In the wake of the GDPR legislation, I like others have been updating my privacy settings on websites, apps and mailing lists. I have been unsubscribing here, deleting accounts there, and resetting old passwords. The feeling throughout has been one of restrained paranoia.
My diligence in following the data privacy recommendations has been fuelled by the fear that the bad people out in cyberspace will hack my accounts, steal my information and either sell it on to third parties or help themselves directly to my bank balance. I have tried to protect my personal information as assiduously as I can.
None of that would be so interesting were it not for the fact that this period of studious self-hiding has coincided with the publication of a new book of mine that is autobiographical. Autobiographical to the point of being deeply personal.
So on the one hand, I have been doing all I can to become as unknowable as possible. On the other hand, I have put into the public domain material about me that most people would consider to be achingly intimate.
The contradiction between these acts of covering up and of exposure raises the question of what really counts as private. My autobiography does not include information such as the sort code of my bank, my mobile number, my passport details or the amount of money I earned last year. It does, however, go into depth about my relationship history, some moments of morally dubious behaviour, my fears over mortality and even medical conditions affecting members of my family.
Most people, including readers of the book, would probably count such information as very personal indeed. The fact that such information has now been published means by definition that it is no longer private. But personal it certainly is.
That is the key lesson. Personal and private are not the same thing. As a genre which is defined by making the personal public, autobiography makes the point resoundingly obvious. If the personal can be made public, as is the case with an autobiography, then the personal was never intrinsically private in the first place. So although we sometimes use ‘personal’ and ‘private’ as synonyms, they are anything but. The two words are not interchangeable.
It is precisely because the personal is not intrinsically private that it can be made public or stolen. Recognising this fact has become one of the chief anxieties of our times.
The point can be put the other way round in order to make it starker. Namely, if the personal is not intrinsically private, it can always be made public. The possibility of becoming public lies in the very nature of the personal.
That axiom has consequences both practical and ethical. The practical consequences are the ones with which GDPR has made us all too familiar. Our personal data can always be made public, so change your passwords, read the cookies policy, etc. Do all the things that we have all been doing in the past few weeks and months.
The ethical aspects are different and point in almost the opposite direction. I am thinking of both Kant and Nietzsche, and their most famous doctrines. Kant’s ‘categorical imperative’ admonishes us not to do anything which we wouldn’t order other people to do. For example, don’t drop litter unless you think dropping litter should be mandatory.
Nietzsche’s philosophy of the ‘eternal return’ advises us to live our lives in such a way that we could bear every detail being repeated ad infinitum. Under such a stricture, would you tolerate having the day you’ve just had? Or would you realise the future you’ve long been dreaming about?
In a way, Nietzsche was re-expressing Kant: whatever you do in life, make sure you are doing the right thing by your conscience.
What do such highfalutin ethics have to do with data and privacy? My answer is this. If the personal can always be made public, assume that everything personal about you is public already. If everything is fundamentally knowable - and increasingly likely to become known - then adapt accordingly. Live your life as though it was already under the spotlight.
Accepting this fact is a better, more stoical, place to start from than believing that you can hide. For the ship of privacy sailed a long time ago, and we are all stumbling forward, blinking, onto the bright plain.
What I am talking about is different from ‘transparency’. Transparency is the regulatory urge to have information readily available to auditors, be they accountants or ordinary citizens. I am saying there is a choice. Either carry on with the furtive hope that you can keep the personal private - which philosophically speaking is a losing game - or accept that everything from your financial transactions to your sexual misdemeanours will be available for everybody to inspect. What changes would you make?
Robert Rowland Smith is a philosopher. AutoBioPhilosophy: An intimate story of what it means to be human is available now
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
