Reference:
At the same time as public discourse becomes increasingly shaped around private, personal matters, we see an increased concern with the protection of individuals' privacy - especially from the media. Recent years have given rise to a new, subjective approach to free speech and privacy rights that alters their meaning.

The current interest in granting new privacy rights relies, not on the assumption that people need protection from interference into their private lives by the state, but that people need a state law to protect them from public discussion of their private lives. It is not that public discussion of private matters is viewed as a problem per se - it is seen as a problem if the subject of this discussion feels hurt or offended.
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The right to privacy has been redefined as a state protection from hurtful public discussion; and the right to free speech has become qualified by restricting speech that may cause offence. The decision about what can and cannot be said in the public realm about people's private lives is an arbitrary one, taken by a judge.

These two apparently conflicting rights are codified in the Human Rights Act (1998), in the form of Article 10 on a right to free expression and Article 8 on a right to privacy.
Spiked

Notes:
Traditionally, when there was a real distinction between a public and a private sphere, the realm of free speech was pretty clear.

Should it be: Information wants to be fed?

Reference:
What journalists, filmmakers and photographers say, write, broadcast or photograph is taken to be as intrusive into people's private lives as somebody bursting into their bedroom.

The contemporary conception of privacy is also problematic. Privacy, as it is traditionally understood, means freedom from intrusion by the state into one's private life.
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Celebrities such as Hollywood star George Clooney complain about video stalkers and the paparazzi engaging in a 'malicious free-for-all' to report their private lives (10), but reveal details about their private life in magazine interviews.
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But should free expression be treated on a par with privacy in the first place?
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However, the more Lords, judges and MPs try to assert their free speech credentials, the more hollow their pronouncements sound. As is shown both by the way the UK's HRA has been written, and by the results of recent cases, free speech is being censored in the name of privacy.

In fact, this is not privacy legislation by the 'back door', but by the 'front door'. The Human Rights Act is intended to, and in practice is used to, 'balance' competing rights with each other - and the outcome of this balancing is that free speech is qualified and restricted.
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Under the Human Rights Act, the right to freedom of expression (Article 10) is considered important, but it is not an absolute right. Article 10 can be curtailed in the interests of 'national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.'
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This meant that the source and the newspaper had broken a duty of confidentiality, not by publishing the fact of her drug therapy, but the details.
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Labour MP Clive Soley summed up the disquiet that many now feel with the personally focused content of much news. 'In terms of media intrusiveness there is too much intrusiveness about sex and not enough on serious corruption,' he said. 'And, who investigates the press?'
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only 20 percent of Britons surveyed trusted the British press, compared to a EU average of 46 percent who trusted their national newspapers (38).
Spiked

Notes:
These articles are based on UK statutes.

Some of the examples given are media running stories about public events -- workplace or being in the out-of-doors. Traditionally, this defined, in great measure, the public sphere.

Reference:
Our attitude to free speech is also an important indicator of how we see ourselves, and each other. A society based on the notion of robust individuals who value their liberty and wish to play a role in public debate will recognise the importance of free speech. Today's society is increasingly based on the idea of emotionally fragile individuals, in need of protection from words and images, and for whom other people pose more of a problem than the state. This is the context in which new privacy protections are brought in.

'Balancing' a right to free speech with any other right is undemocratic. In practice it means that how you wish to express yourself and what you wish to know is qualified by somebody else's view of what you should think, say and inform yourself about.


Furthermore, qualifying free speech for reasons of privacy, distress or offence emasculates what freedom means. An absolute right to freedom of expression neither physically harms anybody nor deprives them of their property. Nonetheless, British law and culture is beginning to treat words and images as if they can be as harmful as physical actions.
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The development of new laws and codes on privacy, designed to regulate the media, is likely only to encourage new demands for censorship.
Spike

Notes:
In a sense, this is the same kind of issue in America with copyrights -- that words and images (thoughts and ideas) are property, a physical thing. Censorship and suppression of innovation are of the same type.

