This raises some serious privacy concerns, no? There is, of course, a need for public oversight of state institutions and how money is allocated, but listing the salaries of particular individuals by name seems to overshoot acceptable transparency.
Shawn, what are the specific privacy concerns? I initialy agreed with your post, then I disagreed. Now the issue confuses me. Is the information infringing something? If so, what? Also, what conditions make transparency acceptable?
Generally speaking, one's personal income is private information and so the public revelation of this information could easily be seen as a violation of one's privacy. ASU is a state institution and so the salaries of its employees is a matter of public record. Agreeing to employment probably implies consent to this and so it's not really an issue.
The question I was raising was whether this information should be public. There is a need for transparent accounting of government expenditures, but I was wondering if there was middle ground here: such as publishing the salaries and ranks, but not the individual's name.
I agree that middle ground is possible. I also understand the position in which ASU employees are. I also argree that whether or not the income info should be public is the central question.
I want you to justify why anyone's income, govt. or otherwise, should be private information. Put differently, why should protections exist for income information?
Also, who should make and enforce those protections?
I'll answer that in a way you're sure not to like. The burden should be on those who think that the information is not private. Why should the public have access to this, or any, information? The presumption should be that an individual's information or the details of a contract are private. Those who want this information have to defeat the presumption to get the information. Much like for search warrant. The presumption is that the police do not have the authority to enter one's home unless the presumption can be defeated in front of a judge.
The state, in its duty of rights protecting, should protect privacy rights as well. As is largely the case, common law would mark out what kind of situations that defeat the presumption.
Ok, you answered one question, but you are avoiding the primary one. Why should we consider income information as private information? Why is the presumption to protect that information and not to publicize it?
Here is my motivation for asking; perhaps that will help you. In all of your posts you assume that income information is and should be private. I am questioning that assumption. Give me some reasons why income information simpliciter should be private information.
The case for income information being private is different than any other personal information: my weight, my birthday, my address, my favorite type of jellybean. At the same time, I don't think the income is fully private. Income information is the product of a contractual agreement with another individual. It is, then, not entirely my own, but shared with the other parties to the contract.
I am not going to try and make the case generally for privacy. So I take what you are asking me is why income should be included in this.
I am not entirely sure, but let's try the following. Income information is something you cannot come to know without asking me. (or my employer, but let's come back to that). That makes it inherently non-public. Unlike my hair color or height, which you can just discover by looking.
Back to the employer. If I can unilaterally disclose my income, why can't my employer? I am not sure, maybe they can. But even so, the information still needs to be disclosed by the relevant parties and so is inherently non-public.
Hmmmm, let's make a dichotomy. On one end we have physical features and on the other we have information.
Physical features are those features like hair color, skin tone, etc., which one can observe of another in public.
'Information' means a class of things that include a person's favorite jelly bean flavor, weight, family history etc. A person must ask another for information.
For the sake of the argument, I buy your distinction between public and private. So physical features are observable and thus publicly knowable.
Let's look at the other side of the dichotomy. Let's make another distinction. We have information that is private and information that is not private.
Non-private info is the info that the government should not protect. For instance, a person's favorite jelly bean flavor, address, etc.
Private info is the info that the government should protect, as you stated in your earlier post about enforcement. In this catergory you place income information. Perhaps a person's bank account amounts, medical history, pre-nup content, etc., also fall in here.
If you grant the second distinction, please explain why income information falls into the private information catergory and not the non-private info catergory?
That is, granting that information is unobservable in public, and that some information about an individual should be public, while other information should be private, and thus protected by the government; then why should income info be private info?
If you do not buy the second distinction (or the first), why not? Should the government protect all information? If you argue that way, you commit yourself to arguing that the government should protect a person's favorite jelly bean flavor from the prying eyes of the public.
I am not entirely comfortable with the distinctions as you have drawn them, but I am not sure why. I'll have to think on that for a bit. So for the time being I'll grant them. My response to the question is essentially what I said earlier. I don't have a specific reason for the income to be private as opposed to non-private. My presumption is that information is private unless it is shown that there are good reasons for the disclosure of this information. So again, I'll turn the tables: why should this information be public?
So what about jelly beans? This would seem to imply that the my favorite jelly bean flavor is private information and if disclosed without my consent would be a violation of my privacy rights. Let's say I am willing to bite this bullet. I could sue for a tort claim, but just calling a lawyer would cost more than any damages I might collect. This might take care of trivial information that is private. This might be a analogous to the violation of my property rights by the neighbor's kid climbing my tree. It is a violation, but because of its trivial nature we ignore it.
