Jay Kuten: Restoration of privacy vital

Right to privacy: Will Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern's new Government repeal the GCSB's authority to spy on New Zealanders? Photo/AP

No greater contrast exists between the authoritarian regimes — whether of the right or left — and the democracies than their respect for the privacy of the individual.

Privacy and its corollary, the right of private enjoyment, are fundamental to any government of and by the people.

Yet the US Supreme Court found a right to privacy within the Constitution only in the late 20th century.

The jurisprudential precedents and their progeny such as Griswold v Connecticut, and Lawrence v Texas, and Roe v Wade, have in common that their penumbra of privacy derives from the most intimate of human behaviours, their sexual expression.

Those rights were the result, as are most prerogatives limiting government, of long and painful struggle in history.

It is fitting that we who live within that benefit tend to take it for granted, like breathing or like the air that is our medium. But no right can be retained without the willingness to guard and to fight for its preservation.

That's why it is particularly disturbing to watch as the convenience of modern technology seduces many, especially young people, to casual surrender of their personal information in the service of some element of short-term gain.

The current sexual panic in the US, begun with the salutary motive of protecting the relatively powerless — mostly women — from the predatory conduct of the powerful — mostly men — has had as its most recent expression a stark reminder of why privacy matters.

A 22-year-old photographer, under the pseudonym "Grace", described online, in explicit detail, her sexual encounter with a famous comedian, Aziz Ansari.

What Ansari claims was consensual "Grace" retrospectively (two weeks later) declared, was "pressured", hence an assault, in the new definition of the permissible.

This incursion to both their privacy by "Grace", has the earmarks of "buyers' remorse" with a strong resemblance to revenge porn.

In these pages during this past November (Chronicle, November 8, 22), I twice took issue with RTL and its spokesperson, Kenneth Orr, for their invasion of the privacy of our Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern.

Their intrusion into her personal intimate decisions was a flagrant violation of her privacy. I was particularly concerned, if the head of government can be denied those inalienable rights, what then could ordinary citizens expect?

Now the PM has made a self-revealing statement of her pregnancy, which is her right too; even if in her position there may well be a political benefit to be derived. The fact of her pregnancy has generated worldwide supportive attention.

Friends from the States, who rarely inquire about our national politics or politicians — except when a New York-based British comedian found a trove of laughs in John Key's "fleg" and ponytail antics — want to know more about her and in the same process ask for my opinion of her and of her politics.

While I am constitutionally optimistic and have previously expressed my support for Ms Ardern when she was an opposition MP, now, as head of government the stakes are higher. She benefits from a political honeymoon and her pregnancy only strengthens those good feelings. She's made a good start to steering the ship of state.

But all governments bear watching. The first indications of portents may come from the degree of independence of those long-overdue inquiries into our failing mental health system, strongly resisted by the former government.

That former government also diminished our collective privacy by legalising the power of our GCSB spy agency to conduct surveillance on our own citizens, after the Kim Dotcom affair, after that spying was held illegal. I will be watching this government to see whether that authority to spy on us will be repealed and our privacy restored.

Meantime, to users of the internet I offer this advice: don't post anything, written or pictured, that you wouldn't want your grandparents to see now or, later on, your own grandchildren.

Jay Kuten

■ Jay Kuten is an American-trained forensic psychiatrist who emigrated to New Zealand for the fly fishing. He spent 40 years comforting the afflicted and intends to spend the rest afflicting the comfortable.