Is privacy a right?

What is privacy?

Privacy is a fundamental right, essential to autonomy and the protection of human dignity, serving as the foundation upon which many other human rights are built.[1]

Privacy enables us to create barriers and manage boundaries to protect ourselves from unwarranted interference in our lives, which allows us to negotiate who we are and how we want to interact with the world around us. Privacy helps us establish boundaries to limit who has access to our bodies, places and things, as well as our communications and our information.

The rules that protect privacy give us the ability to assert our rights in the face of significant power imbalances.

As a result, privacy is an essential way we seek to protect ourselves and society against arbitrary and unjustified use of power, by reducing what can be known about us and done to us, while protecting us from others who may wish to exert control.

Privacy is essential to who we are as human beings, and we make decisions about it every single day. It gives us a space to be ourselves without judgement, allows us to think freely without discrimination, and is an important element of giving us control over who knows what about us.

Privacy is a qualified, fundamental human right. The right to privacy is articulated in all of the major international and regional human rights instruments, including:

United Nations Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) 1948, Article 12: “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.”

International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) 1966, Article 17: “1. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to unlawful attacks on his honour or reputation. 2. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.”

The right to privacy is also included in:

• Article 14 of the United Nations Convention on Migrant Workers;
• Article 16 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child;
• Article 10 of the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child;
• Article 4 of the African Union Principles on Freedom of Expression (the right of access to information);
• Article 11 of the American Convention on Human Rights;
• Article 5 of the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man,
• Articles 16 and 21 of the Arab Charter on Human Rights;
• Article 21 of the ASEAN Human Rights Declaration; and
• Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
• Article 5 of the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man,
• Articles 16 and 21 of the Arab Charter on Human Rights;
• Article 21 of the ASEAN Human Rights Declaration; and
• Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

(source: https://www.privacyinternational.org/explainer/56/what-privacy)

Attending privacy is indeed a human right, why should financial data somehow fall outside the realm of this privacy right?

Authoritarian surveillance states would always be able to “peek” inside your digital wallet, check to see how much money you had in there, and then to freeze that money at any time that you committed any action that went against the interests of the state.

Why do we even need privacy?

“I’ve got nothing to hide. I’m not a criminal.”

Glenn Greenwald has a great Ted Talk on this very question. “I’ve got nothing to hide” is the classic defense of people who’ve thought very little about privacy and what it means.[2]

In the talk, Greenwald says if you’ve got nothing to hide then go ahead and give me the password to your private email. Not your work email. Your private email. I will go through it every day for three months and anything that I find interesting I will just post on social media.

Still got nothing to hide?

Privacy doesn’t have anything to do with being a criminal.

None of us want our private lives aired to the world. Just as we don’t want the neighbors looking in our windows when we walk around naked and we don’t want someone eavesdropping as we whisper sweet nothings to our lover, we don’t want some cold bureaucrat or corporation anonymously monitoring every second of every day of our lives. [3]

Centralized digital money means the end of reasonable checks and balances. If you disagree with the people in power now, you can still put your money where you mouth is and resist.

When central powers have complete control of purely digital money all that will end.

The end of cash means the end of free choice.

And that’s where privacy coins come back into the picture.[3]

Privacy coins give you the peace of mind of knowing that a government regulator or criminal can’t lock down your financial assets. Conceal $CCX acts in the same way, allowing people to remain anonymous while also protecting their financial data and personal messages from mass data collection or government surveillance. From this perspective, it becomes very difficult to ban privacy coins without simultaneously banning certain basic human rights.

https://medium.com/@ConcealNetwork

Sources:
[1] https://www.privacyinternational.org/explainer/56/what-privacy
[2] https://www.ted.com/talks/glenn_greenwald_why_privacy_matters
[3] https://hackernoon.com/surviving-crypto-winter-part-three-why-privacy-coins-will-rule-the-next-bull-run-7a50a093e596

Recommend reading:
[A] https://paytechlaw.com/en/anonymous-payments-2/
[B] “Schönes Neues Geld” (“brave new money”) by Handelsblatt journalist Dr. Norbert Häring
[C] https://medium.com/@ConcealNetwork/what-is-conceal-28c8468b038d