As part of our aim in resurfacing the highlights of the 2001 World Conference Against Racism which was immediately overshadowed by the events of September 11, 2001, Isis International interviewed Gus Hosein, senior policy adviser of Privacy International. Privacy International has been monitoring State-sanctioned intrusions to an individual’s right to privacy especially since 9/11. Part 1 of our conversation reviews the dynamics between privacy as a human right and a cultural practice in communications. Part 2 will further deal with the continuing threats to privacy, particularly in the context of the so called, “war on terror,” even as the Bush administration is about to come to its end.

Isis International: HOW WOULD YOU ASSESS PRIVACY AS A RIGHT IN RELATION TO OTHER BASIC HUMAN RIGHTS IN TERMS OF ITS DEFINITION (CONCEPT) AND ITS EXERCISE (PRACTICE)?

Gus Hosein (PI): There are two ways you can view privacy within the framework of human rights, at the conceptual level. First, you can see it as derivative of other rights, as we have seen emerge in the United States and Germany. That is, other rights such as the right to liberty, the right to security, and the right to human dignity, those most basic rights, place an obligation upon governments to ensure that the privacy rights of their citizens are adequately protected. In light of this, privacy has been interpreted as existing within the shadows of the rights to free expression and freedom of religion (the first amendment), the right to not have your home searched without a warrant (the 4th amendment), and the protection from the government compelling one to divulge information (the 5th amendment). For these rights to have any value, you must have privacy.

This leads to the second way of looking at the matter: privacy makes many of these other rights possible. Privacy forms part of the bedrock of freedoms. Free speech, for instance, is enabled by the ability of speakers to seek anonymity. Otherwise, as we have seen around the world, the right to practice free expression in the absence of privacy protection can lead to persecution, imprisonment, or worse. Similarly, the right to fair trial, due process protections, the ability to participate in public life, even the right to vote all rely upon privacy and confidentiality protections. It is necessary for the protection of human dignity, as we have seen repeatedly in the abuse of personal information about medical histories.

In practice, privacy protects you from many of the other incursions upon your freedom. Or more worryingly, some of the great travesties of injustice relied first on stripping away the right to privacy. Wrongful arrests that have led to torture and other great abuses have resulted almost entirely from secret police files, and often erroneous ones at that. Attempts to prevent groups and individuals from participating in society at economic, social, or political levels almost always involves powerful bodies judging, labeling, and categorising individuals through the abuse of personal information.

Isis: HOW WOULD DESCRIBE THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PRIVACY, ON THE ONE HAND AND WOMEN AND GENDER, ON THE OTHER HAND?

PI: Privacy, gender and sexuality have long been intertwined. Control within the household, as within the state, always relies on powerful institutions and individuals watching over women and children. Once everything about an individual is known, that individual has lost all ability to exert autonomy over her life. Throughout time, the same way that society has monitored the practices of homosexuals, society has also monitored women to maintain control over them.

Sadly, there is a dark history of the right to privacy and gender. The right to privacy in the home was perceived as the right of men to watch over their women and do as they please, without the state or the police interfering even in cases of spousal abuse. It is a great irony that society deemed the right to privacy and the right to family harmony as one and the same. If the state was to interfere into the home to judge against a man who beat his wife, in the eyes of judges, lawyers, and politicians in those dark times, it would cause society to disintegrate.

During those times, if the state wanted to interfere with the right to use contraception, or the right to same-sex relations, they could enter the home.

But much of the world has changed and privacy rights have become intertwined instead with the protection from discrimination. Privacy rights are now given particularly special status for the prosecution of violence against women. Rape victims may seek anonymity protections. Shelters for battered women are granted special protections from surveillance laws. Victims of spousal abuse are given greater protection of the law and when necessary given new identities and their personal information is tightly guarded.

Isis: IN TERMS OF THE EXERCISE OF PRIVACY RIGHTS IN COMMUNICATIONS, WOULD YOU SAY THAT THERE IS A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ITS EXERCISE BY WOMEN AND ITS EXERCISE BY MEN, IN GENERAL?

PI: In a situation where communications are used equally by women and men, then I would say that there is little difference in the exercise of privacy rights. There have been some surveys and studies that show that women are more protective of the confidentiality of theircommunications. But I wouldn't say that this necessarily a universal fact. I think that all humans seek confidentiality in their communications, without regard to their gender.

Where there is some inequality, where women have restricted access to communications for instance, they do seek greater privacy. For instance, websites that inform women of their rights are now also explaining to them how to delete browsing histories to permit them to seek guidance and assistance without fear of recrimination.

Isis: HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE THE MOST EMERGING THREATS TO THE RIGHT TO PRIVACY IN COMMUNICATIONS?

PI: The ways we have communicated have changed dramatically, but we have not considered carefully how this has affected our privacy. Governments and companies certainly have, and are taking advantage of our ignorance. Large companies, government institutions, and governments listening to our communications. Now we have many more parties and institutions who are watching what we do, listening to what we say, reading what we type.

It becomes more confusing with transactional information, or what is called “traffic data.” In the old days, this just meant logging who was mailing or calling who, and when. Governments decided to apply this to telephones. But when you add mobile and digital communications, the situation becomes drastically different. Institutions can now find out where you are when you make a call, which computer you used, when you emailed or surfed the web. Friendship trees are generated to identify who is talking with who, who is in the same location as another, when, for how long. Companies can tell when you move countries on your mobile phone, but they can also tell when you have walked down the street.

What you say in a communication is protected by law. What you do when you are online is not nor is the list of all the locations and places you have been to with your mobile phone. My guess is that the logs of everything you do online say far more about you than what you tell your friend or family member. That's why there is such much money in this business of profiling and surveillance.