What Is Privacy?

Privacy seems like a familiar idea until one attempts to define it.

It may describe being left alone. It may involve control over personal information, freedom from observation or interference, the ability to make certain choices without intrusion, or an expectation that some parts of life will remain beyond the attention of others.

Yet each of those descriptions raises additional questions.

Is privacy something an individual possesses, or does it depend upon the behavior and expectations of others? Is it a natural condition, a social norm, a philosophical principle, a legal right, or some combination of these things?

The answer may also depend upon time and place. What one society considers private may differ from another. What people reasonably expected to remain private decades ago may be difficult to conceal today. Technology can change what others are capable of observing, collecting, storing, combining, and inferring without necessarily changing what individuals believe should remain private.

Law adds another dimension. Legislatures can establish privacy rights and obligations. Regulators can interpret and enforce them. Courts can determine when an expectation of privacy deserves legal protection. Yet law does not necessarily create the underlying human desire for privacy. In many instances, it attempts to define, balance, or protect something that already exists as an expectation or social value.

Perhaps, then, the difficulty of defining privacy is not a problem to be solved before studying it. Perhaps that difficulty is part of what makes privacy worth studying.

This is a thought in progress.

References

Privacy — Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — An extensive examination of the meanings, history, theories, and values associated with privacy, including the difficulty of defining privacy as a single unified concept.