Privacy and social interaction

I The social value of privacy: A first approach

In an attempt to overcome the dichotomy between the individual and society or the state, a number of authors have set out to conceptualize the social value of privacy. ⁶ Priscilla Regan, for example, wrote:

I argue that privacy is not only of value to the individual, but also to society in general.… Privacy is a common value in that all individuals value some degree of privacy and have some common perceptions about privacy. Privacy is also a public value in that it has value not just to the individual as an individual or to all individuals in common but also to the democratic political system.… Privacy is rapidly becoming a collective value in that technology and market forces are making it hard for any one person to have privacy without all persons having a similar minimum level of privacy. ⁷

Most of the arguments that emphasize the social value of privacy draw attention to the benefits that accrue for society from protecting individual privacy. As Daniel Solove wrote: ‘By understanding privacy as shaped by the norms of society, we can better see why privacy should not be understood solely as an individual right.… Instead, privacy protects the individual because of the benefits it confers on society.’ He went on to say that ‘the value of privacy should be understood in terms of its contribution to society’. ⁸ An argument that plays a prominent role in this line of thought is the idea that privacy protection facilitates democratic governance. As early as 1987, Spiros Simitis described privacy as ‘a constitutive element of a democratic society’. ⁹ Ruth Gavison also endeavoured to highlight the value of protecting privacy for democracy:

In the absence of consensus concerning many limitations of liberty, and in view of the limits on our capacity to encourage tolerance and acceptance and to overcome prejudice, privacy must be part of our commitment to individual freedom and to a society that is committed to the protection of such freedom. Privacy is also essential to democratic government because it fosters and encourages the moral autonomy of the citizen, a central requirement of a democracy. ¹⁰

II The protection of private relationships: Friends, family, intimates

Theories that account for the value of informational privacy in terms of the role it plays in the protection of intimate relationships take an important step towards developing an understanding of privacy in social interaction. These approaches in terms of ‘relational privacy’ are concerned with the question of why we need informational privacy, as well as the question of the moral reasons for protecting it. Rachels and Fried, ¹² the most prominent among the relational theorists, argue that without the protection of a private sphere, no intimate relationships are possible, let alone relationships of differing intensity. ¹³ This argument emphasizes that the protection of privacy allows individuals to control the information they disclose to and conceal from others. Given that the relationships between people can be differentiated according to the degree of personal information they share, control over the information that individuals disclose to and conceal from others allows them to determine their self-presentation autonomously, and thereby control the character – the intimacy – of the different relationships they pursue. ¹⁴ According to this theory, it is the constitutive role of privacy for relationships, which are of value for individuals, that gives rise to a right to privacy. ¹⁵

How plausible is the relational theory of privacy in the age of Facebook and the internet? One could argue that this theory flies in the face of the facts. The younger generation is so generous with self-descriptive information that privacy no longer seems relevant for it. If this objection was correct it would call into question the concepts of intimacy, privacy and the link between the two that is presupposed in relational approaches. However, this observation about the extensive self-disclosure characteristic of younger people does not warrant the conclusions that have been drawn from it. Empirical studies demonstrate that users of Facebook and other social networking sites still have a clear idea about what they wish to keep private and offline and what they are prepared to post on the internet. ¹⁶ The research on this question illustrates that ideas of privacy and intimacy are fundamentally altering in response to the changes that recent technological developments, like web 2.0, have brought about in the way individuals communicate, exchange information and associate. This illustrates that the concepts of privacy and intimacy are – and always have been – historically and culturally embedded, and likely to change. ¹⁷

Therefore, the relational approach to privacy offers a normatively appropriate analysis of the regulatory function of the private/public in intimate relationships. However, Fried’s position must be qualified and supplemented on an important point. Fried is committed to the view that, in intimate communications, one predominantly decides oneself what one would like to share and what not, or the extent to which one would like to open up. The private/public distinction in intimate relationships is then exclusively subject to individual determination. On closer inspection, however, the mechanisms regulating the private/public distinction in intimate and other relationships are also constituted and governed by standards external to and exceeding individual control.

