Theorizing Privacy in a Liberal Democracy: Canadian Jurisprudence, Anti-Terrorism, and Social Memory After 9/11
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Valerie Steeves
Abstract
The creation of new search powers in the Canadian Anti-Terrorism Act post-9/11 to make citizens more transparent to state surveillance was less a new phenomenon than an extension of preexisting tendencies to make citizens transparent to the state, so the risks they pose can be efficiently managed. However, 9/11 brought about a shift in the ways in which the Supreme Court of Canada talked about terrorism; terrorism was no longer placed on a continuum of criminal activity but was elevated to a threat to Canadian values as a whole. I argue that, paradoxically, this shift reconnected the Court to earlier discourses about privacy as an essential element of democratic governance and reinvigorated narratives around the importance of the public-private boundary to democratic relationships by situating privacy within narratives informed by social memory. From this perspective, privacy can be conceptualized as a status claim: as citizens, we are entitled to privacy because privacy is the boundary that creates right relationships between citizens and between citizens and the state. This avoids pitting privacy as an individual right against societal interests in transparency because it more fully actualizes Priscilla Regan’s call to theorize the value of privacy as a public good central to liberal democratic governance. This conception also reconnects Alan Westin’s original understanding of privacy as an element of liberal democracy to the sociological research he drew on, enriching the liberal conception of privacy by locating it in the intersubjective communication of cultural actors living in community.
© 2019 by Theoretical Inquiries in Law
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Privacy Law’s Indeterminacy
- Turning Privacy Inside Out
- Re-reading Westin
- Privacy as Protection of the Incomputable Self: From Agnostic to Agonistic Machine Learning
- Schrödinger’s Robot: Privacy in Uncertain States
- Privacy and Manipulation in the Digital Age
- Grappling with “Data Power”: Normative Nudges from Data Protection and Privacy
- Contextual Integrity Up and Down the Data Food Chain
- A Process-based Approach to Informational Privacy and the Case of Big Medical Data
- The Right to Communications Confidentiality in Europe: Protecting Privacy, Freedom of Expression, and Trust
- Theorizing Privacy in a Liberal Democracy: Canadian Jurisprudence, Anti-Terrorism, and Social Memory After 9/11
- Synthesis and Satisfaction: How Philosophy Scholarship Matters
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Privacy Law’s Indeterminacy
- Turning Privacy Inside Out
- Re-reading Westin
- Privacy as Protection of the Incomputable Self: From Agnostic to Agonistic Machine Learning
- Schrödinger’s Robot: Privacy in Uncertain States
- Privacy and Manipulation in the Digital Age
- Grappling with “Data Power”: Normative Nudges from Data Protection and Privacy
- Contextual Integrity Up and Down the Data Food Chain
- A Process-based Approach to Informational Privacy and the Case of Big Medical Data
- The Right to Communications Confidentiality in Europe: Protecting Privacy, Freedom of Expression, and Trust
- Theorizing Privacy in a Liberal Democracy: Canadian Jurisprudence, Anti-Terrorism, and Social Memory After 9/11
- Synthesis and Satisfaction: How Philosophy Scholarship Matters
