This article highlights a contemporary privacy problem that falls outside the scope of dominant theoretical approaches. Although these approaches emphasize the connection between privacy and a protected personal (or intimate) sphere, many individuals perceive a threat to privacy in the widespread collection of information even in realms normally considered "public". In identifying and describing the problem of privacy in public, this article is preliminary work in a larger effort to map out future theoretical directions.

For more than thirty years an extensive and significant philosophical debate about the notion of privacy has been going on. Therefore it seems puzzling that most current authors on information technology and privacy assume that all individuals intuitively know why privacy is important. This assumption allows privacy to be seen as a liberal “nice to have” value: something that can easily be discarded in the face of other really important matters like national security, the doing of justice and the effective (...) administration of the state and the corporation. In this paper I want to argue that there is something fundamental in the notion of privacy and that due to the profoundness of the notion it merits extraordinary measures of protection and overt support. I will also argue that the notion of transparency (as advocated by Wasserstrom) is a useless concept without privacy and that accountability and transparency can only be meaningful if encapsulated in the context of privacy. From philosophical and legal literature I will discuss and argue the value of privacy as the essential context and foundation of human autonomy in social relationships. In the conclusion of the paper I will discuss implications of this notion of privacy for the information society in general, and for the discipline of information systems in particular. (shrink)

From the Supreme Court to the bedroom, privacy is an intensely contested interest in our everyday lives and privacy law. Some people appeal to privacy to protect such critical areas as abortion, sexuality, and personal information. Yet, privacy skeptics argue that there is no such thing as a right to privacy. I argue that we cannot abandon the concept of privacy. If we wish to avoid extending this elusive concept to cover too much of our lives or shrinking it to (...) cover too little, we must come to understand it. After exploring the privacy arguments of philosophers and constitutional and tort privacy law, I argue for a new definition of privacy and an explanation of its value that clarifies and resolves many of our conflicts. Privacy is critical because it allows us to protect a realm in which we can have intimate relations with others. (shrink)

Recent anthropological analyses of Chinese attitudes towards privacy fail to pay adequate attention to more ordinary, but more widely shared ideas of privacy – ideas that, moreover, have changed dramatically since the 1980s as China has become more and more open to Western countries, cultures, and their network and computing technologies. I begin by reviewing these changes, in part to show how contemporary notions of privacy in China constitute a dialectical synthesis of both traditional Chinese emphases on the importance of (...) the family and the state and more Western emphases on individual rights, including the right to privacy. This same synthesis can be seen in contemporary Chinese law and scholarship regarding privacy. A review of recent work in philosophical ethics demonstrates that information ethics in China is in its very early stages. In this work, privacy is justified as an instrumental good, rather than an intrinsic good. I argue by way of conclusion that privacy protections will continue to expand in China, in part under the pressures of globalization, increasing trade with and exposure to Western societies, and the increasing demands for Western-style individual privacy by young people. Even so, I argue that these emerging conceptions of privacy will remain distinctively Chinese – i.e., they will retain a basic consistency with traditional Chinese values and approaches. (shrink)

Privacy is a relational and relative concept that has been defined in a variety of ways. In this paper we offer a systematic discussion of potentially different notions of privacy. We conclude that privacy as the freedom or immunity from the judgement of others is an extremely useful concept to develop ways in which to understand privacy claims and associated risks. To this end, we develop a framework of principles that explores the interrelations of interests and values for various stakeholders (...) where privacy concerns have risen or are expected to rise. We argue that conflicts between the interests and values of different stakeholders may result in legitimate claims of privacy/transparency being ignored or underrepresented. Central to this analysis is the notion of a stakeholder. We argue that stakeholders are persons or groups with legitimate interests, of intrinsic value, in the procedural and/or substantive aspects of the privacy/transparency claim and subsequent judgements on that basis. Using the principles of access, representation, and power, which flow from our framework of analysis, we show how they can facilitate the identification of potential privacy/transparency risks using examples from the British National Health Service. (shrink)