well the first thing for me is i wonder i see a couple of different ways of talking about what privacy is um
if privacy is something that disturbs your private state i mean an invasion of privacy is something that disturbs your private state that's
one thing and if privacy is something that comes into your private state and extracts information from it in other words finds something out about you that's another and the first kind of
invasion of the first type of privacy seems invaded to me in very much everyday in this country but in the second type at least overtly uh where someone comes in and uh
finds out information about you that should be private uh does not seem uh
um obviously everyday
i i think i agree with that i think in a good example on the
typical thing that happens uh when the phone rang and it's TI calling my immediate reaction is that it's some sort of strange phone message and then i realize oh no this is something i solicited
that's right
so my immediate reaction was one of that sense of invasion but after that i realized no i i really wanted this and it was sort of exciting and so that was almost an example of a situation an invasion that turns out to be not invasive
uh-huh
right it turned out to be uh uh an invitation
exactly uh and at the same time i think that i receive on on the order of
uh probably seven or eight a week calls of the nature where one wishes that there were a convenient way to just hang up on it
from from personal parties or from these uh phone answering phone uh commercial things
commercial solicitations solicitations primarily
oh that that's a remarkable number i get them rarely and i'm still astounded that that uh one they let anyone do them and two that they have any effectiveness whatsoever um
because i'm usually so insulted by them i just hang up as soon as i recognize what they are
yeah
i think they prey on people's um
inherent politeness on the phone even with a machine i find people being kind of polite and waiting for it to finish what it has to say and then they feel an obligation to respond even though there's not even a person there
and i think that's what makes one feel invaded is the fact that there seems to be little control and you one's feeling obligated because uh some sense of of the way the ritual is played out
um-hum
um-hum um-hum
and and uh that that then ends up being the the most common example for me
um-hum um-hum
um i guess i'm not
typically feeling invaded in my privacy relative to this second
yeah
this one that you raised and i don't think i would have thought about that i think that's a good idea on your part i don't typically feel intruded on on the things oh in the sense of finding out information
well presumably those who find out such information if they are doing it i would prefer to not to be known and i mean you know the classic
oh i don't know CIA conspiracy theories or whatever would have uh such parties trying to do it without your knowledge so there's
things that invade that second type of privacy
where you do know about them and possibly things that invade that second type of privacy without you knowing about it and
i can't talk about the second one other than to to to generate paranoia yeah to surmise and i'd like to think that's it's quite low at least in this country i don't feel like the KGB is monitoring my phone or anything like that
to surmise to surmise it is there
well i guess although
i well that's a good point where you said that how does one define what invasion of privacy is because uh if that's the case of a tree falling in the forest and i'm not feeling invaded then maybe my privacy hasn't been because i have no sense of my privacy state having been invaded
um-hum yeah
um-hum um-hum um-hum
um if your defining it in terms of information gone even if it's something you don't know about it well then i guess one could assume one was invaded but i don't feel invaded by it
um-hum um-hum
i don't have a sense of threat in general from those sorts of things i'm not sure why uh i guess it comes from a sense of facts or facts and if someone finds out something about me that is true i i don't have a sense of loss from that
um-hum well you must have a relatively clean conscience then
uh the the other side of that might be uh if if someone there's someone found out something or surmised something that weren't true then i would feel probably more invaded in the gossipy sort of sense
yes yes you'd be more harmed or something yeah
because right because you don't have anyway to turn it off there did you hear about this Lotus database that was being put together
yes i did i was just about to write a letter when i heard they canceled it
that would be an example where my sense of threat would be high because i would find that there'd be could good possibility that their facts were were fantasy
um-hum um-hum
and then i would feel not only invaded in the sense that someone had obtained information from me that i would rather they didn't and that might be the sense of a spending pattern for instance that that i would have thought to be private but then if it turns out to generate
um-hum um-hum
incorrect things that's even worse uh or if my call rate of of eight to or so a week went up even higher because uh someone had had