The privacy at stake in Fried’s argument is the privacy of individuals within relationships. However, it is also the privacy of the relationship that has to be protected from social and societal publicness, for the function and intention of these relationships can be realized only if their privacy is protected. Of course, protection of family privacy is a complex issue that has been addressed and analysed frequently. For the purposes of the current study, however, it is sufficient to underline the undisputed fact that families and other intimate relationships (family-like relationships and close friends) need to have their privacy protected precisely because one of their functions involves retreating into a private world. ¹⁸ Social and legal norms regulating informational privacy between the family and the outside world therefore play a necessary role in the function of the family: the family can do justice to its different functions only if it can comprehend itself as a protected private sphere. In other words, intimate relationships can succeed only through the protection of privacy. Within these protected relationships, individuals develop and live out identities which not only facilitate success in life but also permit them to live as mature and responsible citizens in democratic societies. It is then no longer a case of protecting individual privacy in relationships, but rather of society having an interest in protecting the privacy of relationships. Consequently, privacy protection norms should and do regulate and facilitate the enactment of social relationships. But there is an important qualification to be made: the family, or the idea of privacy for family and quasi-familial relationships, always needs to remain open to critical intervention. Privacy norms may regulate social relationships and be partly responsible for the fact that these relationships are able to do justice to their different functions, but what is deemed private and worthy of protection is subject to historical change, and must not in its normative (moral) justification be hot-wired to the current situation. ¹⁹

Fried’s argument for the protection of privacy turns on the value of relationships for an individual person. Focusing on relationships as instances of a social practice, however, illustrates that the relationships in question also have a function that is directly relevant to society itself. ²⁰ Families, family-like relationships and friendships represent a form of social interaction and of social practice, the success of which is, in many respects, necessary for society itself. (Our) societies are dependent on families or quasi-familial relationships because they assume functions which either cannot be or are not assumed by other institutions: raising children, providing the retreat so necessary for life in complex modern societies, as well as different forms of reassuring, intimate communication. If families or family-like relationships have functions relevant to societies, then this argument makes it clear that the protection of privacy, both with regard to individuals within familial relationships and to the relationships themselves, serves the interests of society too.

This account of the value of intimate relationships need not assume that there is a conflict between individual interests in privacy, on the one hand, and the interests of society, on the other. On the contrary, it is clear that a liberal democratic society must have a direct interest in protecting the privacy of relationships, for these forms of social interaction and social practices have tasks and purposes that not only are morally valuable for the individuals involved, but which also directly serve to promote social integration.

III Professional relations

This section considers problems surrounding privacy in relationships between people in their professional roles. We want to show that, in order to be able to do justice to their respective intentions and functions, the social interaction in professional relationships is also founded on various regulations with regard to what is private, in the sense of privacy both within the relationship and of the relationship. On the one hand, privacy regulations are subject to individual control (the subjective aspect), serving a person’s individual, self-determined self-presentation. On the other hand, these regulations are subject to intersubjective control (the intersubjective aspect exceeding individual control), in that they regulate informational privacy within the relationship as functional for the relationship or social role itself.

The role of privacy in social relations has occupied an important place in the philosophical literature on informational privacy. Tying in with sociological theories of Simmel and Goffman, Westin wrote: ‘In real life, among mature persons all communication is partial and limited, based on the complementary relation between reserve and discretion.’ ²¹ He thus pointed out the significance of the control of information as found in all social relationships. The underlying idea is that we distinguish our different social relationships – mother, daughter, friend, employee, customer – to some extent on the basis of what the other person knows about us in each case. In friendships or intimate contexts, significant others know more and different things about us than in professional contexts or in informal public contexts, such as shopping.

The following section first briefly outlines Rachels’ theory, which shows how the regulation of informational privacy is constitutive of the diversity of social relationships from the perspective of the autonomy of a person entering into these various relationships. We qualify this theory further with the help of a social-theoretical interpretation that employs the concept of social role. Finally, we are able to provide a more detailed description of the aspects of privacy in social interaction.

