More than 500 authors from around the globe have signed a petition demanding the creation of an international bill of digital rights. This is a response to the revelations of whistleblower, Edward Snowden, about the extent to which US and UK intelligence organizations engage in online surveillance.
I encourage you to read and sign the petition here. Nevertheless, as I detail below, I have some reservations about how the petition has been framed.
An article in The Guardian offers useful background.
The petition makes several important assertions:
“In their thoughts and in their personal environments and communications, all humans have the right to remain unobserved and unmolested.”
“A person under surveillance is no longer free; a society under surveillance is no longer a democracy.”
The thrust of the petition, then, is the assertion that we have a right to privacy, and the protection of this right is necessary to our freedom as secured by our democratic institutions. So far so good. But then the petition adds this little snippet:
“Surveillance is theft. This data is not public property: it belongs to us.”
This is where I get confused. Note: my confusion has nothing to do with whether or not I think the petition is a good idea; it is. Nor with whether or not I think digital surveillance is a social poison; it is. My confusion has to do with the way in which the concern is framed.
The petition opens with an expression of concern for the protection of a human right. Assuming a natural rights theory is operative here—pretty much the standard for charters, declarations, bills, basically anything modelled on the claim for rights in the US Declaration of Independence—then an essential feature is its inalienability. Implicit in the demand for a UN-sanctioned bill of digital rights is the idea that the declaration creates nothing new; the right already inheres in each one of us by virtue of our existence as human beings. The bill of rights makes explicit a pre-existing moral status. And there is nothing any of us can do to divest ourselves of this moral status. So, for example, a person has the right to be free and can do nothing to forfeit that right. Under a natural rights theory, that holds true even if a) no organization has ever declared the right’s existence and/or b) the free person sells themself into slavery.
The confusion comes with the statement that “surveillance is theft.” We see here a shift in the demand from protection of an inalienable right to the protection of a proprietary interest. These are apples and oranges. A proprietary interest is perfectly alienable. That’s what makes it a proprietary interest. Is surveillance theft? Or is it the violation of a human right? Which is it? The answer to this question matters. If surveillance is theft, then our concern is not with rights, but with permission and control; we want governments to restore to us the ability to choose how we monetize our own data.
Personally, I think the inclusion of the “surveillance is theft” statement does more than simply cloud the issue; it trivializes the demand. It throws the conversation at Wall Street. States engage in surveillance to make us safe. We need to be safe so markets can function. Markets need to function so they can monetize … us. If surveillance steals value from us, then the markets can’t function efficiently. Etc.
Do the signatories to this petition really want to fall down this rabbit hole? Do they understand that this hole has no bottom?