Privacy

A thought may need somewhere to be mistaken before it is ready to be defended. A person may need to stop being publicly legible for a while. Privacy protects those possibilities as well as secrets.

Information changes character when it travels. A message to a friend, a medical record, and a model’s inference about someone are not interchangeable permissions to know them. Being able to derive something does not establish a right to use it.

Begin with what you hold

Ask why you have each category of another person’s information, who can reach it, how long the reason lasts, and what a change of owner would permit. Explain the answer in language the person could contest.

Collect less where less will do. Delete when the purpose and legitimate duties have ended. Do not treat inexpensive storage as a reason in itself. A private life is not raw material awaiting a sufficiently useful application.

But do not use privacy to erase an institution’s wrongdoing. Records may be needed for care, a legal duty, a contested decision or someone else’s redress. Limit access and identifying detail where possible. State the reason for retention and when it will be reviewed. The case for forgetting leaves that conflict unresolved where it deserves to remain unresolved.

Presence without inspection

Knowing where someone is does not establish that they agreed to be followed. Reading a private message does not make the relationship more honest. A tool that makes checking easy can displace the ordinary act of asking.

Care sometimes requires records and intervention. It also requires limits on the person who claims to be caring. The question is not answered by declaring either safety or privacy absolute.

Our own processing is described in the privacy policy. A spiritual statement cannot replace an accurate account of what this website and its providers actually receive.