Scott Adam's Noprivacyville vs. Sienna Miller's Friends

Scott Adams (Dilbert cartoonist) wrote a piece in March suggesting that lack of privacy might not be so bad after all. If lack of privacy is not bad, then Scott Adams might argue that U.K. actress Sienna Miller, whose phone was hacked by the News of the World, has nothing to complain about.

But Sienna Miller testified today that there was a consequence to her relationships: In her search for the source of the leak, she suspected her own friends of spilling private details to the media. You can imagine that not only did her peace of mind suffer, but her friendships, and her friends themselves, suffered, as a result of the News of the World hacking.

But if you were to take Scott Adams' perspective, you could argue that these events are not from the Noprivacyville set of "rules", because News of World failed to live up to the "no privacy" rule itself. To be compliant, they would have to have disclosed that they were hacking Sienna Miller's phone. The lack of this disclosure, that is, retaining the private information that they were hacking her phone, could be deemed a "breach" of the Noprivacyville "rules".

So how many ways was the hacking wrong? Under current laws, it was both criminal and fraudulent (a civil tort). Under common sense, it was a violation of personal space. And even under the fictitious Noprovacyville rules, it was wrong because News of the World claimed privacy for itself that it wasn't entitled to, or non-reciprocal.

The point? Even if you argue that lack of privacy is a problem only for criminals, which is a typical retort on message boards when people discuss the latest outrage against privacy, then you must concede that observers must fully disclose their observational activities. The failure to disclose surveillance, the failure to disclose an interest in observing, and the failure to disclose conclusions obtained from surveillance are all violations of Noprivacyville-like rules. Surveillance activity itself is subject to the same disclosure rules that apply to those surveyed.