Rachels wrote: ‘I want … to give an account of the value of privacy based on the idea that there is a close connection between our ability to control who has access to us and to information about us, and our ability to create and maintain different sorts of social relationships with different people.’ ²² Rachels suggested that individuals are able to maintain different social relationships because they are able to disclose some information to some people and conceal it from others:

The same general point can be made about other sorts of human relationships: businessman to employee, minister to congregant, doctor to patient, husband to wife, parent to child, and so on. In each case, the sort of relationship that people have to one another involves a conception of how it is appropriate for them to behave with each other, and what is more, a conception of the kind and degree of knowledge concerning one another which it is appropriate for them to have. ²³

Rachels was particularly interested in the protection of individual privacy because a person can only behave autonomously and present herself autonomously in various social contexts with this protection. Accordingly, he emphasized the individual’s ability to control information. However, social relationships are not only subject to individual regulation. The point and purpose of the relationships themselves play a regulative role too. Rachels pointed this out en passant when he wrote:

What we cannot do is accept … a social role with respect to another person and then expect to retain the same degree of privacy relative to him that we had before. Thus, if we are asked how much money we have in the bank, we cannot say ‘It’s none of your business,’ to our banker, to prospective creditors, or to spouses, because their respective relationship entitles them to know. ²⁴

It is clear, therefore, that the idea that privacy plays a necessary role in social relations has strong sociological support. Starting with Simmel, sociologists have emphasized that the differentiation between private and public elements within a relationship plays a crucial role for the relationship itself. ²⁵ Given that a regulation of the knowledge shared within a relationship permits that relationship to function as it should, informational control is a necessary condition for such relations. A breach, failure, misunderstanding, or disruption in the circulation of information would distort the relationship. Correspondingly, the privacy norms that govern the circulation or exchange of information within relations protect those relations by preventing these kinds of disruptions in the flow of information between individuals. These observations support the idea that there are necessary and intersubjectively shared standards, founded on the purpose of the social relationship, that rule which information and which knowledge are relevant to that relationship. Stanley Benn introduced a helpful concept to account for the objective aspect of these standards by linking expectations of privacy to ‘role expectancies’. ²⁶ The sociological concept of a ‘role’ is useful in accounting for the intersubjective aspect, because it clearly indicates that patterns of information concealment and disclosure among interacting individuals are governed by standards exceeding individual control. Therefore, the connection between informational privacy and social relationships must be readdressed within a broader framework of social role theory: the function of privacy in social relations should be analysed from the perspective of a social theory that interprets social relations as role-relations, using the sociological concept of the role. ²⁷

Two qualifications are necessary when linking the concepts of privacy and social role. First, although the concept of social role has its origins in functionalistic role theory, this will not be adopted in its entirety. We shall therefore speak not only of roles, but also of formal relationships, and of the form of social practices, coherent with a view of the norms of informational privacy regulations as anchored not only in the function of roles, but ultimately in the normative self-understanding of liberal democratic societies and their social institutions. Functional analyses, as illustrated in the discussion above on the institution of the family, have to take as their critical orientation the moral norms underlying liberal democracies. This is the only way to keep functionalistic analyses open for a normative critique. Since this article is concerned with the theoretical level of analysing the roles and social practices themselves, it will suffice to draw attention to the underlying normative structure without having to spell it out in detail. ²⁸ Second, our argument recognizes that, as indicated in the discussion of Facebook, the forms of exchanging information and association between individuals, and thus their social roles and practices, change in response to technological developments. The changes that norms of privacy undergo follow the changes in forms of communication specific to particular social relations. In other words, interpreting privacy norms as necessary features of social roles does not preclude the claim that norms of privacy are historically and culturally situated, and can change accordingly.

The reference to social roles focuses on what the form of the social relationship itself demands regarding the control of knowledge possessed by a person within it. Interpreting social relations and social interaction as role-structured makes it apparent that social relationships, in addition to the element of individual control of information, contain the necessary and intersubjectively shared element of role-specific demands made on shared information. Our argument is, thus, that norms governing informational privacy work in two ways: they protect the autonomy of individual subjects and, in so doing, facilitate their different social relationships; and they regulate the social relationships themselves, insofar as these norms are a necessary condition for such relationships.

