Political Privacy - Arguments For Limitation of Political Privacy

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 Crick, 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.