Publicity, Privacy and Secrecy

Abstract

which, I think, are related: first, a tendency toward too much publicity, with a consequent disregard of the individual's right of privacy; and second, a tendency toward too little publicity, with a consequent increase of secrecy, areas hitherto considered public. Thus we have both too much and too little publicity, with grave consequences for important democratic values. That publicity has a vital connection with democracy has always been recognized. It has always been favored by democrats and resisted by their opponents. One of the first demands of the ancient Greek democrats was for the publication of the laws, for, without publicity, equality before the law was impossible and arbitrariness the administration of justice was the rule. In the fully developed democracy of fifthcentury Athens, the official acts of every magistrate were subjected to the most careful scrutiny of his fellow citizens.' Public business was conducted public but this did not preclude the recognition of an important area of privacy for the individual, as Pericles points out the Funeral Oration: The freedom which we enjoy our government extends also to our ordinary life. There, far from exercising a jealous surveillance over each other, we do not feel called upon to be angry with our neighbor for doing what he likes, or even to indulge those injurious looks which cannot fail to be offensive, although they inflict no positive penalty.2 Thus, while secrecy public affairs was abhorrent on the ground that it permitted aristocratic conspiracies and the perversion of the principle of equality, there still remained a vital area of individual life free from the control of the state or of a tyrannical public opinion. The Athenians, however, experienced the same difficulties maintaining the proper line between the public and private spheres as we have. Thus, during the Peloponnesian War, under the influence of fear engendered by threats from abroad and oligarchic plots from within, the Athenians redrew the line and began to suspect the motives and good faith of innocent people whose loyalty had been impugned by self-seeking informers. Instead of testing the informers, says Thucydides, in their