A further thought. What ends are served by the public disclosure of income? The government wants to know for tax purposes (which I count as a good reason to keep them private!). Private individuals might want to know for 'keeping up with the Jones'--hardly a good reason to make this info public. They might want to know for purposes of demographics and statistics--but that can be done without disclosing the individual's name (such information is really only useful in the aggregate anyway). I am at a loss for significantly different reasons that might override the presumption of privacy.
Why should income information be public? I admit I haven't a position on the question. I can think of no weighty reason for or against. Since you took a position promoting income information as private, I wanted to see what your reasons were. You admit you have none, but affirm the presumption that income info should be private. The burden is on me, then, to prove that income info should be public. But I stated earlier that I have no reasons either way, and I hold no position on the matter. I fear your positive claim relies on an appeal to ignorance, i.e. X is true because no one has disproven X.
Our discussion depends on the equivelance of meaning between 'non-private' and 'public'. That equivelance may be false. Perhaps there are finer distinctions that would disolve the appeal to ignorance.
If the equivelance holds, then we have no reason to protect or not protect income information simpliciter. When deciding whether or nt to protect, we need merely flip a coin.
But there is always talk of ends, and that appears to be the direction of your last post. Some costs of protection are too high, and thus will be defacto unprotected. For instance, the high cost of protecting favorite jelly bean information.
"What ends are served by the public disclosure of income?" Now consequentialism looms large! You answer your own question. Public disclosure informs people to keep up with the Joneses. But you say that is hardly a good reason for disclosure. Why not? If we are worried about ends, then the maximizing the best consequences is all that matters. If publicizing the info maximizes good consequences, then mustn't we publicize that info?
But you can disolve that worry. Explain why public disclosure maximizes harm, or minimizes good, or however ethicists prefer to say it, and you are off scott-free.
One can be concerned about ends, goals and the like without falling into some kind of maximizing consequentialism. So I don't think that is relevant here.
My presumption is really that everything about me is private, and that to move from that requires some satisfactory reason. What these reasons are and how weighty they have to be is a matter of context and custom. This dissolves the worry about an appeal to ignorance regarding income information.
Income information has a higher threshold than jelly bean information because income information can be used by others to harm you (by taxing you, by targeting you for theft (but I repeat myself!)). Keeping up with the Jones is a motive based on envy and so should be disqualified as a good reason.
What would it take to overcome the presumption in the case of income information? We seem to be having trouble identifying one, so maybe there isn't (at least not for full disclosure of name, income, etc.). But I am sure there are cases where the presumption would be overcome.
12 comments:
This raises some serious privacy concerns, no? There is, of course, a need for public oversight of state institutions and how money is allocated, but listing the salaries of particular individuals by name seems to overshoot acceptable transparency.
Shawn, what are the specific privacy concerns? I initialy agreed with your post, then I disagreed. Now the issue confuses me. Is the information infringing something? If so, what? Also, what conditions make transparency acceptable?
Generally speaking, one's personal income is private information and so the public revelation of this information could easily be seen as a violation of one's privacy. ASU is a state institution and so the salaries of its employees is a matter of public record. Agreeing to employment probably implies consent to this and so it's not really an issue.
The question I was raising was whether this information should be public. There is a need for transparent accounting of government expenditures, but I was wondering if there was middle ground here: such as publishing the salaries and ranks, but not the individual's name.
I agree that middle ground is possible. I also understand the position in which ASU employees are. I also argree that whether or not the income info should be public is the central question.
I want you to justify why anyone's income, govt. or otherwise, should be private information. Put differently, why should protections exist for income information?
Also, who should make and enforce those protections?
I'll answer that in a way you're sure not to like. The burden should be on those who think that the information is not private. Why should the public have access to this, or any, information? The presumption should be that an individual's information or the details of a contract are private. Those who want this information have to defeat the presumption to get the information. Much like for search warrant. The presumption is that the police do not have the authority to enter one's home unless the presumption can be defeated in front of a judge.
The state, in its duty of rights protecting, should protect privacy rights as well. As is largely the case, common law would mark out what kind of situations that defeat the presumption.
Ok, you answered one question, but you are avoiding the primary one. Why should we consider income information as private information? Why is the presumption to protect that information and not to publicize it?
Here is my motivation for asking; perhaps that will help you. In all of your posts you assume that income information is and should be private. I am questioning that assumption. Give me some reasons why income information simpliciter should be private information.
The case for income information being private is different than any other personal information: my weight, my birthday, my address, my favorite type of jellybean. At the same time, I don't think the income is fully private. Income information is the product of a contractual agreement with another individual. It is, then, not entirely my own, but shared with the other parties to the contract.
I am not going to try and make the case generally for privacy. So I take what you are asking me is why income should be included in this.
I am not entirely sure, but let's try the following. Income information is something you cannot come to know without asking me. (or my employer, but let's come back to that). That makes it inherently non-public. Unlike my hair color or height, which you can just discover by looking.
