How does being watched rob a person of their liberty?
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Depends on the reason we’re being watched. If you’re a movie actress and your being watched on screen or in a social or public setting, that’s different than if your that person being watch doing things of a personal nature in a bathroom or in a bedroom with your significant other! The essence of liberty is the right to privacy, the right to be left alone. Being watched is an invasion of those rights.
The essence of liberty is the right to privacy . . .
Liberty, freedom, in whatever form they are manifest, have their boundaries. They are always qualified, usually by attendant laws and ordinances. This may seem self-evident, but many subscribe to the notion these are defined by the *absence* of boundaries, so that their rights are infringed by any prohibitions whatsoever.
So, when it comes to privacy there are limits. Therefore it ought not be called a “right” in the strictest sense. It is not fundamentally granted at all times, but is subject to limits. The only way to have privacy in its purest form is to be an anonymous hermit. You might call that a good life to have, but we’ll never know, and we’ll never know who or how many there are. The census necessarily omits them, and they don’t pay taxes.
So, we have the privilege to enjoy *some* privacy and must peacefully determine among ourselves how much to grant one another and when. That we can do this is because we have that liberty. If an outside entity not having proper authority were to force a manner and degree of privacy upon all of us, that would be a violation of liberty. That’s where we need to avoid complacency, and that’s what the author here is, I hope, sounding an alarm for.