The archive of today in the future

The question of how to archive the present is already a political concern in the present. Archiving, in other words, is no longer a matter of looking back after an event is complete.  So much material is now being stored for analysis, to be carried out either in the very near term or later when the current massive corpus has grown even larger. 

The current debate over privacy entails a discussion about archiving data more than it concerns any measurable intrusion into the immediate private lives of individuals.  We object to privacy policies of social media or financial institutions because they may use our information later, once it has been stored.  The struggle for privacy entails a conflict about how present data will be used in the future.  Privacy today concerns controlling the historical archive of the future.  Should there even be an archive about us?  How can we shape its content and operation?

The eighteenth century understanding of privacy, from whence our laws originated, was more immediate; it often involved the bodily intrusion into domestic space.  The private property that privacy rights protected consisted of land and material objects, whereas today the debate centers on the potential use of information about these things.  The body of the individual with rights was implicitly included in the notion of privacy.  Habeas corpus was the right of family members to see the body of their (living) relatives even if they were under government custody. 

Now the debate has moved further to include the virtual existence of bodies, properties and spaces, i.e. information about these entities. The threat to privacy is indirectly aimed at these material objects through the control of information about them.  Because we don’t know what that threat yet is, the debate centers on the archive, on the collection of data in anticipation of it being used someday against us.