“These days,
the only way you can have a private conversation is to talk to yourself.”
-- “Susan_Gale”
(Board of Wisdom)
Last month,
BSB covered
the saga of Mozilla CEO Brandon Eich, who resigned after amid a torrent of
criticism for his $1000 donation in support of California’s Proposition 8, a
ballot measure that sought to ban same-sex marriage. At the time, there was
considerable discussion about whether public pressure should be directed at an
individual like Eich purely on account of his political beliefs.
More
recently, a similar firestorm erupted in the National Basketball Association,
as Donald Sterling, the octogenarian owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, was
recorded making deeply racist comments. The recording was captured by one of
Sterling’s associates, V. Stiviano, who later gave
it to a third party for “safe keeping” only to have the contents leaked to TMZ.
Recent
reports indicate that the recording was made with consent from both Sterling
and Stiviano (California is a “all-party” (or “two party”) consent state,
whereas New York is a “one-party” state requiring only one individual to have
consented to a recording).
While some
have hailed Stiviano as a “hero”,
others have questioned whether the real story—aside from the vile commentary
unleashed by Sterling—is the nature of private communication in modern life.
NBA great
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar even went so far as to say,
“Shouldn’t we be equally angered by the fact that his private, intimate
conversation was taped and then leaked to the media? Didn’t we just call
to task the NSA for intruding into American citizen’s privacy in such
an un-American way?”
ESPN
columnist Jason Whitlock added:
If TMZ plans to make “pillow talk”
public and the standard is set that “pillow talk” is actionable, it won't be
long before a parade of athletes joins Sterling on Ignorance Island.
A right to privacy is at the very
foundation of American freedoms. It's a core value. It's a mistake to undermine
a core value because we don't like the way a billionaire exercises it. What
happens when a disgruntled lover gives TMZ a tape of a millionaire athlete
expressing a homophobic or anti-Semitic or anti-white perspective?
Lastly, Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby issued
a cautionary warning, “[I]t isn’t only other people’s dirty laundry that the
whole world can get a good look at. It is yours and mine, too. Once our privacy
is gone, don’t count on getting it back.”
So what are
we to make of this? At the outset, we need to define whether the decline in
privacy is a problem in the first place. Presumably, we believe that a
shrinking private sphere will lead to self-censorship and the decline in
discourse that may at the time seem abhorrent but later becomes not only
accepted, but embraced (countless ideas in history follow this trajectory, from
Copernican heliocentrism to marriage equality).
At the same
time, each of us as “public citizens” must be prepared
to shoulder the consequences of our views. But which views? Perhaps those that
we affirmatively choose to share with others. For instance, Brandon Eich contributed
to a public campaign and was held to account in the marketplace. Donald
Sterling did not make such an affirmative choice, though as most others have
noted, given Sterling’s history of behavior, he garners little sympathy.
Beyond
whether a communication was intended to be public or private, are there
important lines to be drawn between politicians and public figures—who we expect
to uphold a certain type of consistency across audiences—and private “everyday”
Americans? The law already differentiates between these classes of persons in
libel law, where public figures must prove “actual malice” to recover. See Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., 418
U.S. 323 (1974).
Of course,
this only begs the question of who constitutes a public figure. It’s easy to
say that a billionaire NBA owner is a public figure—but what of the small
business owner on the corner or the superintendent of a small regional school
district?
None of
these questions are easy to answer, but the Sterling story should generate
conversation about the nature of privacy in the modern age—an issue that we’ve done
little to address, other than using technology to provide a quick fix (here’s
looking at you, Snapchat).
Furthermore,
it acts as a reminder that each of us is aware that people say things they
don’t mean (we’ve all done it) and that attaching permanent pariah status on
another individual for thoughts shared with intimates behind closed doors is
often unfair and short-sighted. A society built on open dialogue and second
(and third) chances cannot function if there is no safe space to discuss
controversial subjects in a constructive manner (again, Sterling’s do not
remotely fit this description, but other controversial comments do).
Now I better
log off and put pen to physical paper. After all, privacy isn’t dead yet.
