Printed in: Philosophy and Technology II. Ed.C.Mitcham. Reidel: Dordrecht 1986. Boston Studies in the Philosophie of Science 90.

ABSTRACT: An extended critique of fear that computers are a threat to privacy. The argument is that although computers will, in fact, do away with privacy, privacy is not the absolute value it is often thought to be. The destruction of privacy will not create an inhuman but a more humane society.

Information technology is a true revolution--but not in the ways most people think. Information technology has fundamental consequences for our understanding of human kind, and constitutes a Heideggerian "turning" that no one intended. But no revolution in history--and I do not mean the so-called "political revolu¨tions"--was ever planned; they all take place behind our backs, so to speak. Hegel's reference to the "cunning of reason" in such a context is correct, because people will never agree to change radically their entire way of life. They always have to be forced to do so. Information technology is such a force. Traditional morality and the well-ordered society will have fatal consequences in a computer society.

I. PROTECTION OF PRIVACY--A PHILOSOPHICAL CRITIQUE OF A POLITICAL ILLUSION

It is a common belief today that our right to privacy is endan¨gered by a computer society. Though such a danger is at present only implicit, civil rights movements in Europe have already mounted major protests against the creation of that so-called "transparent man" which becomes possible with the help of information technology. Thus, it has been declared a problem of political ethics to protect personal freedom under such condi¨tions as would exist in the approaching computer society. Above all it has been proposed to limit the employment of information technology to a necessary minimum, while strictly excluding the private sphere. Outside thos fundamentally opposed to data acquisition systems and computers themselves, and who evoke horror visions of a police surveillance state, the usefulness of information systems is by and large recognized. It is evident that there can be no proper planning without precise data. The general view is one of agreement to data acquisition, but only on the condition that it is legally restricted. Politicians propose limiting the number of those with authorized access to data banks, explaining that an interconnection of information files can and should be avoided--which would, for instance, exclude the possibility of a uniform personal identification number for citizens in Germany--and they suggest destruction of personal data at the earliest opportunity.
Carl Mitcham and Alois Huning (eds.), Philosophy and Technology II, 257-268.

The basic idea is to protect the private sphere by means of a conjunction of voluntary and legally enforced restrictions. The highest court in the Federal Republic of Germany, the Federal Constitu‚tional Court, has agreed to hear a case on the unconstitutionality of the general census which had been planned for April 1983. For our purposes it is important to note that the census, in the form it was supposed to have been taken is criticized as a violation of Articles 1 and 2 of the Basic Rights of German citizens. These articles are, first: "The dignity of each human being is inviolable"; and second: "Everyone shall have the right to the free development of his or her personality." It can be expected that the Constitutional Court will itself propose a definition which will support the central idea of protecting privacy not only in our contemporary society but in a computer society as well.

Although such proposals and attempts at delimitation sound good in theory and seem reasonable viewed in the tradition of Aristotelian prudence (phronesis), they have no prospect of being realized in practice in a technological civilization. They amount in the end to an impotent objection leveled against an overwhelmingly powerful scientific-technological development. The total expansion of information technology and computers cannot be hindered by external forces, nor will those interests directly involved be willing to check its growth voluntarily (the exception proves the rule!). But the possibilities of information technology îsineira et studio have yet to be understood.

All wishful thinking and illusions about human nature must be rejected. Those who appeal to a moral idealism (such as J. Weizenbaum) and express confidence in the human ability not only to know what is immoral but also to act according to this knowledge, must repress the truth about human nature. "We don't do such things!" As a guiding principle of ethics such an appeal is very Aristotelian, but contrary to our experience. We cannot ignore 2500 years of daily refutation of such an ethical program. The rational self is not its own master--this was clear long before Freud. And we shall continue to act according to the promptings of our insatiable greed and blind self-preservation. With regard to the human race, those factors directing action or behavior other than toward gratification of instincts will remain rare, even in the future.

