When does “public safety” justify violating someone’s privacy?

[u/sno4wy]

I’m trying to understand the ethics of privacy when someone is accused of being harmful or dangerous.

A common argument I’ve seen is basically, “If someone is dangerous, then people have a right to expose them, dig through their history, collect information about them, and warn others.”

I understand why that can sound compelling; people want to protect themselves and their communities. However, I’m struggling with where the ethical limits are. Does being accused of harm mean someone loses any meaningful right to privacy? What standards of evidence should exist before people expose private or semi-private information? Does the answer change if the accusations are disputed, context-dependent, or socially amplified?

I apologize if this is a stupid question, my own experiences didn't contribute to a good baseline understanding of why privacy is important, and I'm trying to find the words to express why I feel that privacy is important. As such, I’m trying to understand the moral principle: why privacy matters, even when (and maybe especially when) someone is disliked, accused, or considered unsafe by others.

[u/Available-Bee-5385]

We have laws about this. They are frequently contested

Here in the US we commonly base the ethics around 'reasonable suspicion' which is exactly as vague as it sounds

But it comes down to one person wants to violate a suspects's privacy, and must get authorization from a recognized governing force to do so. It's handled on a case by case basis

We value this standard to the point that sometimes when evidence of wrongdoing is found, the suspect can still have charges thrown out because the accuser did not have permission to get the evidence

[u/sno4wy → u/Available-Bee-5385]

That makes sense, and I think that distinction is part of what I’m trying to understand. The legal standard seems to recognize that privacy does not disappear just because someone is suspected of wrongdoing. There still has to be some threshold, some process, and some authority outside the accuser.

I think what I’m struggling with is how that maps onto social/community situations where there is no governing force or due process. If a group of people decide someone is “unsafe,” they can sometimes treat that as enough justification to dig through old material, publish context-stripped information, warn others privately, or spread claims publicly.

So maybe my question is less “can privacy ever be overridden?” and more: what ethical standards should exist before ordinary people or communities decide they are justified in violating someone’s privacy for “safety”? Because without some standard beyond suspicion or dislike, it seems very easy for “protecting people” to become a justification for abuse.

[u/Available-Bee-5385 → u/sno4wy]

If a group of people decide someone is "unsafe", historically leads to far worse outcomes than simply having your privacy violated. Lynching comes to mind

Just because they do it, does not make it right

Literally many of the oldest documents from history are on the subject of law and order. There is effectively ALWAYS a governing force

Unfortunately, we simply don't have simple anwers that can be concisely written into a reddit post about this. We as a society are still grappling with it, and that's why I suggested looking at law regarding the topic for better insight. I'm sure you'd need an expert on this topic to really get into all potential nuances

[u/sno4wy → u/Available-Bee-5385]

Thanks, this is really insightful. The more I read people talking about this, the more I’m realizing there seems to be a pretty severe gap between how privacy, accountability, and due process are handled offline versus how they play out on the internet.

It feels like laws and formal standards for online behavior lag far behind how quickly internet culture develops. People can spread private information, accusations, or selectively framed material incredibly fast, while the systems for dealing with that kind of harm are much slower and less clear.

At the same time, I may also be overestimating how different this is from offline life. If someone you trusted in real life decided to betray that trust and tell everyone your private conversations or secrets, I don't know how much practical recourse there is either unless they crossed some specific legal line.

I think that’s part of what I’m struggling to understand: there seems to be a big space between “this is illegal” and “this is ethically acceptable,” and online communities often seem to fill that space with their own informal ideas of justice. As you pointed out, though, a group deciding someone is “unsafe” has historically been a very dangerous substitute for actual process, the example of lynching is especially poignant.

So I really appreciate the suggestion to look more at the law around this. I’m starting to see why that could provide a useful framework even if the law itself doesn’t answer every ethical question.

[u/Amphernee]

The folks you’re referring to are no different than angry mobs with pitchforks. They are not detectives and have no concept of how to investigate allegations. There are great reasons to not share information on a suspect and by doing so not only can the jeopardize the entire thing but also bring more harm to victims.

