ABSTRACT
While leading scholars of surveillance studies denounce privacy as ‘hyperindividualistic concept’ which is not only blind to the wider societal and political implications of surveillance but also helpless, and therefore useless, against its excesses (Monahan 2006: 23; Stalder 2002; Lyon 2003), other authors argue that “privacy serves not just individual interests but also common, public, and collective purposes” (Regan 1995: 221). Bennett and Raab (2006), drawing on Alan Westin’s “four states of privacy”, 1 counter the view that privacy and social values are necessarily antithetical, noting that “intimacy and anonymity imply the ability of individuals to engage others, rather than signifying their withdrawal from society. These two ‘states’ therefore sustain participation in collective political life, including such modes of activity as associating politically with others or voting without fear of surveillance. As seen in analyses such as these, this relationship between privacy and political participation opens an avenue, even within the conventional [i.e. liberal] paradigm, for considering privacy as a value for society beyond the single individual or beyond a simple aggregate of individuals” (Bennett and Raab 2006: 24).