Yet even if one believed--contrary to all historical experience--in the ethical improvement of man by his own voli¨tion, it would still be unrealistic to assume that interest groups, whether politically or economically motivated, would do without that which serves their own interests. Extreme legal sanctions are of course conceivable, but even the death penalty for what might be called "information criminals," presuming such a punishment were enforceable by a democratic govern‚ment, would not deter those determined to gain access to information files. Those bent on gathering information or gaining access to its sources will achieve their goal. We have all read the accounts of "hackers" who successfully break through ingenious security codes and are able to invade information networks. Since information technology is based on the concept of the exchange of information, security codes will continually be faced with certain limitations. An information technology which protects information is self contradictory. Advocates of the protection of information naturally dispute such a thesis and insist upon the technically feasible possibilities of keeping data from being used by unauthorized persons (or institutions). But such advocates are like those weapons manufacturers who each time claim to have invented a weapon against which there is no defense (or a defense against which there can be no new weapon!). Will we be faced with the prospect of a spiraling race between the develop¨ment of security systems and techniques to counteract them, patterned after the arms race? This will in fact most likely be attempted only in the military field, resulting in ever increasing costs; all other areas will be fair game for "informa¨tion pirates." Legal restrictions will possess the character of a facade.

Powerful social institutions from the Catholic Church to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union have failed in attempts to halt the expansion of knowledge. As stubbornly as an individual defends his illusions, does the human species strive to know the world the way it really is. Information technology is not merely a fascinating aspect of this increase in knowledge; instead, as a key means to knowledge it functions much like a detecive, which can only be desirable. In computer simulation we may one day come very close to the dream of an adequate intellectual reflec¨tion of reality. This is, however, not yet realizable. The objection that computer modelling reproduces only the quantifiable aspect of reality is plausible but deceptive. The current (as well as the next) computer generation provides no more than a weak indication of information technology capabilities. Only a balanced system composed of man and the computer will be able to bring our knowledge into close harmony with the real. The either/or distinction between the sensitive mind and a rational computer is a fairy tale from vanished times.

My argument is that not only can the expansion of knowledge (both good or bad, from the perspective of contemporary standards) not be checked indefinitely, but that the same holds for information technology and to an even greater extent. Information technology is knowledge, and at the same time knowledge is acquired through informa‚tion technology. Yet for present purposes it is enough to admit that "transparent man" is unavoid¨able and in the decades to come will be taken for granted. The quibblers of today will by then long be dead, and shuld the human race still exist (against which case much can be said), such critics as Weizenbaum will be viewed with the same indulgence as today we accord the 19th century opponents of railraods. One might object that such "cynical" realism eliminates any unambiguous judgement of the computer society from the standpoint of ethics. But what can be the purpose of an ethos which seeks to defend outmoded behavior in fruitless opposition to Being? If technology constitutes the forms of human exiwstence, then the condemnation of any technology as obviously useful as information technology becomes not only sense‚less but more than that, unethical.

II. THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF PRIVACY

1. Social Significance.

What are the alternatives? Should we take the stand of righteous anger as we become increasingly inhumane? Or must we give in to the denial of our mortality as our suffering is reduced to a problem which can be eliminated by technology? But perhaps we are blinded by obsolete alternatives; perhaps such questions are themselves inappropriate. The obligation of philosophy is to break through the merely apparent validity of self-evident truths and to re-open discussions which have been considered closed.

So we ask, then: What is privacy? The super computer "Colossus" replied in the 1969 movie of the same name: "Privacy is the absence of company or observation." The negative charac¨ter of this definition is striking. But more fundamental are the questions: Is it so truly obvious that human beings need privacy as a shelter into which no one is supposed to be able to look? What right have we to conceal how we really are? Do other living things have a private life? Are the deceptions of certain plants and insects to be understood in any way other than as being determined by evolution? Furthermore: How is a private life, hidden and covered, to be reconciled with the search for truth when this search does not possess its own primary epistemological sources, but which on the contrary depends on a knowledge acquired through our physical experience, that an unnatural life will not allow long-term survival?

It is certainly true that our private life offers us the greatest opportunity to be ourselves, that we are able to live in private more truthfully than anywhere else. But this is achieved only at the great psycho-physical expense of maintaining a public lie--allegedly necessary, allegedly for the benefit of humanity, allegedly a step forward with regard to our natural state, allegedly democratic. Surprisingly enough, one can even substantiate all this experience. Who would voluntarily give up all privacy? Only in prisons and hospitals are we forced to live without it. Neighbors will become our enemies if they were privy to our secrets, and totalitarian regimes characteristically give no quarter in persuading their citizens "voluntarily" to relinquish privacy. Yet this has not been fully successful anywhere to date.

But we should not let ourselves be mislead. Such experiences only tell us that we are compelled to react to a false situation and try to make the best of it. The experiences cited in no way prove that privacy can be justified on its own merits.

