In Rwanda, people have invented ways to order things online without revealing their addresses. Encryption was a household name in Germany long before it arrived on American shores. Shopping bags in Japan don’t have any logos or ads. Your salary is public information in Sweden. In Finland, people are allowed to camp on private land. And nudity isn’t very taboo in many places. All this and more is explored on this week’s topic: privacy.

Hello everyone and welcome to the eighth episode of baggage allowance. Last week, I explored how growing up in different countries can greatly alter the experience of childhood. I repeatedly touched on the topic of how children in other countries spend more time in public spaces, though at the time I only explored it from a safety and educational standpoint. This time, I want to explore it from another angle: privacy, and not just with children, but with people in general.

I want to begin by describing an NGO I encountered a while back, who does work in Rwanda. Many buildings in Rwanda don’t have addresses. Like many developing nations, the postal service just does not have the manpower or processes in place to assign addresses to every building in the country. In the case of Rwanda, it gets even more complicated because in 1994 the country went through a civil war and ethnic genocide. One of the ways the murderers found their victims was by going through the address book and looking up names that seemed to belong to the target ethnicity. As you can imagine, people are not particularly open about where they live after this experience, to the point that entire neighborhoods don’t even appear on maps, because no one wants to touch the subject. However, this is a problem. How do you open a bank account if you don’t have an address? How do hospitals, churches, and other institutions communicate with suppliers? How does one buy something online? The NGO I encountered is proposing a software solution where if people don’t have an official address given or maintained by the post office, they can create an address using the NGO’s software. This address though is not a street plus building number, instead it is just a username, and if you give the username to someone, they don’t automatically know where you live. Instead, they have to log in to the application, and the application will only tell them the amount of information the addressee allows them to know. So when online shopping for example, the addressee can reveal to a retailer across the country only what city they live in. Then when the packet arrives in the city, the local postal office can use the application to learn who the deliveryman is. And only the deliveryman would have permission to see the exact location of the customer, recorded as a GPS location along with some customized notes detailing the precise spot of hard to find places.

The NGO is still going strong, so their solution seems to be serving a privacy niche in Rwanda. Given the country’s history, it is understandable. It is also understandable why someone in another country wouldn’t care to experiment with such a novel solution. The benefits of more privacy is vague, theoretical, and abstract. For Rwandans, it is anything but. So when I encounter privacy (or lack thereof) in different countries, I make it a point to look into the history. Not all reasons are as rational as is the case in Rwanda, but it serves as a starting point for understanding.

In another example, contrast how shopping bags in Japan look compared to other countries. In Europe, India, Dubai, Qatar, and the USA, if I buy something from a store and ask for a bag (paper or plastic) to carry it home, companies use the bag as an opportunity to advertise. In Japan, however, I don’t remember a single store that did that. Usually I just got a plain white plastic bag, or in the case of a souvenir shop, a gift bag with tasteful, but unidentifiable designs – the kind that I might use when giving a birthday present. Now to be fair, I was not really paying attention to this detail the whole trip, so I might have missed something. I only began paying close attention when I went to a manga store and noticed that they gave a dark black bag, so no one can see through to the title that was bought. Soon after, I began noticing that people reading books, magazines, or newspapers on the bus, often did so with a protective sleeve that hid the cover or front page, so no one else could see what they are reading. Japanese society places a lot of value on self appearance. Even men can be seen using the windows of the underground metro to make sure their hair is properly combed. This is also one of the only countries in the world where I felt compelled to iron my cloths while on a vacation. When putting so much effort to creating a tailored appearance, details like where they shop or what they read could cause unpredictable gossip. It makes sense they would want to keep this private.

