Privacy is a wonderful thing, a right that I treasure and honor. However, as we stay at home during the pandemic and rely increasingly on the internet to work and stay in touch, we understand that privacy is not the ultimate good or the ultimate bad. It can be either, or it can be both.
We need to become clearer in our own minds when we must fight for our privacy and when we need to sacrifice a certain amount of our privacy for the good of our neighbor.
Before I retired as a physician, I always respected my patients’ right to medical privacy, and took care not to share information without explicit written permission from them. That worked fine much of the time, but there were times when the laws intended to protect my patients actually made it more difficult for all concerned.
If my patient had memory issues, for instance, and I didn’t have permission to speak with the particular family member assisting them with their medications, the chance of medication errors went up dramatically. We could remedy that at an office visit, but only if I knew to ask that they add the family member to their list of people with whom I could communicate – cumbersome at best, but worthwhile in the long run.
Online privacy is even more complex than health care privacy. Like it or not, Apple, Google, and other powers that be know more about us than we even know ourselves. They know where we are at any moment and where we go, how we spend our time, our shopping habits and preferences, our friends, interests, and political persuasions. They can monitor our heart rates and literally track our steps.
Many of the features on our smart devices are indispensable to us. Long ago we stopped adding in our heads in favor of using our ever-ready calculator. Our map-reading skills have atrophied as we have let Google Maps lead our way. Few of us are willing to relinquish the convenience and downright necessity of our smartphones, even knowing that we give up some of our privacy to use them.
But invasion of privacy must be called out and stamped out when it is manipulative. We should, and do, react with shock when we learn that our internet sources know our political affiliation and vulnerabilities, and seek to spread disinformation to influence our vote.
Cambridge Analytica did this in 2016 by sharing our personal data with another government totally without our knowledge or permission. We cannot allow foreign interference in our elections. We need to vigorously defend our privacy in matters like these, and defend free and fair elections in 2020 and beyond.
But we also need to recognize when our personal privacy needs to be sacrificed for the common good. We all know that millions of people are hurting badly during the pandemic. Businesses are paralyzed and industries are crippled. The death toll approaches 100,000 at the time of this writing.
Yet, when we consider that the key to successful reopening is going to require continued social distancing plus vigorous contact tracing, many of us seem reluctant to trade privacy to achieve reopening.
We need to look at what is working in South Korea and other nations battling the coronavirus. People are tracked, and self-isolation is enforced if they’ve been in contact with a carrier of COVID-19. We Americans can’t have it both ways in this. We either enforce social distancing and allow vigorous and comprehensive contact tracing and quarantining of at-risk individuals, or we risk an even more prolonged and deadly battle with the virus.
Privacy is a right we have come to expect and demand. There are times when it is absolutely crucial. There are times, however, when we need to be willing to give up certain aspects of privacy for the greater good. And now is one of those times.
(Millie LaFontaine of Concord is a retired neurologist.)