2. The Ontological Phenomenon of Privacy

Does man, viewed ontologically, need privacy? The answer can only be negatgive. Life indivisible--we live, nothing more. Or we die, if we are capable of it; in most cawses we simply perish. Private or public--this distinction is of no consequence to life and death. The Greeks were concious of the fact that there is basically only one mode of living. Private man (idiotes) was an inferior human being, close to that of the slave, who was, in essence, less than human. Today this common understanding has practically been reversed:Ýthe designation "public person" is now used in the pejorative sense, and when the term refers to celebrities it means in actuality many restrictions in a life-style which often enough takes on inhuman proportions. Stars and famous politicians are imprisoned in the public realm.

The word "private" derives from privation, meaning "deprivation". But we have declared privacy, together with personal freedom and the inviolability of the person, to be the highest values. We believe thereby to have found the innermost core of man, and we mark off that area which no one is allowed to enter without being asked. The main advantage of the modern age and its bourgeois revolution is seen precisely in this freedom of the individual which is realized in private life. Our private life is consequently equated with our true life; a special form is thereby declared to be reality. Can this be the case? What does the emphasis on the private and personal sphere really mean? Is there such a thing as impersonal freedom, or a life in which I ajm not myself? This could only be possible in the metaphor‚ical sense. Even if I totally misjudge myself and am bound by conven‚tion, it is my life, and no one can relieve me of my responsibility for it. Kant called this "Kausalitat aus Freiheit"--causality arising from freedom. Privacy has no foundation in the human condition; the self is possible only in its unified existence.

A philosophical anthropology will indeed argue that there are activities--irrespective of cultural setting--which are of an intrinsically private nature. No matter how culturally dependent one assesses the sense of shame to be, should not at least sexual intercourse and death, despair and joy, remain private? But the students of the "primitive mind" reject such ideas, and, in fact, we know how relative all this is. To be human means to live publicly as well as privately, and simply to live in every situation. This does not mean that we always have to be together with others or that we should be subjected to collective pres¨sure. One can be alone in a crowd as well as feel empathy for others in solitude. Every expression of life has its own time and its own place and cannot be treated as either exclusively public or private.

3. The Relation to Government and Public Man

The main thesis is that privacy has no objective significance whatever; it is, rather, a campaign slogan, and only in this sense meaningful. The right to privacy defines a modern defense against government and its demands for moral regimentation. In the penal as well as in the civil code legal provisions are to be found whose supposedly rational justifications barely conceal their irrational and coercive character. Aristotelian ethics and the Kantian categorical imperative are called upon falsely to justify defining as a norm the historical understanding of property, sexuality, and individual rights. Anyone who deviates risks sanctions, penalties imposed by the government. If all such stipulations were to be taken seriously we would by defini¨tion all be offenders. Instead, authorities permit citizens a right to privacy. "Within his own four walls and when no one is looking man can be a non-conformist, and with the exception of capital crimes is allowed to do what he pleases, i.e.to be the immoral individual that he is. This can be shown most clearly in the case of sexuality. The most enthusiastic members of the swinger set come from the righteous middle class and often enough belong to the "moral majority."

The separation of private and public life is not founded in the phenomenon of life itself, but is rather a historically established distinction which each of us views not as a desirable goal but the lesser of two evils. Richard Sennett describes this predicament in his interesting book îThe Fall of Public Man (New York: Knopf, 1977) and laments (as did Hannah Arendt before him) the rapid disappearance of a distinction between publicness and privacy. Sennett's analysis points up an important relationship. The "self-communicative process of society" should not, he argues, be allowed to become completely private, nor should it be isolated from the private sector. Sennett's understanding of man's private life is of a "mutual revealing of one's self. A reciprocity and interaction between the private and the public is necessary if self-perception is to be truly complete. It was Sartre who emphasized that the view others have of me is the actual source of my self-knowledge. Sennett argues that pre¨cisely because my family sees me in a different way than my social peers do, the sphere of public culture (corresponding to Hegel's objective mind) should not be sacrificed to the new "logic of intimacy. " Although plausible, this misses the point. Sennett fails to differentiate between the human condi¨tions of life and those which are strictly historical. The distinction becomes crucial in an age such as ours, in which we must leave history behind in order to survive. It is in no way a prerequisite of humanness to have my "image" impressed upon me, nor must I exist merely in certain roles and constantly have to justify myself. Sennett shows clearly which mechanisms are at work here, and how a world ruled by morality functions. But--disregarding for a moment the question of the humaneness of such a life--he does not question whether such a concept can help us survive in the age of technology.

