Without the ability to keep secrets, individuals lose the capacity to distinguish themselves from others, to maintain independent lives, to be complete and autonomous persons. This does not mean that a person actually has to keep secrets to be autonomous, just that she must possess the ability to do so.
The ability to keep secrets implies the ability to disclose secrets selectively, and so the capacity for selective disclosure at one’s own discretion is important to individual autonomy as well.
Secrecy is a form of power. The ability to protect a secret, to preserve one’s privacy, is a form of power. The ability to penetrate secrets, to learn them, to use them, is also a form of power. Secrecy empowers, secrecy protects, secrecy hurts. The ability to learn a person’s secrets without his or her knowledge — to pierce a person’s privacy in secret — is a greater power still.
Cell phones are like a drivers license. It is really hard to function in the modern world without one, but they reveal a lot of information about you that you might not want to share.
Surfing the internet can leave a huge data trail behind. Private browsing helps cover digital tracks.
Red light cameras and speed enforcement cameras are a big part of the problem. These cash machines are not intended to, and do not increase safety.
When you want to avoid private investigators then you should be cognizant that the economic resources of the person or entity that might be investigating you is also a clue to how much surveillance is actually being conducted on you.