We will pause here briefly in order to position the argument with respect to the dominant discourse on privacy. To begin with, privacy has been understood in that discourse as a means of protecting individual autonomy, a view that this article also endorses. The claim that privacy is also among factors that constitute social roles, relations and practices might give rise to the concern that social roles constrain rather than advance individual autonomy. But this is not necessarily the case. Whereas it is not entirely for individuals to decide the kind and scope of information that they exchange, this does not imply that social roles and practices diminish individual autonomy. To wit, autonomy always has to be understood as socially embedded, since individual autonomy cannot be exercised without always already being integrated into social relations. ²⁹ Social roles and practices create and provide a social framework in which the exercise of autonomy becomes meaningful. Privacy, by regulating social roles, practices and relations, facilitates the social conditions of the meaningful exercise of autonomy. Furthermore, as explained in the introductory section, privacy is commonly defined in terms of controlled access to personal information. This argument does not divert from that claim, but rather qualifies it by emphasizing that the individual ability to control access to personal information is linked to the kind of relations in which the person concerned is engaged. In other words, privacy involves individual, autonomous controlled access, but the degree of controlled access that individuals possess depends on the character of the social roles they perform and on the character of the social relations in which they participate. ³⁰

The argument that privacy, as a mechanism regulating the circulation of information between interacting individuals, is a necessary (not a sufficient) condition of social relations has important implications for the way in which one understands the role and function of privacy. It demonstrates that the regulation of informational privacy is a prerequisite of relationships, social practices, or roles. These roles and social practices function only when they are based on regulations of private and public knowledge that are appropriate to them. Social norms governing informational privacy constitute and regulate different social relationships. Insofar as these social relationships, practices and roles are constitutive for society, so too is the protection of privacy of these relationships and the individuals engaged in them.

We have argued so far that privacy is a structural element of human interaction in the sense that norms of privacy are constitutive of social relationships. Let us now briefly explain our concept of a ‘necessary rule’ by referring to the concept of constitutive rules employed by Christine Korsgaard. ³¹ Although Korsgaard’s analysis focused on individual agents and was meant to explain the concept of action, it can be usefully applied to interactions between agents; that is, to relationships between individuals. Action, Korsgaard argued, is governed by constitutive rules. Constitutive rules are rules that make it possible to engage in an activity. An activity’s standards or principles are constitutive if the complete failure to adhere to them would mean not performing the activity at all. ³² Without complying with such rules, engaging in that activity would not be possible. For example, playing the ball with one’s feet rather than with one’s hands is a constitutive rule of football. Ignoring that rule, systematically scoring goals with one’s hands, makes playing football an impossibility. Norms of privacy are necessary – or constitutive in this sense – to interactions in a similar way to which they are constitutive to action: one cannot commit oneself to participating in different social relationships and at the same time systematically ignore the norms of privacy that define them.

It must be noted, however, that even though it is impossible systematically to violate norms of privacy and remain involved in the relationships concerned, it is possible to adhere inaccurately to the norms of privacy in a way that puts those relations under strain. In the same sense, it is possible to play football but to be a poor player who occasionally uses her hands during the game. We are speaking here of what Korsgaard labels ‘defective actions’. ³³ Similarly, violations of the norms of privacy internal to relationships mark defective role performances and defective social relations.

Defective social relations in this sense can have two causes: either one or both of the participants in the social relationship does or do not adhere to the privacy norms in the required sense, or the privacy norms regulating the relationship can be violated from the outside, causing failure in adherence to those norms through invasion of the privacy of the relationship. We will refer to these two different causes of defectiveness henceforth as internal and external violations of privacy norms, respectively. These two types of violations refer, respectively, to the subjective and the intersubjective aspects of privacy norms.

Three examples help to outline briefly the constitutive role of privacy for specific professional role relationships. The first concerns the role of an employee in a firm. ³⁴ In a series of analyses, Stone-Romero and Stone demonstrated how expectations regarding the protection of informational privacy and expectations regarding shared knowledge specific to the roles in question are relevant to the relationship between employer and employee. For example, employees naturally assume that information about their qualifications, that is, information that is relevant to their performance of their roles, is known to their employer. However they experience the acquisition and storage of information about their health, for instance, as invasive. ³⁵ More generally, empirical research shows that the expectations of employees can be pinpointed relatively accurately by looking at which information they perceive to be justified and which to be invasive. ³⁶ These studies demonstrate that failure to meet expectations of workplace privacy leads to uncertainty on the part of the employees, a considerable deterioration of the atmosphere at work, a general deterioration in employee motivation and, ultimately, dysfunctional role behaviour. ³⁷ In the terms introduced above, violations of expectations with regard to workplace privacy make role performance in employment relations defective. Adam Moore, in his recent book on privacy rights, provided useful illustrations of the impact of privacy violations on employment relations. ³⁸ He discussed the impact of privacy-invasive surveillance practices like drug testing on workplace morale. He cited at length a number of studies reporting that drug testing, by invading employees’ expectations of privacy, has a negative effect on workplace morale and on the professional performance of employees. ³⁹

