The concept of privacy, as conventionally understood, can have no value against the greater concern of social welfare. Social welfare can be defined as the ability of a society to function well in whole or in part -- spreading from the macrocosmic nation to the microcosmic family -- and privacy as the ability to conceal information in which one has a personal interest. As a value I offer ensurance of social welfare; as a criterion, effective but not excessive government strength. Before we go any farther, it would do well to point out two concepts proponents of privacy as an inviolable right often overlook: first, the relativist, catch-all nature of 'privacy' as a concept, and second, the important concept of negative rights.

Privacy is, generally, two separate but related concepts: the ability to conceal personal embarassing or harmful details, and the ability to act without oversight. Two acts as unrelated as suppressing the knowledge that you listen to Britney Spears and prevening government employees from searching your bags before you board a train are lumped under the same word: privacy. The opponents of controls on privacy generally create a straw man here, and equate loss of the second to loss of the first. They believe in a malicious state, one which will dismantle all liberties and show everyone naked-baby photos of you. They equate measures of control found in fascist countries to fascism itself. The nightmares of Huxley and Orwell assume a government not ruled by and for the popular interest, and this shows clear when one tries to construct such a dystopia using a democracy as a base. It is simply impossible without astounding leaps of social logic. Thanks to the American democratic spirit, the government is able to subjectively violate rights. Does the right to secrecy from one's peers exist? Absolutely. The perfect scenario of an opponent of right-to-concealment involves a near-mechanical government, in which no information reaches human ears unless it is dangerous to society.
Negating the resolution would imply consent with privacy as a non-priority ONLY when it conflicts with social welfare; were the government to tap the phone lines of a neighborhood suspected of holding a terrorist cell, for instance, the information law-abiding citizens keep secret from anyone except their conversational partners would remain utterly secret. Ideally, any intranational espionage would take place only after the development of a filtration system which makes certain key words a red flag to otherwise dormant listening systems.

Further, it is typical that proponents of the resolution fail to realize negative rights. The quote "My right to swing my fist ends where another man's nose begins" has been attributed to everyone from Jefferson to Holmes, but it remains a valid point. Negative rights are very important, possibly more so than positive ones, and here 'social welfare' is, albeit somewhat nebulous, a clear example of a social negative right. It is not a freedom to -- such as the freedoms to freely worship, speak, and write guaranteed by the First Amendment -- but rather, a freedom from -- such as the freedoms from double jeopardy and self-incrimination guaranteed by the Fifth. If a school of thought fails to recognize negative rights as a priority, they will naturally reach such logical conclusions as individual privacy being, in all cases, more important than social welfare. They will also naturally reach conclusions such as racial discrimination being an employer's right. If negative rights are not taken strongly into account, the very nature of democratic government is threatened. The government must take at least some role in the protection of its components...

In any debate over such a ponderous issue, there must be, in addition to a discussion of philosophical ramifications, a discussion of pragmatist concerns. If the government is allowed the power necessary to protect but not the power necessary to abuse, many issues will be resolved in addition to the current national bugbear of terrorism. With concern to medicine, many people contaminated with deadly diseases are allowed to live and work in complete freedom from reasonable restraints, and help to spread otherwise preventable plagues. Wives and husbands and mothers and fathers are often allowed to abuse partners and children for years longer than they should have due to a respect for 'family privacy' -- again, a freedom to conceal activities, not personal details.

On a pragmatist level, the greatest threat posed by a lack of government ability to intervene in favor of the negative right of societal welfare is, ironically enough, tyranny... a charge often levelled against proponents of scaling-back of privacy rights. Abuse of an absolutist, unreduced concept of privacy will almost certainly lead to a decline in the quality of life. And historically, totalitarian elements have relied on a declining standard of life. The loss of privacy as an absolute right can be considered almost inevitable -- by regulating it, we can prevent losing every faction of that right rather than only the ones with the potential for societal harm.
I am not about to say that all privacy should be stripped away, or that in each and every case, that societal welfare should be valued above a man's right to privacy. In negating the assertion under question today, we are not claiming that the right to privacy does not exist. We are merely saying it is not absolute -- that it, like every right, knows some limit, and that the concept of freedom from harm by hostile agents must be weighed as heavily or more so than the concept of freedom to secrecy. I urge a decisive negation of the resolution. I will now open the negative argument for questioning and clarification.