Even Sennett's terminology betrays the metaphysical character of his thinking. Privacy is supposed to mean the "revealing of one's self." Is the self hidden from itself? And should this prove to be true, how could we have become so self-estranged? Is it the real character of a self to be first and foremost not itself? Can a self reveal itself? Would it not likewise have to be a "non-self" in order to be able to do this? Moreover, does culture--which Sennett pits against the private sphere--really have uncontested priority? Freud analysed culture as "sublimated instinct" or, in less compli¨mentary terms, pseudo-gratification. Viewed phenomenologically, culture is a conglomerate of natural and artificial technologies employed in the "process of civilization" (Norbert Elias). But even in its best sense, as a sphere of the objective mind, and distinct from its marketable side, culture is, according to Hegel, not the last word. Rather, its function is fulfilled within objective mind itself. In any case, it cannot be considered to justify a world which becomes day by day more inhuman. But, Sennett is right on one point: privacy is essentially imperfect, and our withdrawal into this sphere is tantamount to an admission that we live a divided life. In his private life an individual can indeed realize without fear much of what he would choose to make up his own life, but the dimension of the "other," of "Being-with" (Heidegger), of society, is sorely missing. We must recapture human life in its wholeness. If ethics is understood not normatively, but as an analysis of the ontological conditions for humanness--as recognized by Spinoza, Schopenhauer, and Heidegger¨--then "public privacy" or "private publicness" will be a proper ethical life.

III. PUBLIC PRIVACY AS A PERSPECTIVE IN POLITICAL ETHICS

The initial question is thus reversed. Privacy is in fact an ethical problem in a computer society, but it is not information technology which causes the difficulties. On the contrary, information technology can most likely help us to achieve for the first time an authentic way of life instead of the distortion called history. Everything we do, whether individually or together, can be done openly. There is no objective reason for hiding ourselves. The truth is that, contrary to popular opinion, the data files on us give not a distorted but an approximately true picture of life in those areas capable of being monitored by the computer. This is not a positivistic commitment to scientific fact; opinions and subjective convictions constitute part of the world and are included. According to the phenomenological method, how a thing reveals itself to us is not to be predetermined. The influence of a natural preju¨dice, which always claims to know beforehand what reality is and how it is to be understood, will be reduced by computer stimulation. Interests will no longer be able to falsify input data. They will themselves simply become date--no more, no less. This opening into an impartial reality, called knowledge, cannot be overestimated in a world threatened with destruction by distortion, improper priorities, and systematically falsified information. As of yet we cannot dare freely to admit the consequences of our acts, and we rule out absolute justice as being allegedly inhuman. But in reality, the abolishing of authoritarian powers which could impose sanctions would be a first step toward the human.

However, it remains indisputable that as long as there are rulers and masters public privacy will have only one consequence, that we will all be forced to conform, down to the bottom of our souls. Justification and legitimation of such totalitarian rule is of no importance to those in authority, and no ruler would be able to resist the possibilities open to him.

Does this mean that we must abolish the government, throw the "moral order" onto the rubbish heap of history, and make rule and domination superfluous? Does this sound impossible?Ý The truth is that it should be quite simple; every generation can show that all the apparently unchangeable institutions and invariable behavior patterns of the past were mere figments of imagination. As Hannah Arendt says, man is always capable of beginning anew. We are free to realize the inevitability of our nature as technicians, to exist through properly functioning rather than improperly functioning technologies.

But scepticism remains. For thousands of years men have vainly attempted to live humanely and in such a way that brother¨hood would replace tyranny, love override envy, and peace take the place of aggression. The morality of the Sermon on the Mount is politically impracticable--so say the realists, and with good reason. But has not politics, this crude and violent technology of intersubjectivity, become obsolete? There are changes at the most fundamental levels of our lives which render powerless all historical experiences. The inner disposition of a computer society marks just such an essential change, one which will also alter the human being as we know him. For the computer society-¨and here I agree with all the critics--will be extremely inhuman and certainly unendurable should government and the sanctions of public morality remain in power. Inner conflicts would intensify and even industrialized nations would be threatened by permanent civil war and the terror of a police state--El Salvador everywhere.

But computer society is at the same time inevitable and will bring us into a final crisis. Despite all the metaphysical fears of "being controlled by machines" it is evident that those public services claimed by the government to be its legal right can be broken down into individual technological jobs and performed without politics in the classical sense. Anything that concerns us can be discussed. Inter-regional cooperation can be under¨stood in concrete terms as a feedback system. No one has the right to declare war anyway, and only one person could be a sovereign. International economy and trade as well as ecology are a collection of technological questions; any other perception is misrepresentative. A computer society which persists in an organization based on hierarchy, value judgement, and sanctions is not realistic. It only foreshadows a mistake which the human race will not survive.