The second example derives from the context of education and deals with relationships between lecturers and students. This relationship aims to develop students’ abilities to critically acquire knowledge. In order to fulfil the role of a teacher, lecturers need to grant their students access to the information that is relevant to this form of relationship: their academic performance, publications, teaching experience, etc. The same or similar is also true of the information which students need to give their lecturers. The communication necessary to fulfil the purpose of the relationship – teaching – can only succeed if the participants within this social practice adhere roughly to these measures and expectations. Again, revealing information other than what is relevant to the purpose of the professional relationship would not necessarily incapacitate it, but would in fact make it defective. For example, a teacher’s revealing intimate details of her or his private life would be damaging to the form of communication involved in teacher–student relations, if only because slipping into intimacy diminishes the distance between the parties and undermines their professional roles. ⁴⁰ Violation of the privacy norms involved in teacher–student relations then constitutes a poor role performance even if it does not immediately make the relationship impossible.

The third example derives from the context of health care and deals with relationships between psychotherapists and clients. The norms of privacy regulative to this relationship render it appropriate for clients to disclose their emotional condition to psychotherapists, and this information is of course functional as well as essential for the purposes of a psychotherapeutic relationship. At the same time, however, the norms of privacy render it inappropriate for psychotherapists similarly to disclose their emotional conditions. This information would be damaging to the purposes of the relationship. Disclosure of lack of emotional stability, sense of inferiority or hostility on the part of the psychotherapist would then be characteristic of his or her poor role performance, even if it does not immediately make role fulfilment on his or her part completely impossible.

The example of a relationship between psychotherapist and client is especially interesting because it is a paradigm case of a relationship in which the norms of privacy function in two different ways. If the psychotherapist–client relationship exists to fulfil its specific purpose, it is not only the privacy of individuals within the relationship that has to be protected, but also the privacy of the relationship, as such. ⁴¹ The protection of privacy has a different function here because the specific forms of communication that play a role in these relationships and that constitute these relationships can succeed only if the relationships as such are protected in their confidentiality and privacy. For this reason, specific forms of communication also merit special legal protection. Again, defectiveness in role performance would, in this case, be due not only to violations of privacy on the part of individuals directly involved in the relationship (internal violations of privacy), but also to invasion of privacy from outside (external violations of privacy). Generally speaking, therefore, the social dimensions of privacy can be different with regard to different formal relationships, depending on the role in question.

So where do we stand? In crucial respects, professional relationships can be understood as roles. Individuals are protected in their autonomous presentations of self when they play different roles. What is more, these roles are what make these different presentations of self possible in the first place. Depending on the intention and purpose of the relevant social relationship with regard to informational privacy regulations, roles also have necessary and intersubjectively shared requirements, which limit the scope of individual behaviour. In each case, different norms of privacy therefore guide expectations regarding shared knowledge. Thus, insofar as these different social relationships are relevant to society and its integration, the protection of privacy in social interaction does have a social value.

IV The social value of privacy in public: Interaction between strangers

The role of privacy in interactions between strangers in public places is one of the key issues that features highly in public debates. From the start, surveillance – for example, CCTV cameras – has been linked to Bentham’s Panopticon and to Foucault’s discussion of it. ⁴² This section considers three aspects of the problem, all of them primarily oriented to the social dimensions of privacy rather than to its value for individuals, as has chiefly been the case in public debate. It begins with a general analysis of the norms of privacy underlying interactions between strangers. Second, we will focus more specifically on the consequences of camera surveillance of public spaces for interactions between strangers. Third, this section discusses this same surveillance of public spaces from the perspective of the citizen–citizen relationship. This final concern raises the question of whether, and to what extent, the protection of privacy in public has consequences for the democratic self-understanding of citizens.

