The Ethics of Privacy, Lying and the Withholding of Information

How many sexual partners have you had? What's your penis size? What crimes have you committed in the past?
Do you think you're more intelligent than your co-workers? Does my ass look big in this? Answering these questions honestly may incriminate yourself, brand you as arrogant or severely diminish the self-esteem of your partner or friend.

Most individuals would be averse to speaking candidly or would withhold information in some of the aforementioned questions regardless of how much their partner, colleague or friend wanted to know. Personally, I've always found it a good practice to draw a line between Noble Lies, White lies and Fraud.

Noble Lies
A noble lie, coined from Plato's book 'The Republic' aptly describes a lie that serves to inspire someone or a people to do good and causes no harm in the event the truth is revealed. i.e If you eat your vegetables, you'll grow up to be big and strong just like Michael Jordan.

White Lies
White lies are typically lies that are trivial, employed to avoid hurting someones feeling i.e "you're performance wasn't that bad" or "your ass looks great in that dress babe".

Fraud
Fraud from a voluntaryist standpoint is deception/lies that result in the harm to an individual or theft of their property typically done for personal or financial gain. I.e Claiming to pay someone $100 if they clean your house and never doing so, falsely advertising the selling of your services, a product or purposefully telling a lie that results in damages to an individual, their reputation or their property. It's worth noting that there is a distinction between promissory commitments vs contractual commitments. Promissory commitments deal with personal matters i.e saying you'll go on a date with someone, however, decide to cancel. Furthermore, these types of commitments do not result in any tangible harm or loss to an individual or their property. Whereas contractual commitments involve honoring verbal/written agreements that if not followed result in the tangible harm of an individual or a loss of their property.

Honesty is not always the best policy. It is a virtue and we should all strive to be staunch advocates of truth-telling, furthermore endeavor to be as transparent as possible, however, at times lying is not only the kinder and wiser approach but an inherent right of self-defense.

Many religious groups, spiritual teachers and wise leaders i.e Benjamin Franklin, the early Christians, Gnostics, Cathars, Bogomils, Albigensians, Manichaeans, were part of secret societies and were persecuted due to their heretical beliefs. These groups and individuals pursued truth, philosophy, and understanding of the mysteries but understood that revealing their knowledge to everyone would not only lead to their demise by the misguided and often belligerent masses but that knowledge given freely to people not ready can do more harm than good. Thus they employed secrecy or deception to guard their truth against those that would seek to end them or do harm to themselves.

When it comes to the sharing of knowledge. No one has an inherent right to know personal details about others and neither should you feel obligated to share your personal information regardless of how socially unacceptable it is. Withholding information that may be used against you and/or implementing deception to guard it is perfectly morally acceptable from a position of self-defense.

That being said, there is a distinction between not disclosing information that if were to come out would have no tangible harm on another i.e your age, nationality, salary and sexual orientation vs wantonly omitting information
that if not disclosed would lead to the physical harm of another or their property. Both scenarios are an appeal to potentiality, therefore, they are subjective arguments. However, if your actions in the latter are a purposeful deception that leads to the harm of an individual or their property, that constitutes fraud and thus you're morally culpable for the consequences of that action and should be held accountable.

In ethics, It's always a good rule to observe the inherent nature of an action rather than it's potential consequences which are untenable. If we take the position of lying to be immutably wrong in all situations even in self-defense, it would follow that a coercive act by an individual requiring you to divulge information that will assist them in harming another would still require you to be honest. An example worth noting is that it was illegal a few generations ago to harbor Jews. Moreover, a few decades ago it was illegal for blacks to have relations with whites and citizens in West Virginia were made to hunt runaway slaves under the threat of a $1000 fine and 6 months in jail. To advocate that people in these situations were still obligated to corporate with authorities and not mislead or withhold information would not only be unwise but stupid.

In an age where information is limitless, privacy is not only important but a necessary part of freedom.