Frankly, I can't think of any instance where secrecy is not perverse. There's a difference between minding one's own business, respecting the privacy of others and turning a blind eye towards offensive behavior, whether that behavior be assaultive or extractive. In the U.S. Constitution, both the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments prohibit the deprivation of life, liberty and property, without "due process of law." Which implies, whether the word "property" applies to the material assets (belongings) or natural attributes of the person, if the proper process is followed, deprivation is legal. Indeed, we know that from the experience of having indentured persons legally deprived of their right to travel and, most recently, from both the federal and Arizona state government challenge to any person's right to move about (travel) without impediment under the cover of alien/immigrant control. That deprivation should serve as a caution to every person. Sometimes a secret agenda can be hidden in plain sight.
You'll see that introduction repeated near the end because the following was too long for the box.
In the last few weeks, the shadow economy has become a hot topic. As recently as two days before tax day it was possible to note that the one authority on the shadow economy (also known as "the underground economy" or "the black market") in the United States, Edgar Feigehad been surfaced in the Sacramento Bee. Since then, Google coughs up over two thousand references to the shadow economy in the news. Prominent in the list are references in speeches by President Obama, Senate Majority Leader Reid and Senator Dodd in connection with proposed regulatory reform of the financial system. Big banks and speculators trading in the shadows are the new denizens of the shadow economy. But, that's not whom Feige and a few European researchers were focused on. From their perspective, which I share, the shadow economy being undocumented and unregulated provides evidence that most economic analysis is flawed because of what it leaves out.
This paragraph is going to have to do double duty. Yesterday, I used to introduce a discussion of the shadow economy, trade and exchange which either goes unnoticed or is purposely hidden to escape public supervision and regulation. Today, I want to consider the point at which a transaction between two or more private individuals properly becomes the public's business -- i.e. when public interest in a relationship is called for and respect for privacy is perverted into secrecy.
The supposed need to protect privacy with secrecy first came to my attention while attending juvenile court proceedings which are normally closed to the public (though there's no evidence of widespread interest anyway), to "protect" neglected and abused children from having their deprivation exposed to the community at large. One had to be sworn into a secret cohort of "advocates" in order to learn just how depraved some humans are and one had to promise not to tell anyone else. How that was supposed to "protect" the children, who were certainly aware they'd been abused or violated and by whom, was and is a puzzlement. The elaboration of "don't tell" into DADT is not a clarification.
But, the secrecy that continues to shroud personally abusive behavior, regardless of whether the victims/targets are adults or children, isn't my main topic today. What I want to consider is when and why it is proper for a relationship between two private persons to become subject to public inspection and intervention (presumably what one person does with and by him/herself is nobody's business -- i.e. sacrosanct). What triggers, for example, public participation (more than as a mere witness) in the private partnership we classify as marriage? When is it proper to interfere? The answer, when you come to think of it, seems quite obvious. It's when mutual consent is broken and the relationship becomes violative of one of the parties. In other words, the public has a role when something goes wrong and/or some injury has been done. It's an after-the-fact intervention. But, the alternative, public intervention in a private relationship at the outset would violate its integrity.
"Integrity" is a lovely word. It refers to wholeness, a wholesome existence, the enjoyment of life or, as our Constitution asserts, "the pursuit of happiness." It's the Canadian Constitution which asserts that the people, the public, through their government have an obligation to respect and protect the bodily and psychological integrity of the person -- i.e. his or her privacy. The actual phrase in their Constitution is "security of the person," as the fellow, Morris Manning, who argued the seminal case, Regina v. Morgenthaler, before the Canadian Supreme Court, explained twenty years later, but what it boils down to is that the state has an obligation to protect the bodily integrity of the person and the ramifications are quite extensive. As Mr. Manning explains:
The recognition by the Supreme Court that state interference with bodily integrity and serious state-imposed psychological stress engages the security of the person interest was recently applied in Chaoulli v. Quebec.
Taking the Morgentaler ruling’s principles forward, Supreme Court Justices William Binnie and Louis LeBel were of the view that delays in medical treatment could cause interference with physical and mental well-being, amounting to a deprivation of both physical and psychological personal security.
Given that explanation, I think it is significant that President Obama used the phrase, "bodily integrity," to the consternation of some members of the press, in his discussion of the upcoming nomination of a new Justice to the Supreme Court. Equating the right to privacy with bodily integrity and the state's obligation to "protect" the security of the person would seem to be a significant step towards realizing human rights and the public's role in providing security, rather than secrecy.
(It might be worth noting that the landmark status of Regina v. Morgenthaler was achieved as a direct result of lower court rulings in favor of the individual's rights being appealed and appealed again until the Supreme Court of Canada had the opportunity to throw the offending statute out. Until that happened, deprivation of rights under cover of law was legal. Something to consider when our own Department of Justice, under the direction of Attorney General Holder, makes apparently frivolous arguments, as in Pottawattamie v. McGhee. The law has to be argued to be definitively decided).
When is it necessary to protect the bodily integrity of the person? When is an intervention not itself an attack or an aggravation? Clearly, it's when the person is already under attack, either from natural or man-made forces, and the intervention serves to halt an unwarranted affront -- i.e. an assault to which a person has not given assent. And just as clearly, neither secrecy to cover up the affront, nor the public disregard implicit in DADT, for example, are appropriate responses from those who are charged with the obligation to insure the security of the person. Which is not the same as securing a person by locking her up.
There was a time, not so long ago, but long enough so some are too young to remember, when the recipe for securing the privacy and bodily integrity of women (specifically their hymen) was to lock them into the household and demand that any excursion be supervised by a male guardian. What happened to them in the household was considered private and to be kept secret. I suppose it is progress that heterosexual women need no longer be satisfied with secrecy as the sole source of protection of their privacy. But, the persistence and, indeed, spread of secrecy and a multitude of efforts to sequester all kinds of information is a threat to all of us.
Frankly, I can't think of any instance where secrecy is not perverse. There's a difference between minding one's own business, respecting the privacy of others and turning a blind eye towards offensive behavior, whether that behavior be assaultive or extractive. In the U.S. Constitution, both the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments prohibit the deprivation of life, liberty and property, without "due process of law." Which implies, whether the word "property" applies to the material assets (belongings) or natural attributes of the person, if the proper process is followed, deprivation is legal. Indeed, we know that from the experience of having indentured persons legally deprived of their right to travel and, most recently, from both the federal and Arizona state government challenge to any person's right to move about (travel) without impediment under the cover of alien/immigrant control. That deprivation should serve as a caution to every person. Sometimes a secret agenda can be hidden in plain sight.
That said, it seems even more important to point out that a prohibition against extractive behavior (taking rights or attributes) whether legally or illegally, inside or outside the law, is not a guarantor of protection or respect. Indeed, we have a long history of official negligence under the guise of "protecting privacy" and "nobody's business." Doing or not doing one thing does not insure that an alternative will happen. The Party of No did not invent shirking one's social obligations. And redefining social obligations as some sort of ritualistic expression of niceties doesn't mean they have ceased to exist. "Just say no" is easy, but it has no positive effect. Neither does turning a blind eye and closing one's ears.