um-hum um-hum
they had you pegged
right as a person who had takes unsolicited phones calls and pays money and then all of a sudden you get your thirty a week because now their advertising you right exactly
yeah
yeah
yeah and i one of the problems with the Lotus database was uh that it was uncontrolled access to who would have that information i mean they said they would give it out to only select companies but
uh you know just like software is only given out to customers i mean you can't believe that it would it would be pirated and they wouldn't bother to check that carefully anyway to someone who's offering
right right
you know full cash price for it i mean you know you can't tell what what a company really has to do with it and there's something rather ominous about having
right
virtually anyone any hacker being able to know what your income is what your spending habits are and you know and
and that hacker just has to get into in touch with a sneak thief and suddenly and then what started as an invasion of privacy can be you know an invasion of your actual home
um-hum
and i guess that turns out to be the basic problem with any invasion of privacy is whether or not you're feeling threatened as a result of of it so so maybe that is a a little bit of what privacy is
yeah
yes exactly
um-hum i also hm thought about it because i was uh waiting to talk to you that another thing
that occurred to me is there's not so much invasion of my privacy because i know how to behave such that there isn't
but i realized i have to behave in a certain way in order to not have people invade my privacy if i deviate from social norms of behavior if i run up and down the street yelling or something someone's gonna invade my privacy very quickly and
um-hum
i realize that that i mean
i can take that for granted but i used to i used to live in India and
things are quite different there in terms of that there's less of a sense of privacy in fact it's said that no Indian language has a word for privacy certainly a language i know doesn't but just has a word for loneliness loneliness is the closest you can come which is really quite different
oh that's interesting
but but no concept for wanting to be private
yeah it's it's generally being alone is not a very desirable state at least officially
okay
um so there's not i mean doors don't have latches on them people don't tend to knock you just if there's a door closed you open it because it's in your way you people walk in and out and
as a as a westerner in India i was often surprised and felt my sense of privacy there was quite invaded
oh that that would be
that'd be culturally shocking
you know it it very much is but on the other hand i realized i could go out on the street and act like a complete lunatic
uh-huh
and people would leave me alone
uh-huh
whereas in this country where everyone respects the closed doors very much if you go out and act like the lunatic you you violate the uh the norms of social of um public behavior um
people start paying attention to you very much and they start asking q uestions and in a sense are invite invade invading your privacy although if you know what the social norms are you know quote unquote you asked for it
but it does mean that you have yet another reason to follow a set of social norms
yes
and which isn't alway always the case in all cultures and it wasn't until i was thinking about it just now that i realized that's actually something that's culturally relative
that that is true i hadn't thought about that and and that is fascinating to to think about someone who doesn't know how to say private
um-hum um-hum
and they've really um well i mean i i wonder how people have sex and things like that i mean they obviously you go to India and it's obvious you know the results of sex are quite obvious as the population goes up an extra hundred million every few years um but i i just don't quite
um
there's hope i actually for all for the time i've spent there i still don't quite understand how certain things that i assume and require privacy and require not just that you be alone but actually that you have a sense of privacy
yes
because anyone can be alone for oh some period of time but for me a lot of what i do requires a sense that
there's this invisible barrier around me which people will respect will respect and if that's gone um i i really really don't know how to live very well and i wonder i really do wonder how people do that
yes
that's interesting are there are there any other specific things that that you feel like where where you feel your privacy to be invaded on a day-to-day basis or either growing on a growing frequency
well the classic the other classic examples the Jehovah's Witness or or Mormons or someone knocking at the front door um
which is more intrusive because i have to feel really tell someone to go away and there's that sense of i have now opened my door they now see
what i look like what i live like and normally and they're doing something that normally i really only invite people to because i
okay
any friend anyone any friend anyone i give my number to is welcome to call me but no one is just welcome to come by my house so that is more of a sense of invasion
so that's another example of the invasion because of a nonsolicited