Let us start with a general analysis of the norms of privacy regulating relations in public. It is useful to refer, again, to sociological research focusing on the ways in which reserve and indifference play a role in the relations between strangers, and thus the way in which respect for the privacy of others (indifference) and the retention of one’s own privacy (reserve) normatively regulate these relationships. ⁴³ Goffman described these forms of retention as civil inattention, and other authors have pointed out that the protection of individual privacy in public places is connected with relationships of civility as a condition of the functioning of such relations in public. Goffman also used the term ‘social mask’, which one dons in contact with strangers. ⁴⁴ Normatively, these characteristics of interaction between strangers have been interpreted as a requirement for public life in complex modern societies. ⁴⁵ Thomas Nagel, similarly, argued that relationships based on civility are only possible in public when one’s own private affairs are kept private, as well as when respect and reserve are displayed towards others. According to Nagel, civility and mutual respect are the prerequisites enabling social cooperation to take place in public at all. ⁴⁶

This normative analysis of the norms of privacy underlying the interaction between strangers is plausible: interaction in public places is dependent on some forms of civility, respect and civil inattention as necessary conditions of the functioning of such relations. Solove expanded on this point when he wrote that a society without respect for privacy (that of others as well as one’s own) becomes a ‘suffocating society’, ⁴⁷ since without this respect we no longer have the freedom to present ourselves in an anonymous public arena, which, in turn, is an element of the successful practice of autonomy. The existence of ‘free zones’ ⁴⁸ which are necessary for giving us the freedom to present ourselves in public as well as for informal communication in public is made possible only by the norms constituting and regulating privacy in public. Again, this illustrates the double function of privacy norms regulating behaviour: on the one hand, they protect individual autonomy and guarantee different forms of self-presentation for the subjects themselves; on the other, they enable social interaction through intersubjectively shared normative standards of reserve, civility and respect.

If participants in public social interaction do not adhere to these norms, by not respecting other people’s privacy or by not showing adequate forms of reserve, these social interactions become defective – not impossible – in the sense described in section III. Public life is dependent on some adherence to these norms precisely because social life in public otherwise becomes ‘suffocating’, losing the capacity to provide ‘free zones’ for self-presentation and communication. However, as we also pointed out above, we can speak of two different kinds of violations of the norms of privacy. On the one hand, participants in the relationship can violate the norms of privacy constitutive to that relationship and to the roles they perform within it. On the other, third parties can invade the privacy of relationships themselves. In the first case, the violation of privacy is internal and in the second case, external.

The same difference can be applied with respect to interaction between strangers in public: Nagel’s, and partly also Solove’s, analyses point out in which way the participants themselves have to adhere to the norms of privacy. But violations of these norms – and the ensuing defective social relations – can have external causes as well, for example, when the social norms of privacy are not adhered to by the institutions whose task it is to provide adequate setting for these forms of interaction.

This leads to the second problem, of observation of public places. Let us start, however, with two brief clarifications, on the concepts of observation and public space. Observation is, on the one hand, often understood as little more than indifferent watching. ⁴⁹ CCTV cameras are – at least prima facie – not functionally distinguishable from random individuals casually observing what is happening on the street. On the other hand, observation has functionally been defined as including control and possibly a direct exertion of influence. ⁵⁰ This latter concept is more adequate: different motives, different methods and different contexts are at work and help to distinguish between individuals casually ‘watching the street’ ⁵¹ and CCTV cameras and their type of controlling surveillance. The possibilities that the state, with its cameras, has at its disposal for storing and transferring information and exerting influence, not to mention its underlying intentions, are fundamentally different from casual and incidental observations. One important factor that is frequently overlooked is power: only the state has the power and the means to follow up its observations and pursue a person on this basis. Furthermore, incidental and casual observation form part of one’s legitimate and reasonable everyday expectations of moving in public spaces, whereas control and surveillance, including the storage and potential transfer of data, explicitly undermine these expectations. ⁵²

