Nothing reminds me of my Saudi identity more than my almost obsessive need for privacy. I may write for a paper and have my views available to anyone with an Internet connection, but there it ends. Only what I submit for publication has a right to be in the public domain, anything else — from my physical image to my personal details — is strictly out of bounds. Luckily for me, I am neither famous nor a public figure, or in this instance a judge who has been blackmailed and whose personal life is being laid bare in the newspapers with lurid details.
In point of fact, there are two judges: A man and a woman. And the blackmailer is their former cleaning lady, a colorful Brazilian woman called Roselane Driza. It is a titillating story, the kind that fill your TV screens late at night on second-rate cable channels. The two judges were once lovers. During the court case we only knew them as Judge I for the man and Judge J for the woman. The court granted them anonymity because they were victims of blackmail. And yet over the course of the last week we have found out the most intimate details of their personal lives, as the only privacy they were granted was that of withholding their names. In effect we were told all the information the Brazilian woman was blackmailing them with, all of it reproduced with glee in the pages of English newspapers and even on the evening news. Since they were also required to testify in person, anyone with access to the court — and London’s Old Bailey was packed for this most sensational of trials — could see the two judges and identify them. I find this disregard for privacy rather shocking.
I cringed as on Channel 4 news Jon Snow, that most august of newscasters, read out pan-faced the content of an e-mail the male judge had sent to his lover after a night of love. Words exchanged between lovers are by their nature intimate and often ridiculing when read by others, particularly when read devoid of the gush of feeling they were written with.
They reveal our most vulnerable side, they lay us bare. Surely they should never be allowed into the public domain. Surely privacy is a basic right?
No, I am told. We live our lives in the glare, constantly ready to reveal and justify every aspect of our daily lives. Whereas this was once the prerogative of public figures, who in Britain have almost no right to privacy, now even ordinary Joes are finding themselves under scrutiny. It is the flip side of transparency, that cure-all for corruption, criminality and terrorism. We no longer have the right to discretion. If we want to send money to someone in need for instance, we cannot do so in the manner we are enjoined to do: “So that the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing.” Quite the opposite, your bank manager will interrogate you and take detailed notes before he condescends to affect a transfer. The fact that it is your money and that you should be free to spend it as you wish is an irrelevancy.
The way we live our lives has also made us more exposed. Just think of the information Google has on you. I for one was unaware until the AOL story broke out that Google and other search engines kept records of every search you have ever done. And only when I read specific examples of how a journalist was able to identify particular individuals through their search history and piece together like an intricate jigsaw a surprisingly extensive picture of their lives and thoughts did I understand just how unprotected we are.
But then, as the argument goes, those who have nothing to hide have nothing to fear. Why should we worry that privacy is fast becoming a rare commodity?
Privacy is the protection of intimacy. Whether it is our fears and worries or the emotions we feel or our relations with those around us or our financial concerns or our health or even our tastes and preferences, these intimate details make us who we are and, just as we don’t strip naked in front of every Tom, Dick and Harry, so we should have a right to keep a veil over our personal lives. Our personal experience belongs to us and should not be hijacked.
Take for instance a film currently showing in London: The Queen. Helen Mirren plays Queen Elizabeth II in a film that recreates the days following the death of Princess Diana in 1997. I find the sheer concept of this film distasteful.
The queen is still alive and we should not be intruding into her life in such a manner. And it is not because she is the queen, I feel the same about all films and books “based on a true story”. It is one thing when it is an autobiography or when it is a recreation of a momentous episode in history but I feel increasingly uneasy with the exploitation of people’s personal experience for the entertainment of others.
But back to the blackmail case that has had London riveted for the last week. The cleaner was found guilty of blackmailing the female judge but not the male judge. Within hours the name and photograph of the male judge was plastered over the front pages. His name is Mohammed Ilyas Khan. He is a senior immigration judge whom colleagues had regarded as a devout Muslim and who now faces the utter destruction of his reputation.