Back to the employer. If I can unilaterally disclose my income, why can't my employer? I am not sure, maybe they can. But even so, the information still needs to be disclosed by the relevant parties and so is inherently non-public.
I hate that one can't edit the comments: in the first paragraph, I meant to say that the case is not different
Hmmmm, let's make a dichotomy. On one end we have physical features and on the other we have information.
Physical features are those features like hair color, skin tone, etc., which one can observe of another in public.
'Information' means a class of things that include a person's favorite jelly bean flavor, weight, family history etc. A person must ask another for information.
For the sake of the argument, I buy your distinction between public and private. So physical features are observable and thus publicly knowable.
Let's look at the other side of the dichotomy. Let's make another distinction. We have information that is private and information that is not private.
Non-private info is the info that the government should not protect. For instance, a person's favorite jelly bean flavor, address, etc.
Private info is the info that the government should protect, as you stated in your earlier post about enforcement. In this catergory you place income information. Perhaps a person's bank account amounts, medical history, pre-nup content, etc., also fall in here.
If you grant the second distinction, please explain why income information falls into the private information catergory and not the non-private info catergory?
That is, granting that information is unobservable in public, and that some information about an individual should be public, while other information should be private, and thus protected by the government; then why should income info be private info?
If you do not buy the second distinction (or the first), why not? Should the government protect all information? If you argue that way, you commit yourself to arguing that the government should protect a person's favorite jelly bean flavor from the prying eyes of the public.
I am not entirely comfortable with the distinctions as you have drawn them, but I am not sure why. I'll have to think on that for a bit. So for the time being I'll grant them. My response to the question is essentially what I said earlier. I don't have a specific reason for the income to be private as opposed to non-private. My presumption is that information is private unless it is shown that there are good reasons for the disclosure of this information. So again, I'll turn the tables: why should this information be public?
So what about jelly beans? This would seem to imply that the my favorite jelly bean flavor is private information and if disclosed without my consent would be a violation of my privacy rights. Let's say I am willing to bite this bullet. I could sue for a tort claim, but just calling a lawyer would cost more than any damages I might collect. This might take care of trivial information that is private. This might be a analogous to the violation of my property rights by the neighbor's kid climbing my tree. It is a violation, but because of its trivial nature we ignore it.
A further thought. What ends are served by the public disclosure of income? The government wants to know for tax purposes (which I count as a good reason to keep them private!). Private individuals might want to know for 'keeping up with the Jones'--hardly a good reason to make this info public. They might want to know for purposes of demographics and statistics--but that can be done without disclosing the individual's name (such information is really only useful in the aggregate anyway). I am at a loss for significantly different reasons that might override the presumption of privacy.
Why should income information be public? I admit I haven't a position on the question. I can think of no weighty reason for or against. Since you took a position promoting income information as private, I wanted to see what your reasons were. You admit you have none, but affirm the presumption that income info should be private. The burden is on me, then, to prove that income info should be public. But I stated earlier that I have no reasons either way, and I hold no position on the matter. I fear your positive claim relies on an appeal to ignorance, i.e. X is true because no one has disproven X.
Our discussion depends on the equivelance of meaning between 'non-private' and 'public'. That equivelance may be false. Perhaps there are finer distinctions that would disolve the appeal to ignorance.
If the equivelance holds, then we have no reason to protect or not protect income information simpliciter. When deciding whether or nt to protect, we need merely flip a coin.
But there is always talk of ends, and that appears to be the direction of your last post. Some costs of protection are too high, and thus will be defacto unprotected. For instance, the high cost of protecting favorite jelly bean information.
"What ends are served by the public disclosure of income?" Now consequentialism looms large! You answer your own question. Public disclosure informs people to keep up with the Joneses. But you say that is hardly a good reason for disclosure. Why not? If we are worried about ends, then the maximizing the best consequences is all that matters. If publicizing the info maximizes good consequences, then mustn't we publicize that info?
But you can disolve that worry. Explain why public disclosure maximizes harm, or minimizes good, or however ethicists prefer to say it, and you are off scott-free.
One can be concerned about ends, goals and the like without falling into some kind of maximizing consequentialism. So I don't think that is relevant here.
My presumption is really that everything about me is private, and that to move from that requires some satisfactory reason. What these reasons are and how weighty they have to be is a matter of context and custom. This dissolves the worry about an appeal to ignorance regarding income information.
Income information has a higher threshold than jelly bean information because income information can be used by others to harm you (by taxing you, by targeting you for theft (but I repeat myself!)). Keeping up with the Jones is a motive based on envy and so should be disqualified as a good reason.
What would it take to overcome the presumption in the case of income information? We seem to be having trouble identifying one, so maybe there isn't (at least not for full disclosure of name, income, etc.). But I am sure there are cases where the presumption would be overcome.
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