Political privacy
Encyclopedia
Political privacy has been a concern since voting system
s emerged in ancient times. The secret ballot
is the simplest and most widespread measure to ensure that political views are not known to anyone other than the voter—it is nearly universal in modern democracy
, and considered a basic right of citizenship
. Even where other rights of privacy
do not exist, this type of privacy very often does.
is fundamentally about settling disputes, it puts winners and losers in unique positions to avenge themselves on each other. In a democracy, the winner is physically vulnerable as they often appear in public to explain policies and gain additional support. The loser is also vulnerable as they are subject to the interpretation of criminal justice
by winners - law enforcement is often prejudicial, and an independent judiciary is not always available to ensure fairness in how winners of a political conflict deal with losers. Uncertainty about who supported what measure, and the right to keep one's opinion to oneself and not be required to reveal it except voluntarily (such as by joining a political party
or answering opinion poll
s), aren't generally challenged even by the most strident national security
advocates. In this sense, supporters and detractors of the state have a common position: when operating within the existing legal bounds of a political system
, opinions should be measured only in aggregate.
A jury
also typically provides its opinion only as an aggregate and jurors have the right not to reveal whether they found someone 'guilty' in cases where a unanimous verdict is not required. When found 'not guilty', it is also not revealed who opposed or advocated a 'guilty' verdict - particularly important as the accused will now be set free and might be tempted to seek revenge against those who disbelieved him or her.
the votes of each legislator are supposed to be literally 'representative' of constituents' views and political party
positions - if these are in conflict then that too must be observed by the voters and parties. Representative recall
measures further discipline this by permitting voters to 'fire' their representative during a legislative session. Chairs of committee
s in a legislature may be determined by open vote or by secret ballot, if there are concerns that retribution may apply to a legislator from some particularly powerful central figure advocating a specific candidate:
In Canada
in 2002 the ruling Liberal Party of Canada
under Prime Minister Jean Chrétien
opposed a successful measure by Paul Martin Jr., also a Liberal and widely regarded as Chrétien's rival or successor, to require Canadian House of Commons
committees to choose chairs by secret ballot. The public debate centered on the issue of whether representatives must do public business in public, or whether the Prime Minister's Office was overtly directing that business to a degree unintended by the Canadian Constitution or traditions in a parliamentary democracy. Martin's faction carried the day with support from opposition parties, and many breakaway Liberals who resented their relatively weak power related to that of their Leader - and thus wanted the power to select chairs that he did not approve of, without being clearly identified and thus subject to his retaliation.
in early 2002, an Ontario
federal Liberal MP wrote an ill-advised letter to a constituent telling him that if he wished help on some matter he'd written to the MP about, next time he "had better vote Liberal." Apparently, the MP's office had access to a canvasser's list of the riding and had noted the man's name as having a lawn sign
for a competing candidate during the most recent election. A cynical view is that this is normal behavior for all representatives and that denying opponents favors they grant to supporters is just part of the "spoils of victory".
Political privacy concerns extend far beyond dealings with voting and legislative systems, however. Citizens' opinions on almost anything can be taken as having political implications. For these reasons, opinion pollsters stringently protect respondents' privacy, in order to more accurately gauge their real political temper.
A typical issue of this sort is the wearing of masks during protests and demonstrations, e.g. in the anti-globalization movement
. The hiding of identity as radical views are expressed, e.g. favoring some form of anarchism
, has long been considered a fundamental right:
In England, it is a longstanding tradition to dress as Robin Hood
when protesting privileges of the rich or exploitation of the poor, and more recently when protesting destruction of natural ecology.
Although technically this is a disguise, and demonstrators often break one or more laws during a protest or blockade, historically, there has been broad tolerance of the right to express such political views without necessarily being subject to legal or social retribution. To a degree, this recognizes the need for some means of "blowing off steam", or the system itself demonstrating its power and confidence by choosing restraint. Many nations, however, have now passed laws against masks in protest and demonstration contexts, despite the fact that police in such circumstances very often appear masked and without badge numbers.
Most privacy advocates view such measures as typical of a carceral state
- where the state itself knows everything, and there is neither political nor consumer privacy
nor even much medical privacy
- a special concern is the gathering of biometrics
. This may enable identity theft
by the state itself, framing
citizens whose political views it finds offensive.