A third example can be seen in Germany. Germany, particularly Berlin, is a hotspot for opensource and privacy focused software. Before end to end encryption went mainstream, many startups in Germany were offering encrypted messaging, and to this day companies offering encrypted emails, semi-private social networking, and other services are abound. While this kind of work usually attracts techies, I found a surprising number of normal people involved in these groups as well. Even more mainstream though are details like, for example, Google Maps blurring the view of people’s front yards in street view, or the fact that a significant minority of Germans don’t post on facebook their complete face, and instead opt for a side view, a silhouette, or even just a drawing. The background here is that many Germans are very sensitive to hacked communications, because it was used by the Stasi during the cold war to imprison and kill those they felt were potentially disloyal.

That being said though, something about this explanation puzzles me. Germany wasn’t the only country with an oppressive police agency. Many East European nations share this experience, and yet they never formed such a privacy focused subculture. I mean, they exist, but not as strong. Furthermore, only half of Germany, East Germany, experienced this kind of suppression, and yet among the Germans I met and spoke to, the few who stood out as most concerned about privacy were actually from the West. I am not sure how to interpret this, so I will just leave it as an observation.

So far, I gave three examples of exceptional levels of privacy. For the remainder of this episode, I will be describing ways other countries have notably less privacy than what I am accustomed to in the USA. Unlike the three examples from before, however, these descriptions are neither unique nor characteristic of the countries I will describe them with. Trying to describe every country or encounter I had would becoming distracting, so I am using only the most illustrative anecdotes. Please remember that what I am about to describe is more common that what you might initially imagine.

Let’s begin with salary. In the USA, you need to be very good friends with someone before you ask them about their salary. It is a very private question. However, in many parts of the world, this is public or semi-public information. Some unions, for example, will share the salary of every individual in the company with their colleagues. They justify this by saying the burden of proof falls on the company to justify pay discrepancies, and it helps reveal pay gaps due to race and gender. The country that takes this furthest is Sweden, where everyone’s tax records are public information. In other words, if I know your full name, I can do the equivalent of a google search to find exactly how much income you make and how much property you own. The nominal justification I heard for doing this is that it encourages trust and transparency, especially in salary negotiation. Critics, however, claim that employers are more hesitant to give bonuses based on performance, because doing so can make other employees envious and cause all sorts of political problems at work. Furthermore, nosy neighbors sometimes do checks on each other, though most Swedes I spoke to said something to the effect of, “I don’t give a damn what my neighbor thinks about my salary.” I can sort of believe that. In the USA, for example, if I am conversing with a new acquaintance, within 5 minutes the questions, “Where do you work? What do you do?” comes up. And based on how I answer these questions, the person I am conversing with is doing an estimation of my income, my prestige, and where I fit in the social hierarchy. I see a lot less of that in Sweden, and in other countries where salary information is more public. However, these countries are not beyond measuring themselves to each other either. Fashion is used to signal wealth and status, the price of people’s zip code determines what social circles they can enter, and people still like to showoff big, fancy cars. People still judge each other based on wealth, so I don’t know how comfortable I am with this kind of information being public.

So far this episode, I spoke about privacy from the standpoint of personal security or a desire to maintain a public image, but there are other reasons to seek privacy. Judgmental, nosy people are not the only reason why I am uncomfortable making my salary information public. I simply find it intrusive that anyone could anonymously look up my age, address, and income on Swedish public record. I find it to be a violation of my personal space. However, just like actual personal space, what is considered too close in some cultures would perfectly acceptable in other cultures. So in Sweden, people’s salaries and income are not considered personal space.

Another example of how personal space can differ is with regard to private property. In Finland, there is a concept called “every man’s right” which means anyone is allowed to roam freely in the nation’s forests and lakes. Permits are required for hunting and commercial activity, but for personal use foraging and fishing is allowed. What’s really interesting about this rule is that it applies to private property as well as public land. So if I own a few acres of forest, I have the exclusive right to harvest wood or build a cabin on the land. However, anyone is allowed to walk through my forest or even set up a temporary campsite on my land, so long as they are far enough away from my cabin and are not being too loud or making a mess. There is little a landlord can do to prevent this. There are rules regarding where fences can be placed, so it is not as easy as just fencing up the property. This very much contrasts with the USA, where trespassing laws are very strict and fences are ubiquitous.

