Privacy, Secrecy, Idiocy: A Response to Mark Neocleous

MARK Neocleous’s very challenging paper questions traditional assumptions and the strategies based on them concerning the nature of state secrecy and its relation to privacy. According to the author, “secrecy is integral to the nature of state power. It has little to do with political culture and everything to do with the institutionalization of political power in the state over the last 500 years. As such, secrecy cannot be eradicated until the state itself becomes obsolete; to think otherwise is to succumb to the mythology of modern liberalism.” Neocleous concludes that privacy splits individuals into public and private selves. The right to privacy confirms the processes of individualization and commodification , which are, ironically, precisely the phenomena to reject in order to achieve the goals set by the fight for privacy. I agree with the author’s basic statement. Strengthening privacy protection does not necessarily promote the position of individuals and collectives in the struggle for freedom from undesirable exposure to the state and other factors of power. Indeed, in some cases the effective defense of privacy unavoidably reinforces the capacity of the state to keep the public from its operations. The secrecy surrounding taxes is an example. However, questions emerge with regard to the paper’s conclusions . First, it has to be decided, in the course of “combating the state collectively,” whether the goal is the destruction of the unavoidably secretive state. In that case the current political SOCIAL RESEARCH, Vol. 69, No. 1 (Spring 2002) Privacy, Secrecy, Idiocy: A Response to Mark Neocleous BY ISTVÁN SZIKINGER power and civil society could be unified. This necessarily would lead to the collapse of market competition, which is significantly bound to protection of business secrets and attempts to learn confidential information about the intentions and plans of other actors. Thus, dissolution of the liberal formula certainly raises the issue of socialism. We have some experience with this and for the time being one can conclude that merger of private and public does not seem to be the best way to promote social welfare as it is broadly understood. If we do not challenge the entire social structure, the real problem becomes whether one can achieve a better position in the struggle for controlling the state instead of being controlled by it. This is the original idea of substituting the police state with one based on the rule of law. I admit, again, that exposure to public power is growing and is related to the point elaborated by Neocleous . But it is dubious proposition that destruction of privacy and its guarantees would enhance the possibility that civil society could decrease the gap between state and nonstate interests. One has to emphasize that, even according to the author, secrecy is one of the essential attributes of the modern state. The question is, therefore, would more openness combined with organization based on collective knowledge and collective efforts result in changing the oppressive tendencies in the field of state power? My answer is no. As the author correctly notes, states use secrecy to maintain separation , order society according to the will of the ruling groups, and achieve their goals by referring to the need for confidentiality. As a result, a shift in attitudes about traditional perspectives on privacy will trigger the mobilization of the system that protects state interests (that is, the mechanisms of oppression). In other words, the state perceives the organized public as an enemy. Strengthening the public by abandoning the traditional division of public-private does not eliminate the phenomenon that, according to the author, belongs to the very nature or the state. On the contrary, public power will be more deeply embedded in the social current. 112 SOCIAL RESEARCH For example, gathering information on ethnic and national minorities illustrates how national security agencies continue their efforts, despite the obvious absence of any real need in systems with open and and democratic structures. In Hungary, the 1993 Act on National and Ethnic Minorities provided for the establishment of minority self-governments. These are special local authorities (without substantial powers) that express the special needs of groups different from the Hungarian majority. According to the report of the Office of the Minority...