The more political privacy is violated, the easier it becomes to frame an innocent person using credible-sounding variations of their views and fabricated recordings. In 2001-2003 these concerns became relevant on the global diplomatic scene, as the reputed capture of recordings of Osama bin Laden
boasting about the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and reputed intercepts of Iraqi Republican Guard
officers conspiring to hide evidence of weapons of mass destruction
from United Nations weapons inspectors, was challenged, especially in the Muslim world
and especially Iraq
, as being "well within the capabilities of the CIA to fabricate."
Credibility of anything other than first-hand evidence being difficult to establish, but motivations for believing hearsay and evidence 'found' without first-hand corroboration from those who were actually there, not to mention probability of torture being used in gaining confessions or other 'intelligence', makes it all but impossible to rule out the conspiracy theories. Accordingly like many political matters it boils down to a question of who is ultimately trustworthy.
Within the United States itself, political privacy of citizens has come into open question, with the government having prepared so-called No-fly lists of individuals with no history of advocating violence or hijacking, but who strongly opposed the Bush Administration
and its ideology. While few individuals were detained for long, many were denied access to flights and thus economic or political opportunities, including prominent members of the Green Party
and the Libertarian Party
, wholly peaceful organizations with no ties to terrorism
.
It is such political harassment and overt singling-out of persons with unpopular views that tends to characterize the first stages of any police state
. Accordingly, civil rights
advocates have little patience for the excuse that these measures "ultimately protect" the citizen. Political privacy may be more of a concern in the future as the capacities of persuasion technology
improve, enabling pitches to be tailored to appeal to one's most fundamental personal beliefs - with or without human labour - making telemarketing scams easier, and making it extremely easy to slant opinion polls to get a desired result. It may also become harder to defend political privacy, where extreme views and strong challenges to the dominant political system are beginning to threaten the power of dominant cliques in society - who tend to prefer in general a zero-accountability carceral state
.
, for instance, a notable advocate of politics
as the necessarily-public form of ethics
, defined politics itself as "resolution of moral conflict, or ethics, in public". From this point of view, one may have no right to political privacy, and even such measures as a secret ballot may be denied based on the grounds that political differences between neighbors or friends must be open, in order to avoid over-empowering some central authority.
Fear of such a central authority, that argument goes, is the problem, and knowing there is no political privacy, people become maximally motivated to ensure that the central authority has no arbitrary power. Junius
said that "the subject who is truly loyal to the Chief Magistrate will neither advise nor submit to arbitrary measures." Knowing that such measures might be directed against oneself may be the strongest possible motivation to avoid advising them against others.
, which contributed to the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, were written under the pseudonym Publius
. Most peer reviewed journals employ anonymous reviewers - and some, such as The Economist
, publish only unattributed views. From classic to modern times, anonymity has proven an effective counter to groupthink
- ossified mind-sets that very often become politically dangerous. The more who author anonymously and "neither confirm nor deny" their authorship, this argument goes, the harder it is to confirm identity, and therefore the harder to intrude into anyone's political privacy.
Mainstream views in North America
tend to weakly support this view, in contrast to very strong support for it by its nations' founders: Benjamin Franklin
said that "those who give up a little liberty to gain a little security, deserve neither." Political liberties being to a degree dependent on basic rights of political privacy and expression of views without retribution, this could be applied to modern contexts to argue strongly against such measures as Total Information Awareness
. Knowing the political views of the citizen and what s/he has done to oppose the state
and its law enforcement, how can an administration or police officer actually behave in a neutral way?
One answer, in modern democracies, is that this is neither a function of the elected administration nor the lower-level legislators nor the police, but is solely in the hands of the independent judiciary - who are supposed to be neutral and appointed by prior administrations of all political views, and well beyond reach of political influence.
Voting system
A voting system or electoral system is a method by which voters make a choice between options, often in an election or on a policy referendum....
s emerged in ancient times. The secret ballot
Secret ballot
The secret ballot is a voting method in which a voter's choices in an election or a referendum are anonymous. The key aim is to ensure the voter records a sincere choice by forestalling attempts to influence the voter by intimidation or bribery. The system is one means of achieving the goal of...
is the simplest and most widespread measure to ensure that political views are not known to anyone other than the voter—it is nearly universal in modern democracy
Democracy
Democracy is generally defined as a form of government in which all adult citizens have an equal say in the decisions that affect their lives. Ideally, this includes equal participation in the proposal, development and passage of legislation into law...
