Too Much Privacy? Or Not Enough? An Exchange on The Limits of Privacy

Amitai Etzioni. The Limits of Privacy. New York: Basic, 1999. 280 pp. $25.00 cloth; $16.00 paper.

Some years ago, a young man got tossed out of Brown University for getting drunk and screaming racial slurs. He sued, of course, arguing that the university had violated his rights. When the inevitable media storm hit, I was in Ontario delivering a talk. Since I teach at Brown, the case of the racial epithets soon hijacked my lecture. After some heated back and forth, two views emerged pretty much along national lines. The Americans focused on the screamer's rights; what he did was repulsive, they kept repeating, but the university should have stood up for free speech. Not a single Canadian agreed. "Every community has to protect its fundamental norms and values," said one Canadian, "and that means taking a firm stand against racism."

Amitai Etzioni's great project has been to push that kind of communal thinking back into American heads. Good societies, writes Etzioni, "carefully balance individual rights and social responsibilities, autonomy and the common good, privacy and . . . public safety" (184). No other public intellectual has done more to rekindle America's communal urge.

Of course, community goes down a lot smoother when it's being pushed onto greedy rich folks or drunken racists. Lately, however, Etzioni has led the communitarian revival into more risky precincts. In The Limits of Privacy, he challenges America's passion for privacy rights.

While civil libertarians are launching great jeremiads about "privacy under siege" or even "the end of privacy," Etzioni trumpets the dangers on the other side. Privacy is too well protected, too privileged. We've let our guard down against pedophiles skulking in the suburbs, criminals lurking behind false IDs, and cyber terrorists zapping their encrypted plans around the globe. Public safety, writes Etzioni, is "systematically neglected out of excessive deference to privacy." After all, he asks, don't you think public authorities ought to be checking whether school bus drivers, pilots, or police officers "are under the influence of illegal drugs?" The school bus driver, in particular, comes up again and again (2, 8, 13).

Etzioni tossed this gauntlet just before the rampage at Columbine High School. Does that trauma lend new urgency to the call for collective health and safety? Or have we already overreacted? The tragedy infuses a new urgency into the underlying question: Just how do we strike that elusive balance between individual privacy and public safety, between personal rights and communal obligations?

Etzioni gives us a clear answer: It depends. He suggests a communitarian's checklist for disrupting privacy rights: First, is there a clear and present danger to public health and safety? Second, can the danger be countered without restricting privacy? Third, if we are forced to introduce curbs, how can we make them minimally intrusive? And, finally, can we treat the undesirable side effects? All perfectly sensible suggestions.

Etzioni applies his rubric to five cases. He concludes that there is too much fussing over private rights in four of them--Megan's laws, HIV testing for infants, national ID cards, and federal authority to decipher encrypted messages. When it comes to medical information, on the other hand, privacy rights are at risk. The argument adds up to more than the sum of individual cases: The American balance, says Etzioni, tips too far toward protecting privacy rights for our own (public) good.

Etzioni weighs the cases in what might be called a communitarian tone. He is generous to the other side, quick to entertain objections, more interested in stirring a discussion than in securing an outcome. I'd hand over my own privacy rights a lot more easily if he were the one moderating the community meetings. But, as James Madison famously warned us, "enlightened statesmen will not always...