Does this demand the abolition of human domination? Will we be ruled by a "neutral machine"? Our emotions rebel against such an idea, yet the issue in question is not one of power. The computer is humane; it is our organ, not our tool. Computer society will relieve us of our fear; we will no longer need protection. Man will show himself openly, just as everything in the world shows itself. This does not mean that man will suddenly become good. His envy, his thirst for revenge, and his malignant delight will remain, but they will be rendered ineffective. Freedom will be confined to one's own person and will not allow for any infringement upon the life of another. "Unique¨ness" (Adorno) will be given ethical seriousness by a computer society. A trace of influence will remain only in a model for one's own life, chosen voluntarily and put through the trial of psychological criticism. Information does not standardize, it is open to fullness, change, and the unexpected. Life does not require us to hold on to what was yesterday, or to plan a future which can be awaited with curiosity. Only our desire for security endangers us, not what seems to be its absence.

IV. CONCLUSION: THE ETHICS OF A COMPUTER SOCIETY

The guiding ethical principle in a computer society is that a person should live publicly in the same manner as he would live privately. This does not mean: -being forced to live publicly, -having to answer all questions one is asked, -acknowledging the right of any person to claim he represents -the public viewpoint.

For a person to live privately in the same manner as he would live publicly (the principle can be reversed) means on the contrary: -not allowing any division of our life, -not having to fear data which someone could gather on us, -to bear in mind only intersubjective jobs can be "public."

The ethics of a computer society will be incapable of realizing the presumptuous dream of a boundless freedom and a totally unrestrained life-style. As classical philosophy has taught, resistance is important for the development of the personality and of language. Privacy was indeed such a form of resistance, brought forth in opposition to publicness. But even if privacy disappears the much more decisive resistance of things and of our life will remain. The laws of nature are simply an expression of this; and suffering will always be with us. The real deficiency, not the imagined or self-concocted one, must be discovered and experienced. And we shall not have to repress it. We have in our present society artificial obstacles and regulations--mere surrogates behind which the real order of phenomena has become unrecognizable.

In a computer society we shall live neither in paradise nor Arcadia, but instead in our own authentic environment through our physical experience ofr vulnerability as well as successful achievements. The return to a natural way of life is only one aspect of this. A great cultural effort is required to live without violence, without rules and regulations imposed by law.

But at the same time we do not have to conform to the restrictions imposed upon us by a computer, as Weizenbaum fears. Without realizing it, such a view is committed to the metaphysical categories of mastery and slavery, and simply describes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Computer truth differentiates our comprehension of the world, it is not the opposite of such an understanding.

Information in its sense as "transmission of the content of meaning between humans" is not the only potential of language. Even if data banks, from criminal records to information on financial transasctions were interconnected--as is now planned with the Swedish computer system "Rex"--this will not endanger me as a person in any way. My real being is not the data registered in a computer file. And should TV habits, illnesses, occupation, and election behavior (to name just a few recordable data) actually express the inner makeupof a human being, then such a hollow shell is not worthy of protection. Free access to information about another is not the same as understanding a person, knowing what and who he is. Everything we think up or invent, all differences in emotions, and everything we talk about in our private language remains unpredictable and is what really indicates what and who we are. Man is the wealth of his possibilities, an open horizon and a "homo creator" (A.T. Tynmieniecka). What we possess is irrelevant--but our life can become more humane by living as what we are not.

It is not the nature of information technology itself which makes it seem ethically dangerous. The problem lies with the authoritarian powers whose sanctions we have to fear. The attempt to define the prospects of information technology in metaphysical terms of domination, history, or morality is doomed to failure from the outset. Instead, a fundamental turn is required in thinking, a turn which corresponds to the end of metaphysics and to a rejection of all anthropocentrism. To live both privately and publicly with a ruined reputation and without embarrassment, as Wilhelm Busch said, is irreconcilable with mastery over persons or things in any manifestation whatsoever. Such a manner of living would be the beginning of ethical behavior in computer society. In one of hislast works Sartre called for this kind of living together:Ý"Instead of secrecy, openness should reign, and I can very well imagine the day when two persons will no longer keep any secrets from one another because they will have no secrets from anyone, because the subjective life will be a fact, as totally open as the objective life."

Hamburg University

Translated by Virginia Cutrufelli