, and considered a basic right of citizenship
Citizenship
Citizenship is the state of being a citizen of a particular social, political, national, or human resource community. Citizenship status, under social contract theory, carries with it both rights and responsibilities...
. Even where other rights of privacy
Privacy
Privacy is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves and thereby reveal themselves selectively...
do not exist, this type of privacy very often does.
Motivation
Because politicsPolitics
Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the...
is fundamentally about settling disputes, it puts winners and losers in unique positions to avenge themselves on each other. In a democracy, the winner is physically vulnerable as they often appear in public to explain policies and gain additional support. The loser is also vulnerable as they are subject to the interpretation of criminal justice
Criminal justice
Criminal Justice is the system of practices and institutions of governments directed at upholding social control, deterring and mitigating crime, or sanctioning those who violate laws with criminal penalties and rehabilitation efforts...
by winners - law enforcement is often prejudicial, and an independent judiciary is not always available to ensure fairness in how winners of a political conflict deal with losers. Uncertainty about who supported what measure, and the right to keep one's opinion to oneself and not be required to reveal it except voluntarily (such as by joining a political party
Political party
A political party is a political organization that typically seeks to influence government policy, usually by nominating their own candidates and trying to seat them in political office. Parties participate in electoral campaigns, educational outreach or protest actions...
or answering opinion poll
Opinion poll
An opinion poll, sometimes simply referred to as a poll is a survey of public opinion from a particular sample. Opinion polls are usually designed to represent the opinions of a population by conducting a series of questions and then extrapolating generalities in ratio or within confidence...
s), aren't generally challenged even by the most strident national security
National security
National security is the requirement to maintain the survival of the state through the use of economic, diplomacy, power projection and political power. The concept developed mostly in the United States of America after World War II...
advocates. In this sense, supporters and detractors of the state have a common position: when operating within the existing legal bounds of a political system
Political system
A political system is a system of politics and government. It is usually compared to the legal system, economic system, cultural system, and other social systems...
, opinions should be measured only in aggregate.
A jury
Jury
A jury is a sworn body of people convened to render an impartial verdict officially submitted to them by a court, or to set a penalty or judgment. Modern juries tend to be found in courts to ascertain the guilt, or lack thereof, in a crime. In Anglophone jurisdictions, the verdict may be guilty,...
also typically provides its opinion only as an aggregate and jurors have the right not to reveal whether they found someone 'guilty' in cases where a unanimous verdict is not required. When found 'not guilty', it is also not revealed who opposed or advocated a 'guilty' verdict - particularly important as the accused will now be set free and might be tempted to seek revenge against those who disbelieved him or her.
In legislatures
Ballot secrecy however is not typically part of legislative procedure, as in a representative democracyRepresentative democracy
Representative democracy is a form of government founded on the principle of elected individuals representing the people, as opposed to autocracy and direct democracy...
the votes of each legislator are supposed to be literally 'representative' of constituents' views and political party
Political party
A political party is a political organization that typically seeks to influence government policy, usually by nominating their own candidates and trying to seat them in political office. Parties participate in electoral campaigns, educational outreach or protest actions...
positions - if these are in conflict then that too must be observed by the voters and parties. Representative recall
Recall election
A recall election is a procedure by which voters can remove an elected official from office through a direct vote before his or her term has ended...
measures further discipline this by permitting voters to 'fire' their representative during a legislative session. Chairs of committee
Committee
A committee is a type of small deliberative assembly that is usually intended to remain subordinate to another, larger deliberative assembly—which when organized so that action on committee requires a vote by all its entitled members, is called the "Committee of the Whole"...
s in a legislature may be determined by open vote or by secret ballot, if there are concerns that retribution may apply to a legislator from some particularly powerful central figure advocating a specific candidate:
In Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
in 2002 the ruling Liberal Party of Canada
Liberal Party of Canada
The Liberal Party of Canada , colloquially known as the Grits, is the oldest federally registered party in Canada. In the conventional political spectrum, the party sits between the centre and the centre-left. Historically the Liberal Party has positioned itself to the left of the Conservative...
under Prime Minister Jean Chrétien
Jean Chrétien
Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien , known commonly as Jean Chrétien is a former Canadian politician who was the 20th Prime Minister of Canada. He served in the position for over ten years, from November 4, 1993 to December 12, 2003....
