ABSTRACT
Introduction As has already been said elsewhere in this book, digital technology is a doubleedged sword.1 It provides great freedoms, empowering the user to meet virtually with people they would otherwise never encounter, to address large gatherings and to assemble and manage large amounts of data, allowing them to learn, research and direct complex operations. Equally, digital technology can, in an Orwellian fashion, monitor, manage or control the actions of the user.2 Commentators have unfortunately tended to focus on the second, controlling, aspect of digital technology,3 and within this the focus tends to be on the ability of the state to control or manage large amounts of personal (or private) data.4 Such commentators frequently overlook the corresponding privacy interest of the state. This is in part due to the conditioned response of the civil rights movement. It is hard for a commentator schooled in the civil rights tradition to imagine the rights of the state as being under threat, and in the rush to ensure individual informational privacy, by which is usually meant freedom from state interference, the assumption is that the state can look after itself. This in turn is due in part to the persistence of the erroneous image of the state as Orwellian State with the ability in the digital (or informational) age to control all information types and thereby control citizens through information management.5 It is also a reaction to the outdated image of secrecy, even paranoia, which so defined the relationship between the state and the
individual during the Cold War years.6 In fact, it may be argued that the advent of digital technology has empowered the citizen in a way that George Orwell could not have imagined. With the advent of the Internet, citizens may now access volumes of government data hitherto deemed impossible to circulate. The development of digital radio and television has led to televised, live parliamentary coverage, and the advent of 24-hour rolling news. Finally, powerful search engine technology means that a citizen may subject their local representative or any government Minister to scrutiny in a way unimaginable ten years ago.7 It may reasonably be argued that digital technology, rather than trapping the citizen within the web of state control, has empowered the citizen while enmeshing the apparatus of state in a culture of informational freedom. The aim of this chapter is to ask whether our obsession with cultures of freedom (when discussing the state) and privacy (when discussing the individual) are healthy. Are there times when states should be allowed to rely on a particular concept of state privacy (in addition to the already recognised concept of National Security or secrecy)? More simply: should states have a right to informational privacy?
