Privacy [What Would Hayek Say?]

Technological advancements have brought privacy concerns, especially in the digital world, to the fore like never before.
In this week's "What Would Hayek Say?" we take a look at what Hayek has to say about privacy by drawing on a very revealing footnote from his Law, Legislation and Liberty in which he quotes an author from the 1960s who argues that privacy is the same thing as secrecy and it should be abolished. Hayek was afraid already in the 1960s of the possibilities that are even more real thanks to technological progress today. We examine how privacy and freedom are connected, and how privacy is essential to the protection of minorities and the furthering of civilization. We draw a necessary distinction between privacy and secrecy as well as point to the problems of letting computer algorithms determine our values for us. Finally, we draw some needed distinctions between community, state, and society, which all too often are confused by people who want to rob individuals of their liberty in the name of some social good.
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Martin Gundinger is a Research Fellow at the Austrian Economics Center and Hayek Institut in Vienna, Austria.
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That is hard to follow, due to the stiff nature of him reading all that.