opposed a successful measure by Paul Martin Jr., also a Liberal and widely regarded as Chrétien's rival or successor, to require Canadian House of Commons
Canadian House of Commons
The House of Commons of Canada is a component of the Parliament of Canada, along with the Sovereign and the Senate. The House of Commons is a democratically elected body, consisting of 308 members known as Members of Parliament...
committees to choose chairs by secret ballot. The public debate centered on the issue of whether representatives must do public business in public, or whether the Prime Minister's Office was overtly directing that business to a degree unintended by the Canadian Constitution or traditions in a parliamentary democracy. Martin's faction carried the day with support from opposition parties, and many breakaway Liberals who resented their relatively weak power related to that of their Leader - and thus wanted the power to select chairs that he did not approve of, without being clearly identified and thus subject to his retaliation.
Political privacy of individuals
Outside legislatures, the political privacy of ordinary citizens has always been an issue. Representatives are supposed to serve citizens equally without regard to how they voted in the most recent election—this would seem to be impossible if it is easy to look up one's vote. In another case in CanadaCanada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
in early 2002, an Ontario
Ontario
Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....
federal Liberal MP wrote an ill-advised letter to a constituent telling him that if he wished help on some matter he'd written to the MP about, next time he "had better vote Liberal." Apparently, the MP's office had access to a canvasser's list of the riding and had noted the man's name as having a lawn sign
Lawn sign
Lawn signs are used for local advertising. They can be used by business such as real estate and are popular in election campaigns in some countries. They are small signs that can be placed on the property of a business or on the lawns of a candidate's supporters...
for a competing candidate during the most recent election. A cynical view is that this is normal behavior for all representatives and that denying opponents favors they grant to supporters is just part of the "spoils of victory".
Political privacy concerns extend far beyond dealings with voting and legislative systems, however. Citizens' opinions on almost anything can be taken as having political implications. For these reasons, opinion pollsters stringently protect respondents' privacy, in order to more accurately gauge their real political temper.
Government encroachment on political privacy
Radical or extreme political opinions that do not achieve expression to a satisfactory degree within a formal electoral system or legal system present a special problem: while all of the above concerns remain, they must be balanced against the concern that the system itself will be directly and violently opposed by those of such views, relatively disadvantaging those who work within the system for change.A typical issue of this sort is the wearing of masks during protests and demonstrations, e.g. in the anti-globalization movement
Anti-globalization movement
The anti-globalization movement, or counter-globalisation movement, is critical of the globalization of corporate capitalism. The movement is also commonly referred to as the global justice movement, alter-globalization movement, anti-globalist movement, anti-corporate globalization movement, or...
. The hiding of identity as radical views are expressed, e.g. favoring some form of anarchism
Anarchism
Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations...
, has long been considered a fundamental right:
In England, it is a longstanding tradition to dress as Robin Hood
Robin Hood
Robin Hood was a heroic outlaw in English folklore. A highly skilled archer and swordsman, he is known for "robbing from the rich and giving to the poor", assisted by a group of fellow outlaws known as his "Merry Men". Traditionally, Robin Hood and his men are depicted wearing Lincoln green clothes....
when protesting privileges of the rich or exploitation of the poor, and more recently when protesting destruction of natural ecology.
Although technically this is a disguise, and demonstrators often break one or more laws during a protest or blockade, historically, there has been broad tolerance of the right to express such political views without necessarily being subject to legal or social retribution. To a degree, this recognizes the need for some means of "blowing off steam", or the system itself demonstrating its power and confidence by choosing restraint. Many nations, however, have now passed laws against masks in protest and demonstration contexts, despite the fact that police in such circumstances very often appear masked and without badge numbers.
Most privacy advocates view such measures as typical of a carceral state
Carceral state
A Carceral archipelago refers to French social theorist Michel Foucault's work on surveillance systems and their technologies over modern societies and its practice of social control and discipline over its population in all areas of social life.Taken from his classic work Discipline and punish...
- where the state itself knows everything, and there is neither political nor consumer privacy
Consumer privacy
Consumer privacy laws and regulations seek to protect any individual from loss of privacy due to failures or limitations of corporate customer privacy measures...
nor even much medical privacy
Medical privacy
The main subject of medical privacy or health privacy is the 'medical record' which historically has been a paper file of the entire medical history of the patient. Various electronic forms of medical records have existed in western countries, but mostly in an unintegrated fashion. This lack of...