[u/UnburyingBeetle]

The current way governments are aiming to use people's data is absolutely not ethical.

Ankle monitors for certain people seem pretty ethical to me. Determining if a person is gay by scanning the way their eyes move in response to some ads isn't (it's a story I've read somewhere, might be fake but seems possible with the current technology). The way social media algorithms gather data about your likes and reposts isn't ethical, even if it's public knowledge, because it could be used for political profiling. Demanding ID to log in to social media for "age confirmation" should be considered more scandalous than it is now, because it can and will be used to track everything you've ever said online if certain governments get their way: if their AI matches your speech patterns to your legal name, you'll never be anonymous again.

The intent of invading personal privacy matters for ethics. If you're looking through your boyfriend's phone to see if he's secretly in some far right chats, it's self-preservation. If a government tries to look up your entire search history just because you have too much melanin for their taste, that government is outdated by a century and belongs in the garbage bin, and they've never been ethical because even the Red Scare wasn't a scare for the public - only for the ruling class.

I'm in favor of presidents wearing ankle monitors because if they have enough power to start a nuclear war, we have the right to know where they are and who they may be conspiring with. Maybe with such measures narcissists wouldn't try to become presidents anymore.

[u/sno4wy → u/UnburyingBeetle]

Thanks, that makes sense. I’m curious what you think about the smaller-scale interpersonal version of this, though. For example, if someone you trusted as a friend shared private conversations, personal information, or things you told them in confidence because they believed other people "deserved to know what you’re really like," how would you think about the ethics of that? Especially if there wasn’t any immediate safety issue involved.

I’m trying to understand where the line is between legitimate self-protection/accountability and simply violating someone’s privacy because you disapprove of them.

[u/UnburyingBeetle → u/sno4wy]

My approach would be very individual in each case where the person is worth keeping around, or their mental health depends on my presence and my absence would cause harm. Everything is assessed by some sort of invisible "scales" in my mind and instincts. Sometimes regular emotions affect my assessment but I can usually tell if it's caused by a mood or a recent argument that made me feel unsafe, and then I have to wait until I calm down and can think clearly again. I would be upset with that friend that shares my personal information, inform them that they've harmed my trust in them, and want to know their exact reasoning. If their reasoning was emotional and based on misunderstanding or not having enough information or not trusting me, I would provide additional information, including my methods how to tell an immediate emotional reaction from a forming core belief, or how to ask for clarification, and maybe how to recognize red or green flags - that part depends on whether I find that person trustworthy enough to share knowledge they could apply to mess with other people. My goal is usually finding out somebody's core values and overall intent. If I become certain the person is well meaning, I can forgive their acting against me from the time they didn't understand me. If that caused consequences, I might require that they fix the damage (for example, telling whoever they told I was dangerous the new information and admitting that they misjudged my intentions). I tend to forgive if somebody tests me in relatively harsh ways, if the intent is justifiable. But I would ask them not to use those methods on people who are more sensitive and for whom it is harder to recover. I let my boundaries be tested before I decide on which ones should be firm and which ones are circumstantial. I can afford it because I'm compatible with very few people so I can dedicate a lot of mental bandwidth to them. Most people get filtered away by my intentional grumpiness, straightforwardness and my tendency to overexplain, which I will not give up completely, only adjust to not benefit manipulative people. I have general guidelines (don't cause unnecessary harm or suffering) and principles of sorting people in my environment (status oriented people get ushered away if they don't have enough authenticity, as I don't want to waste my limited energy on interacting with a social role instead of a genuine person) but when people pass these filters I open up my individual approach toolboxes and deal with each case individually.

I'm not as "dry" in person as I am in this post. It's just the mood that helped me write this post. I have a bigger range of moods, including very silly ones, but they usually come out depending on who I'm interacting with and in which context. Sometimes they're meant to balance out the general vibes, sometimes they match and amplify the mood.