"Don't Bug Me" - Commentary by Tony Seton

Don’t Bug Me

Privacy is a vital right in a healthy society, on two levels. People need privacy so they can have some peace and quiet so they can reflect. If they didn’t reflect, there’d be little to set them apart from the beasts in the field. People also have a right of privacy as citizens, that is, to be protected from unwarranted intrusions into their personal lives.

Not everybody gets to have privacy. Prison inmates and people in mental institutions, for example. To some extent, politicians and other celebs usually have to give up some of their privacy. By making themselves public figures, they agree to reveal more of themselves, although what they want to expose and what their public might want to know are often not the same thing. What is the public’s right to know? Not as much as they’d like -- we are a voyeuristic species, after all -- but much more than their targets would like.

For the rest of us, the privacy line is hardly straight. Especially with the Patriot Act. Under the banner of national security -- as the government defines it, without adequate judicial review -- the feds can snoop into all corners of our lives, uncovering information that is unrelated to anything germane to protecting our nation. They can look at the sites we visit on the Internet and see what books we check out of the library.

Another angle to this privacy issue is what rights do children have. A Washington court recently ruled that a child enjoyed a presumption of privacy being on the phone. A mother overheard a minor daughter’s conversation with her boyfriend who’d committed a crime. She reported it. The boy was convicted but the conviction is now overturned.

Take it a tragic step further. What about minor girls who want to have an abortion? Should they be allowed to do so without a parent’s permission? Should a girl have to go to a judge in avoidance or defiance of her parents?

Another issue. Should the government have any say over what consenting adults want to do in the privacy of their own homes? People in eleven states said they can’t marry if they are of the same sex. The Canadian Supreme Court ruled otherwise, paving the way for the government to give legal sanction to anyone who wants to marry.

We are a curious society, protective of our own privacy but nosey about the lives of others, and the hypocrisy doesn’t seem an issue.

And that’s SetonnoteS...I’m Tony Seton.