I’d like to make a case against privacy laws by starting with a general statement: Politicians and academics who represent rich people tend to justify the need for privacy laws by telling commoners that they’re designed to prevent the press and the government from, for example, listening to their private conversations. Now, I doubt that the press and the government are interested in the private life of my aunt Leah in Loughborough, England, or that of my friend Jose Vejar in The Bronx, NY. Actually, my aunt Leah would welcome some form of interest on the part of her government so that it would know her pension is too small. No, in my view privacy laws have one main purpose: To protect the rich and the powerful from scrutiny and accountability. In countries such as Italy, Greece and Argentina, for example, those who have invoked the right of privacy have been mostly politicians, superstars, financiers and industrialists. In the recent book Privacy (Picador Paper, 194 pages), U.S. journalist Garret Keizer attempts to make the case in favor of some restrictions, but in the process brings to the surface the idea that, in essence, privacy laws safeguard offenses against honor. In Europe, laws were developed to protect honor as a form of pecking order, where all people knew their place in society. Basically, privacy was intended for the aristocrats, not for the commoners. In addition, according to Keizen, even though privacy laws are a “form of resistance to exploitation,” the rich have a greater ability to assert them than the poor do. On the other hand, American laws protect privacy indirectly through laws safeguarding property; and, while in Europe, privacy is intended as a means of protecting dignity, in the U.S. it is meant to protect liberty. For this reason, the American civil libertarians fear that strict privacy laws would remove transparency, accountability and truth in the media. Just recently, the Greek government indicted Kostas Vaxevanis, editor of HotDoc magazine, on the grounds of “privacy violation” for publishing a list of 2,059 people who had foreign Swiss bank accounts (the list was provided by the French Finance Ministry) and for suggesting that the Greek authority should check whether any of those accounts were set up for tax evasion. Vaxevanis toldThe New York Times, “Instead of arresting the tax evaders and the ministers who had the list in their hands, they’re trying to arrest the truth and free journalism.” Granted, there can be excesses. GermanKorean philosopher Byung-Chul Han argues in his book Transparenzgesellschaft, that there are two transparencies, a good one that limits corruption, and a bad one that seeks control. Indeed, institutions such as prisons, the military and monasteries tend to deny or limit privacy as a means of fostering greater control, but those are exceptions that should not affect transparency requirements, especially for elected officials. For example, since 1766, Sweden has allowed its citizens to review all official government documents. The United States passed its Freedom of Information Act in 1966 (while many countries still don’t have one) and, in 1974 enacted the Privacy Act, which also provides individuals with a means by which to seek access to and amend their records, and sets forth various agency record-keeping requirements. Make no mistake: I’m not advocating for unjustified government intrusions, phishing or the mining of private data for commercial purposes or gain. Indeed, those acts should be punished. However, in some parts of the world, strict privacy laws combined with restrictive and unfair defamation laws (covering liability, slander and vilification) could cripple the free press to the advantage of common criminals, corrupted officials, incompetency, negligence, political patronage, abuse of power and financial shenanigans, among other creative ways of evading public scrutiny. Dom Serafini M y T w o C e n t s V I D E O • A G E DE C E M B E R 2 0 1 2 30 MAIN OFFICES 216 EAST 75TH STREET NEW YORK, NY 10021 TEL: (212) 288-3933 FAX: (212) 288-3424 VIDEO AGE WEBSITES: www.videoage.org www.videoagelatino.com www.videoage.it P.O. 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