It seems the right to privacy speaks less to the imagination, or perhaps is a less obvious right for many than say freedom of expression or the right to assemble. That this is the case can be seen from the fact that people often feel the need to reframe the right. The right to privacy, these people will say, is the right to hide something or the right to be left alone. Although privacy might allow something of the sort, it is this framing which pollutes discussions surrounding the subject and devalues the right.

The right to hide something

When I hear people describe privacy as ‘the right to hide something’ I generally cringe. The negative connotations with ‘hiding something’ are strong and discussions inadvertently become awkward. In a sort of odd role reversal, people who value their privacy find themselves in a discussion where they need to explain why they wish to excercise their (constitutional) rights instead of the infringers explaining why they want to infringe. Describing privacy as ‘wanting to hide’ something also comes with its own stigmas in contemporary society. After 9/11 the only people wanting ‘to hide’ something were obviously terrorists. Today, people wanting ’to hide’ something are obviously perverts, afraid the government will snoop on the dick pics which they Snapchat to their partners, or worried the NSA will watch along with their kinky Skype sessions.

If anything, the right to privacy means you shouldn’t have to hide anything because others have no right to invade your privacy.

The right to be left alone

Although a lot less bad than the right to hide something, the right to be left alone too does not do complete justice to the right to privacy. True, privacy is defined as the state or condition of being free from being observed or disturbed by other people, so in a sense, it is the right to be left alone. But as with the right to hide something the narrative and framing quickly becomes sour. Why do you need to be left alone? What are you hiding? Or, worse perhaps, to some people the right to privacy then means the right not to be disturbed by telemarketers while they’re having dinner.

Chilling effects

A lot of the core constitutional or human rights, whatever you wish to call them, are interdependent on each other. If they were software packages, you would not be able to install one of them without installing all the others as well. And the right to privacy, perhaps, is at the core of these dependencies. It acts as a firewall that keeps so-called chilling effects out of the system.

In the context of privacy, chilling effects can occur when someone observing you might prevent you from doing what you actually want to do because you fear the consequences of that observation.

Demonstrations

Most democracies will grant its citizens the right to demonstrate. And where there’s large crowds of people, inevitably there will be a large police presence. In the Netherlands, the police riot vans that are brought out with demonstrations feature cameras that register the crowd. For crowd control purposes. But the fact that you are being filmed and thus your presence at a certain demonstration is being registered might in itself become a reason that you no longer feel free to demonstrate.

Expressing yourself

The right to freedom of expression requires a couple of other things. In order to be able to express yourself, for example, you must also be able to form an opinion. And in order to form an opinion, you need to be able to access information. How free are you to research opinions and ideas that might not necessarily stroke with the government when that government watches your research every step of the way? How free was the average American to learn more about communism during the McCarthy era for example? Without the right to privacy, the right to express yourself, to inform yourself without having to fear persecution, cannot be fully exercised.

Coming together

Closely tied to the two rights above is of course the right to assemble, to meet up with other people to exchange ideas, form coalitions and to express yourself freely. This right too cannot do without the right to privacy. This right too is dependent on people being able to formulate their ideas and opinions, which may or may not be in favor of the current ruling powers, without having those ruling powers present while doing so. To not have privacy renders this right useless. How would the earliest civil rights movements have grown if they would have been observed by white policemen every step of the way?