
big part of our notion of privacy relates to maintaining control over our self-presentation,
and that when we do not have that control, we feel that our privacy has been violated.8
5.
6.
7.
8.
See Introduction in Perri 6, Kristen Lasky and Adrian Fletcher, Future of Privacy, Vol 2
(London: Demos, 1998).
Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), ‘Annual Track 2014: Individuals (Topline
Findings)’, 2014.
Emma Barnett, ‘Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg Says Privacy is No Longer a “Social Norm”’,
Daily Telegraph, 11 January 2010.
Tony Bradley, ‘Privacy Is Not Dead, Just Evolving’, PCWorld, 14 March 2010, <http://www.
pcworld.com/article/191506/Privacy_is_Not_Dead_Just_Evolving.html>.