[Tango-L] secrecy

[Jeff Gaynor]

Melanie Eskoff wrote:

>I find it interesting that people like this little thing that goes,"if it's a private post, then it's private."  I have never knowingly shared a private post until now.  I found this one too off topic to justify honoring the code of silence.   
>
Code of silence. Hmmmm. Code you say. So this is all the honor system? 
Well yes and no. One comment here. When I was younger, my mother worked 
for a very senior judge on the US Court of Appeals (this is the last 
stop in the US judicial system before the Supreme Court). He once 
commented that really much legal machinery for rights was aimed at 
trying to legally define privacy. I think that it is still one of the 
better summations I have heard and it bears thinking about in every 
context. [Privacy means "free from public scrutiny", as opposed to 
"secrecy".] Many of the outstanding issues in this day take on a very 
different timbre when thought about like this. Take the contentious 
issue of homosexuality. What a lot of moralizers want is to criminalize 
it. In their zeal what they propose is to make private relations a 
matter of public law enforcement. Once in place the police will possibly 
be obliged to pre-emtively investigate any suspicious activities just 
like they would a possible robbery in progress. So regardless of what I 
feel on the topic, regulating human relations this way is out of the 
question -- do you want the police checking you out the next time you 
make nooky-nooky? Best not to start on that slippery slope at all.

The philosophical question here is when/if we should jump into the 
public arena. I think what should apply is a "call for help" standard. A 
mugger should not be able to claim you must give her the privacy to rob 
you, should she? Sour grapes or a desire for embarrassing someone aren't 
really grounds for abrogating privacy and in this invasive age we must 
be careful not to just give it away. This is an especially grievous 
problem in the modern world where a company can ask for all sorts of 
personal data as a prerequisite to their services. If you give it up 
voluntarily then they have not invaded your privacy, you eschew it. The 
simple truth is that people lack privacy mostly because they give it 
away. This erodes where the boundaries are and it gets easier to pass 
laws that encroach on it.

As for the topic at hand, Melanie felt uncomfortable. Alberto probably 
meant no harm, at least judging by his other activities. Does the "call 
for help"  apply here? Only Melanie knows for sure, because she is the 
one who felt that way. Personally I would have handled it differently, 
such as writing back to him for a clarification. Of course, I'm old 
fashioned and think that in most cases everyone should be given a chance 
to be good, since erring is human and it is what we do afterwards that 
shows our character. Don't forget now that if Alberto just made a bad 
decision compounded by linguistic difficulties he now has a black mark 
against him and it doesn't matter what he does or says, he will be 
treated as guilty by a goodly portion of the It is doubtful he will live 
this down for a long time to come. With the information glut of 
contrasting reports we see the final paradox of the Information Age: 
Myth and perception are now more important than truth precisely because 
they are alluring and not bound by the same slow standards of proof.

Jeff