The second conceptual clarification concerns the idea and the function of public spaces, and the forms of social interaction they provide. Public places enable a valuable form of social space for individuals by facilitating different types of self-presentation sought, for example, as recovery or relaxation from other social roles, experienced in an anonymous context. Furthermore, they enable and facilitate communication and informal social dealings between strangers or between people communicating in public. ⁵³ Both aspects of social public space are dependent on the proper functioning of the norms regulating expectations with regard to anonymity and privacy, and those regulating respect and at least basic forms of civility between people. However, the function of these social dealings and communications is called into question by observation and surveillance. The ‘free zones’ which one needs in social life would not exist under permanent (supposed) observation and social control. ⁵⁴ Where CCTV is present, individuals in public places are no longer able to exercise self-determined – ‘relaxed’ – forms of self-presentation and social communication. Instead they may be forced, at least indirectly, constantly to control their self-presentation and dealings with others. Although this is clearly a desired effect of CCTV, it fundamentally changes the sociality of public places. Patton wrote:

The introduction of electronic surveillance to a place makes the events of that place accessible to any number of places and times. Participants in the social context thereby have their ability to read the circumstances of that place’s context diminished. Surveillance introduces an ambiguity into the place whereby people become less clear on who their actions are accessible to and in what circumstances their actions may be reviewed. In addition to interacting with those present, people additionally perform for unknown others. ⁵⁵

The third and last set of problems involves the consequences of state control and surveillance for the democratic self-understanding of citizens. One way in which a citizen’s democratic self-comprehension finds expression is in unhindered and tolerant social life and sociality. The constituents of successful sociality are tolerant, respectful dealings with others, comprehending that others in public social relationships are fellow citizens rather than objects of suspicion and mistrust. ⁵⁸

Westin, in a forward-looking study, addressed this problem as early as 1967; it has recently become more urgent due both to technological developments and to changes in the law. ⁵⁹ State monitoring creates genuine problems with regards to people’s existence as citizens in public space, because, by its very nature, it views and treats every subject observed and monitored as potentially suspicious. The idea of total security assumes that in principle all are, or could be, dangerous, that everyone is a potential deviant. ⁶⁰ When individuals are induced to regard one another as the object of observation and control, they are also induced to regard one another as suspects. Eventually, as Prins put it, they come to see one another as tokens of a type rather than as subjects with rights. ⁶¹ If citizens view each other as suspects and objects of surveillance then tolerant, respectful and informal behaviour in public is called into question and undermined. Attitudes of mutual suspicion and distrust induced in this way stand in sharp contrast to the ideas underlying democratic citizenship. ⁶² As we saw at the outset, Gavison and Solove were among those to emphasize the necessity of protecting privacy for democracy. Using an admittedly brief example, we have attempted to show that public interactions between strangers as citizens are also regulated by necessary and intersubjectively shared norms governing informational privacy. Consequently, these social norms also have political functions and consequences.

V Privacy vs social interests: Conflicts revisited

Throughout this article we have made three points. First, along the lines of sociological reflections on privacy, we have argued that privacy is a structural element of social interactions. In particular, we have argued that norms governing informational privacy are necessary for and regulate social relationships. In intimate relationships, in professional relationships and in social interactions between strangers in public, the social and sometimes legal norms governing informational privacy do not merely regulate these relationships; they are also necessary for them. Therefore, privacy is an integral element of the dynamics of all social relationships. ⁶³ A transparent society, a society without privacy, would be a society deprived of meaningful social relations. Second, this claim has supplemented the view according to which norms of informational privacy protect the autonomy of individual subjects. By facilitating social interaction, norms of privacy contribute to creating the social conditions that are required for the successful exercise of individual autonomy. These claims suggest that norms of privacy work in two ways: they protect the autonomy of individuals and they are necessary for social relations. In defending these claims this article has, third, brought together two strands of the contemporary discourse on privacy. We have argued that the control and regulation of informational privacy should be viewed not only under the perspective of individual rights, but also as being necessary for social interactions themselves, and therefore as relevant to the integration of society.

The argument we have pursued in this article implies that it is not always reasonable to assume a conflict between individual privacy on the one hand and society on the other. Given that an individual interest can also be understood as a societal interest, conflicts between individual and societal interests in privacy have to be reconsidered. Even then, there will still be situations in which societal interests in privacy have to be weighed up against other societal interests. However, the function of privacy in social interaction means that conflicts regarding individual privacy vs societal safety in particular have to be seen in a new light: they may still not be solved, but they have fundamentally shifted. ⁶⁴ Legislators and participants in public debate also have to take into account the consequences of limiting privacy on social interaction itself, the ways in which relationships would change and therefore the ways in which social practices would be potentially distorted or threatened. ⁶⁵