- a special concern is the gathering of biometrics
Biometrics
Biometrics As Jain & Ross point out, "the term biometric authentication is perhaps more appropriate than biometrics since the latter has been historically used in the field of statistics to refer to the analysis of biological data [36]" . consists of methods...
. This may enable identity theft
Identity theft
Identity theft is a form of stealing another person's identity in which someone pretends to be someone else by assuming that person's identity, typically in order to access resources or obtain credit and other benefits in that person's name...
by the state itself, framing
Frameup
A frame-up or setup is an American term referring to the act of framing someone, that is, providing false evidence or false testimony in order to falsely prove someone guilty of a crime....
citizens whose political views it finds offensive.
The more political privacy is violated, the easier it becomes to frame an innocent person using credible-sounding variations of their views and fabricated recordings. In 2001-2003 these concerns became relevant on the global diplomatic scene, as the reputed capture of recordings of Osama bin Laden
Osama bin Laden
Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden was the founder of the militant Islamist organization Al-Qaeda, the jihadist organization responsible for the September 11 attacks on the United States and numerous other mass-casualty attacks against civilian and military targets...
boasting about the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and reputed intercepts of Iraqi Republican Guard
Iraqi Republican Guard
The Iraqi Republican Guard was a branch of the Iraqi military during the presidency of Saddam Hussein. It later became the Republican Guard Corps, and then the Republican Guard Forces Command with its expansion into two corps....
officers conspiring to hide evidence of weapons of mass destruction
Weapons of mass destruction
A weapon of mass destruction is a weapon that can kill and bring significant harm to a large number of humans and/or cause great damage to man-made structures , natural structures , or the biosphere in general...
from United Nations weapons inspectors, was challenged, especially in the Muslim world
Muslim world
The term Muslim world has several meanings. In a religious sense, it refers to those who adhere to the teachings of Islam, referred to as Muslims. In a cultural sense, it refers to Islamic civilization, inclusive of non-Muslims living in that civilization...
and especially Iraq
Iraq
Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....
, as being "well within the capabilities of the CIA to fabricate."
Credibility of anything other than first-hand evidence being difficult to establish, but motivations for believing hearsay and evidence 'found' without first-hand corroboration from those who were actually there, not to mention probability of torture being used in gaining confessions or other 'intelligence', makes it all but impossible to rule out the conspiracy theories. Accordingly like many political matters it boils down to a question of who is ultimately trustworthy.
Within the United States itself, political privacy of citizens has come into open question, with the government having prepared so-called No-fly lists of individuals with no history of advocating violence or hijacking, but who strongly opposed the Bush Administration
George W. Bush administration
The presidency of George W. Bush began on January 20, 2001, when he was inaugurated as the 43rd President of the United States of America. The oldest son of former president George H. W. Bush, George W...
and its ideology. While few individuals were detained for long, many were denied access to flights and thus economic or political opportunities, including prominent members of the Green Party
Green Party (United States)
The Green Party of the United States is a nationally recognized political party which officially formed in 1991. It is a voluntary association of state green parties. Prior to national formation, many state affiliates had already formed and were recognized by other state parties...
and the Libertarian Party
Libertarian Party (United States)
The Libertarian Party is the third largest and fastest growing political party in the United States. The political platform of the Libertarian Party reflects its brand of libertarianism, favoring minimally regulated, laissez-faire markets, strong civil liberties, minimally regulated migration...
, wholly peaceful organizations with no ties to terrorism
Terrorism
Terrorism is the systematic use of terror, especially as a means of coercion. In the international community, however, terrorism has no universally agreed, legally binding, criminal law definition...
.
It is such political harassment and overt singling-out of persons with unpopular views that tends to characterize the first stages of any police state
Police state
A police state is one in which the government exercises rigid and repressive controls over the social, economic and political life of the population...
. Accordingly, civil rights
Civil rights
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from unwarranted infringement by governments and private organizations, and ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression.Civil rights include...
advocates have little patience for the excuse that these measures "ultimately protect" the citizen. Political privacy may be more of a concern in the future as the capacities of persuasion technology
Persuasion technology
Persuasive technology is broadly defined as technology that is designed to change attitudes or behaviors of the users through persuasion and social influence, but not through coercion...
improve, enabling pitches to be tailored to appeal to one's most fundamental personal beliefs - with or without human labour - making telemarketing scams easier, and making it extremely easy to slant opinion polls to get a desired result. It may also become harder to defend political privacy, where extreme views and strong challenges to the dominant political system are beginning to threaten the power of dominant cliques in society - who tend to prefer in general a zero-accountability carceral state
Carceral state
A Carceral archipelago refers to French social theorist Michel Foucault's work on surveillance systems and their technologies over modern societies and its practice of social control and discipline over its population in all areas of social life.Taken from his classic work Discipline and punish...