That being said, laws like these are being reconsidered nowadays. The only way such laws are able to work is because everyone agrees to treat other people’s property with respect. Don’t leave trash, don’t be loud, don’t intrude on private gardens and porches. If someone violates these rules, it was generally possible in sparsely populated Finland to find out who it was. Just ask the resident moose. These days though, there are lot more foreign tourists, and they can be obnoxious. Furthermore, sense they are there for only couple of days, it is incredibly hard to track and prosecute them if they damage anything.

The level of access or exclusive access people have with regards to property is based on local law, and what the locals feel is the right balance between personal and public space, and that changes with the times. In the coming years, Finland might modify private property laws that strengthen the privacy and exclusive rights of the landowner. I don’t see any nation going in the opposite direction anytime soon when it comes to land rights, but I have heard discussions with regards to copyright and patents. Movie and music studios and pharmaceutical companies have abused existing copyright and patent laws to become monopolies. Those defending existing laws claim that any change is a violation of intellectual property rights. However, the rights and responsibilities of private property is a societal and legal agreement, and these agreements can change with time. Companies should have some exclusive rights to their patents and copyright, but allowing the public to use it freely in certain conditions does not automatically constitute a violation of private property altogether.

Anyhow, back to the main subject: privacy, particularly with regards to personal space. It is time to address the elephant in the room: nudity. My first exposure to public nudity was a sauna in Finland. Now fun fact about Finland, every building has a sauna. Which I thought was cute, until winter came, at which was when I realized, this is essential. You are never warm in Finland in the winter. Even when you are indoors it is chilly; when you wake up in the morning and touch your arm it feels like ice. You are never warm. So a couple of times a week, you need to thaw in the sauna. It takes about an hour, but after that you can feel the heat radiating from your bones, and when it is minus 20 outside, there is no better feeling. Now the first time I entered a sauna I was a little shy, so I kept my bathing suit on, which was a big no-no, but this sauna was mostly full of international students, so they were polite and didn’t say anything. I became more and more comfortable with nudity over time.

More interesting though was that in the summer, rules regarding gender were strictly observed. Men had certain days, women had certain days. By winter though, girls were sharing the men’s sauna as well. I didn’t say anything, but one of the other men (who I think was slightly drunk which is very dangerous in the sauna, but was common enough anyways) asked the girls pretty directly whether they were okay with people looking at them. This made my skin crawl. I felt like this was one of those things that everyone knows, but shouldn’t be spoken. The girls were surprisingly calm about it though and responded matter of factly: “That’s fine; enjoy the eye candy, but don’t take it as an invitation to do anything else.” Fair enough. I suppose if they thought anything else, they wouldn’t want to come into the sauna during the men’s hours anyways. I should stress though that this sauna was being used by international students, and this is not in line with Finnish norms, which observes strict gender separation. That being said though, strict gender separation doesn’t eliminate this question entirely.

There are gays, lesbians, and bisexuals in the sauna as well. I asked a Finn (a straight man) this question, and his response was: “Yeah, he might find it arousing, but I expect him to control it. So long as he doesn’t make it awkward for me, what happens in his head is his business.”

When I think about this from the perspective of privacy and personal space, it is very interesting. Those who are nude in public know that some people might take a glance, but they don’t see that in itself as a violation of their personal space. If, however, someone chooses to respond in a way that makes them feel pursued, then there is a violation of personal space. The rule regarding privacy in the sauna is clear and unambiguous, whether it be a mixed sauna, or a separated sauna, whether it be in Finland or anywhere else: this is not the place to pursue sex. The same holds true for nude beaches.

