Privacy as a cover

Can I ask you something please?

If you had just won an international award for most outstanding short film in some prestigious competition, would you want this achievement to be kept private?

Ok, ok,

What if you just received an honour for outstanding service to your local community? Would you want that to be kept private?

Alright,

What about that photo of you at that dress-up party wearing a Nazi uniform and smoking pot? (no disrespect to you P.Harry!)

It seems that most informal debates in the classroom or lecture theatre about privacy focus on the idea that we have the automatic right to be in sole control of the release of all information about us. Therefore it seems that in these debates, the term 'privacy' has become inseparable from the term 'protection' - that is, when we are asked if we are concerned about issues of privacy, the majority of answers are based around protection of our actions. Be them done intentionally or by a lack of judgement at the time, the term 'privacy' did NOT originate to give us protection against the stupid things we do, or more mildly, the mistakes we make. At most, before the era of new media, the term privacy in terms of ourselves I would argue, only covered the protection of our naked bodies; when we get home, we have the right to close the curtains, lock the doors and change our clothes in private.

• If somebody drinks too much knowing they have work the next day and consequently under-perform, this is not a case around which you can argue for the right to privacy. You probably broke your contract and possibly put others in danger.

• If you or anyone else post a picture of you smoking pot on a social networking page, this is not a case around which you can argue for the right to privacy. Smoking pot is illegal [mmmkay]!

Of course there are areas beyond the exposure of the naked body that need to be protected by the idea of privacy - we live in the password era and we have the right to choose who we give our credit card details to. What we are discussing here is the need to take extra responsibility to ensuring that, before debating privacy, we are thinking properly about what information we really have a right to keep private.

The internet is a part of society. It is not a consequence free environment, and Privacy is not a cover.