.
Arguments for limitation of political privacy
One response to the issue of political privacy as such is that any political privacy outside the expression of voting is inappropriate. Bernard CrickBernard Crick
Sir Bernard Rowland Crick was a British political theorist and democratic socialist whose views were often summarised as "politics is ethics done in public"...
, for instance, a notable advocate of politics
Politics
Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the...
as the necessarily-public form of ethics
Ethics
Ethics, also known as moral philosophy, is a branch of philosophy that addresses questions about morality—that is, concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, justice and crime, etc.Major branches of ethics include:...
, defined politics itself as "resolution of moral conflict, or ethics, in public". From this point of view, one may have no right to political privacy, and even such measures as a secret ballot may be denied based on the grounds that political differences between neighbors or friends must be open, in order to avoid over-empowering some central authority.
Fear of such a central authority, that argument goes, is the problem, and knowing there is no political privacy, people become maximally motivated to ensure that the central authority has no arbitrary power. Junius
Junius
Junius was the pseudonym of a writer who contributed a series of letters to the Public Advertiser, from 21 January 1769 to 21 January 1772. The signature had been already used, apparently by him, in a letter of 21 November 1768...
said that "the subject who is truly loyal to the Chief Magistrate will neither advise nor submit to arbitrary measures." Knowing that such measures might be directed against oneself may be the strongest possible motivation to avoid advising them against others.
Anonymous authorship of political opinions
Finally, there is the issue of anonymous authorship of opinions. The Federalist PapersFederalist Papers
The Federalist Papers are a series of 85 articles or essays promoting the ratification of the United States Constitution. Seventy-seven of the essays were published serially in The Independent Journal and The New York Packet between October 1787 and August 1788...
, which contributed to the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, were written under the pseudonym Publius
Publius (disambiguation)
Publius is a Roman masculine given name . See Publius.Publius may refer to:-Name:*Publius Valerius Publicola, Roman consul*Publius Clodius Pulcher, Republican politician*Publius Cornelius Scipio, Roman consul...
. Most peer reviewed journals employ anonymous reviewers - and some, such as The Economist
The Economist
The Economist is an English-language weekly news and international affairs publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd. and edited in offices in the City of Westminster, London, England. Continuous publication began under founder James Wilson in September 1843...
, publish only unattributed views. From classic to modern times, anonymity has proven an effective counter to groupthink
Groupthink
Groupthink is a psychological phenomenon that occurs within groups of people. It is the mode of thinking that happens when the desire for harmony in a decision-making group overrides a realistic appraisal of alternatives. Group members try to minimize conflict and reach a consensus decision without...
- ossified mind-sets that very often become politically dangerous. The more who author anonymously and "neither confirm nor deny" their authorship, this argument goes, the harder it is to confirm identity, and therefore the harder to intrude into anyone's political privacy.
Mainstream views in North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
tend to weakly support this view, in contrast to very strong support for it by its nations' founders: Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin
Dr. Benjamin Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, musician, inventor, satirist, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat...
said that "those who give up a little liberty to gain a little security, deserve neither." Political liberties being to a degree dependent on basic rights of political privacy and expression of views without retribution, this could be applied to modern contexts to argue strongly against such measures as Total Information Awareness
Information Awareness Office
The Information Awareness Office was established by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in January 2002 to bring together several DARPA projects focused on applying surveillance and information technology to track and monitor terrorists and other asymmetric threats to national security,...
. Knowing the political views of the citizen and what s/he has done to oppose the state
State (polity)
A state is an organized political community, living under a government. States may be sovereign and may enjoy a monopoly on the legal initiation of force and are not dependent on, or subject to any other power or state. Many states are federated states which participate in a federal union...
and its law enforcement, how can an administration or police officer actually behave in a neutral way?
One answer, in modern democracies, is that this is neither a function of the elected administration nor the lower-level legislators nor the police, but is solely in the hands of the independent judiciary - who are supposed to be neutral and appointed by prior administrations of all political views, and well beyond reach of political influence.