A friend told me a story about one such privacy violation. She was on a nude beach in Germany, and went for a swim. When she returned to shore to dry off a man sat himself down right next to her stuff, when there were plenty of other spots to choose from. Obviously, this is a clear violation, and it discouraged her from going to a nude beach ever again. However, another women (she is Russian, though I don’t remember where she said she was swimming), described a similar experience, but said she was not going to let that stop her. There will always be such people. You fight them off when you have to, but enjoy yourself otherwise. She extended that same attitude to her two children (a boy and girl). If someone comes and starts acting suspicious, chase them off, but don’t approach it by restricting the child’s behavior. “It’s the same as blaming a women for how she dresses if she gets molested.”

Her attitude was not unusual. In Sweden, I found a lake that is perfect for swimming in the summer. The first few times I went, the water was still cold and my friend and I were the only ones there. Once summer started heating up though, families started coming. I am not exactly sure what the law in Sweden regarding public nudity is with regards to such places, but whatever they were, it did not apply to children, who were happily running around in their birthday cloths. This was such a bizarre experience. In the USA, I don’t want to be anywhere near a naked child, even in public, who wasn’t family or a very close family friend, because I honestly feel it is one of those situations where even if the court decides I am innocent, the court of public opinion will deem me guilty out of the gate. And oh boy would the media love such a story; it hits all the buttons. I initially felt so uncomfortable that I started chatting with my friend about the subject just to calm my nerves.

Once I finally calmed down, it felt liberating. Those kids can do whatever the hell they wanted, and I don’t have to give a damn. I could just sit back and watch them do silly things like run into ice cold water and then complain that it was cold, which to be fair was exactly what I was doing.

Even in the middle of summer the water is cold, and the moment summer ends, forget it, I wasn’t going. Indoor pools are expensive, but I did go occasionally, and I made sure to visit the sauna while I was there. While chatting away with my friend in the men’s sauna, a father came accompanied by his daughter, about 8 years old. Even in gender separated saunas, exceptions are made for children, so long as the child is respectful. And they usually are, which is a far cry from the USA where even a biology textbook would make children squeal and giggle. They learned how to respect people’s privacy by watching the adults around them.

And that brings me back to an idea I first introduced in the previous episode. I mentioned how using public spaces should be seen as part of a child’s education, because using public spaces teaches them how to use and care for public spaces safely. Another thing students can learn by using public spaces is how to respect people’s privacy. There are ways to achieve privacy beyond building a fence or concealing your purchases, but this takes the cooperation of everyone involved. If necessary, it can be legally enforced. Without this, public spaces are neglected or possibly even abandoned altogether, because people are unable to maintain their personal space, their privacy. So American parents are rightfully concerned about their children’s privacy, if schools start encouraging them to spend more time in public spaces; however, when I look at the history, this concern about children’s privacy in public spaces in America has a very racist and classist past. It was a way for parents to ensure all their property taxes went towards “their children” and not to other poor white folk or black folk.

Especially after the supreme court outlawed segregation, it became harder to separate black people from public spaces like libraries and public pools. If you lived outside the American South (where busing made school segregation much more difficult), fleeing into suburbia with other white families was the solution. And to ensure other public resources, like libraries and pools, stay only with your children, you tie all these resources to the school. You have indirectly accomplished the kind of segregation you desired. I can not prove this outright, but I did observe that schools built in suburbia in the 1960s and later (after Brown vs Board of Education in 1954) contained a lot more facilities than schools built before 1954. As I said before, public spaces are neglected or possibly even abandoned altogether when people are unable to maintain their personal space, their privacy. And that’s exactly what happened. Whites felt blacks encroached on their personal space, and so they abandoned public spaces. At that moment in history, it was probably worth sacrificing privacy and public spaces at the altar of desegregation. However, desegregation will remain an unfinished task until public spaces are restored, and all people learn how to use, care, and feel secure (both in the literal and privacy sense).

That’s all for this episode. Next episode is going to be about economics, starting with a trip to medieval Europe at the Hansa museum in Lubeck, before describing more modern economic observations. Until next time.

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