Irenic Road

Privacy: Privilege or Right?

Nicholar Carr, my favorite information technology skeptic, has written a great post on privacy with respect to the Gmail security breach and Facebook’s “enhanced” privacy options:

For a public figure to say “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place” is, at the most practical of levels, incredibly rash. You’re essentially extending an open invitation to reporters to publish anything about your life that they can uncover. (Ask Gary Hart.) The statement also paints Schmidt as a hypocrite. In 2005, he threw a legendary hissy fit when CNET’s Elinor Mills, in an article about privacy, published some details about his residence, his finances, and his politics that she had uncovered through Google searches. Google infamously cut off all contact with CNET for a couple of months. Schmidt didn’t seem so casual about the value of privacy when his own was at stake.

The China-based cyber attack, which apparently came to Google’s attention just a few days after the CNBC interview, makes Schmidt’s remarks about privacy and deferring to “the authorities” seem not just foolhardy but reprehensible. When the news reached Schmidt that some Gmail accounts had been compromised, perhaps endangering Chinese dissidents, did he shrug his shoulders and say, “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place”? Did he say that Gmail customers need to understand that sometimes “the authorities” will have access to their messages? Judging by Google’s reaction to the attack, it takes the privacy of its own networks extremely seriously – as well it should. The next time Schmidt is asked about privacy, he should remember that.

I’ve long been aware that Google and Facebook’s best interests do not entirely align with my own, but I was most intrigued by his concept of the “personal Green Zone”:

If you exist within a personal Green Zone of private jets, fenced off hideaways, and firewalls maintained by the country’s best law firms and PR agencies, it’s hardly a surprise that you’d eventually come to see privacy more as a privilege than a right.

When people like Schmidt insinuate that privacy doesn’t exist I think they’re arguing in good faith, because in their personal experience this is surely true. A high profile, celebrity CEO is going to have a tough time maintaining much privacy. It comes with the territory. Someone in his shoes can’t even answer his own doorbell for fear of being kidnapped or mugged. (This almost happened to Warren Buffett’s wife.)

Privacy is indeed a luxury, whether or not it ought to be. I once worked at company where every year the president/owner threw a nice holiday party at the local country club for the entire company. Toward the end of the evening he would give a blathering speech about how “it was a very good year” and then call each employee forward to shake his hand and give him a bonus check. Reading the addresses on the envelopes, he’d invariably butcher the names of the Southeast Asians who worked in the factory. “Fu- WONG En-GOO-yen…” No one would get up, so he’d read the next name. “Moo-WOY TRAIN… hmm, same address… they must be brothers!” Though he was a certified loon, it puts these IT tycoons’ remarks in perspective. They’re hardly aware of how the poor live, and they build their lives around avoiding as many people as possible who aren’t of their own economic class. Hollywood elites and Paris Hilton excepted, many of the richest people are also the most “private.” Products and services aimed at the rich are usually marketed as exclusive or private.

I understand privacy in Aristotelian terms, as a mean between the extremes of The Truman Show and The Invisible Man. We all have a natural need for some level of privacy, but one the most obvious ways wealth divides people is by fostering excessive privacy.  Given the opportunity most people seek to shelter themselves from the pains of this world, but it’s easy to go to far and insulate ourselves with indifference to the point of obliviousness, as these corporate leaders demonstrate.

Notes on Matthew 15

Here are a few notes on Matthew Chapter 15 that I would’ve brought up at Bible study if I were able to attend tonight.

Clean and Unclean

The Mishnah (the written version of the “tradition of the elders” mentioned here) records debates on the problem of people swearing their property to God by declaring it qorban in order to avoid paying debts, and eventually the rabbis decided this was unlawful. But in Jesus’s time it amounted to a loophole in the law, and was apparently abused to avoid responsibility. This is also consistent with Jesus’s teaching on swearing oaths in Mt 5:37.

From what I can tell, scholars are divided on whether Jesus “declared all foods clean,” as the parallel passage in Mark states. Given the conflict over this issue in the early church, this apparently straightforward interpretation seems doubtful. This passage is not in Luke, and Acts 10:9-23 seems to suggest it was only made clear by Peter’s vision. Matthew leaves out Mark’s parenthetical statement, and includes the additional section about the Pharisees being “blind guides.” It looks like Matthew understands this as a lesson in the way exterior forms and practices of religion can become blind guides. At Immersion Thursday night, Justin referenced this passage and pointed out that today, we act like Pharisees we think “How come your disciples don’t go to church on Sunday/ dress up for church/ serve communion like we do/ etc.

The Faith of the Canaanite Woman

On the surface, this story looks embarrassing. Why would Jesus ignore and humiliate this poor woman before finally healing her daughter?

First of all, it would’ve been unseemly for Jesus, a Jewish teacher, to speak to any woman in public, let alone a Gentile woman. His disciples tacitly acknowledge this when they ask him to send her away. Instead, he decides to show them what their cultural attitudes look like when fully expressed. His first response, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel” is technically true. During his ministry he spent most of his time in Galilee and Judea reaching out to the Jews, but Jesus was also in the act of expanding the definition of “Israel” to include all who follow Him. The woman persists, saying “Lord, help me.” In response Jesus suggests she and other Gentiles are little dogs (the Greek is diminutive). A dog in the Middle East then and now was not a pet, but a filthy street animal only slightly less unclean than a pig. This is an insult, but it would’ve been a prejudice shared by most Jews. Even then she persists, playfully suggesting “even little dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” At that, Jesus, who at first “spoke not a word” says “Woman, you have great faith!” (“Woman” would’ve been a respectful form of address.) “Your requested is granted.”

Instead of the woman, it is the disciples who are humiliated here. It seems likely Jesus chose for this incident to parallel Elijah’s encounter with the widow from Zarephath of Sidon in 1 Kings 17:17-24. There Elijah’s heals the woman’s son after stretches out over him three times and cries out for God to heal him. This makes doubly clear that God’s love and grace is for all people, not just the Jews.