Reference:
But discussions about the quality of speech should be distinct from the question of whether free speech on these trivial matters ought to be regulated. That the rise of trivia is increasingly used to justify regulation ends up confusing the two debates.
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Those demanding changes in media standards today are often those seeking to control their own PR, or to protect lucrative financial deals based on selling their private information. ... The supermodel went on to win damages against the newspaper and discuss her personal life in Hello! magazine.
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It is not only the overdose of celebrity coverage that is the problem. Rather there is a cultural shift in the way public issues are addressed generally. ... The classic Who-What-Where-When-Why news reporting formula is now likely to be heavily weighted in terms of 'Feel': what people feel about what happened, what the reporter feels about what happened and what people feel about others feelings about what happened.
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The culture of our times is one that deifies 'survivors' who have unique stories to tell and emotions to recount. ... The way the rules are framed means that a Hollywood star can tell us the secrets of their soul, but privacy restrictions limit the ability of anyone else to find out the truth about what they are saying.
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Politicians, academics and campaigners today routinely frame public issues in emotional terms.
Spiked

Notes:

Reference:
Increasingly today, free speech tends to be qualified by its association with a 'right to know'. This defines permissible speech according to what somebody thinks the public should know about. But what if the issue at stake relates, not to what is assumed to be something of interest to the public, but to what is important - regardless of whether the public wants to know about it or not?
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But to use private behaviour as the chief basis for political discussion degrades political debate. People's public actions become assessed primarily in terms of their private morals and motives, rather than according to the success or failure of their public achievement (11).
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There is no clearly definable right to know about an individual's private life. Nor, I would argue, should there be. What should exist is free speech - which includes the freedom to talk about what you think others should know.
Spiked

Notes:

Reference:
The discussion about the public interest is usually about the quality of speech - a sometimes useful debate about our culture of reporting and journalism. But in the debate on speech regulation, the quality of speech, or what is in the public interest, is used to justify what should be allowable - and this represents a confusion of two separate debates.
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The idea of the public interest used to mean matters of public policy or issues of social importance. Today, however, nobody seems to agree on its definition.
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People are volunteering the kind of information that judges and media regulators define as being not in the public interest. This undermines the usefulness of the public interest as a justification for publishing a particular story. It also makes it more difficult for the courts to censor stories just because they are not in the public interest. ... Yet however problematic the use of 'the public interest' has been as a justification for censorship, when it comes to journalistic standards it is a notion worth retaining.
Spiked

Notes:

Reference:
a billionaire would be able—and therefore willing—to pay more than a pauper for the same improvement in environmental quality, even though both cared about it with equal intensity. Some critics dislike BCA because it reduces benefits to pure dollar amounts. But BCA analysts use dollars to estimate benefits because there simply is no other way to directly measure the intensity with which people desire something.
The Library of Economics

Notes:
Presumed cost is not a direct way. It is a "simple" way because it assumes that a value system is equivalent to a pricing structure.

Reference:
Those who believe that particular resources would be more valuably (more efficiently) employed in some other way can raise the price and bid them away from the current users.
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The crucial missing element is private property. Because so many of the key resources employed by commuters are not privately owned, commuters are not required to bid for their use and to pay a price that reflects their value to others. Users pay no money prices for resources such as urban air and urban streets. Therefore, those goods are used as if they were free resources.
The Library of Economics

Notes:
But when doing BCA, one is allowed to include value of non-price items, even though they are reduced to a dollar amount. Economic efficiency has to be seen as a subset of a more global evaluation means and ends.

Theoretically, if *everything* was privatized, then perhaps price could be a sole measurement of evaluation. However, that just ain't gonna happen.

Reference:
Perhaps the consequences of the GOP agenda – small government and very large corporations – are unintended, but the result is to place profits over democracy. Some examples:
greater Democracy

Notes:
A good list of 10 or so items of where Big Bet corporation strategy is at odds with civil government.

Reference:
What we're seeing is a culture clash; it's happening in many areas of security. Attorney General Ashcroft is working to keep details of many antiterrorism countermeasures secret so as not to educate the terrorists. But at the same time, the people -- to whom he is ultimately accountable -- would not be allowed to evaluate the countermeasures, or comment on their efficacy. Security couldn't improve because there'd be no public debate or public education. ... For example, in the master key case, even if there weren't more secure designs available, many customers might have decided not to use master keying if they knew how easy it was for an attacker to make his own master key.
Counterpan

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