This essay critically examines some classic philosophical and legal theories of privacy, organized into four categories: the nonintrusion, seclusion, limitation, and control theories of privacy. Although each theory includes one or more important insights regarding the concept of privacy, I argue that each falls short of providing an adequate account of privacy. I then examine and defend a theory of privacy that incorporates elements of the classic theories into one unified theory: the Restricted Access/Limited Control (RALC) theory of privacy. Using (...) an example involving data-mining technology on the Internet, I show how RALC can help us to frame an online privacy policy that is sufficiently comprehensive in scope to address a wide range of privacy concerns that arise in connection with computers and information technology. (shrink)

The vast majority of philosophers and legal theorists who have thought about the issue agree that there is such a thing as a moral right to privacy. However, there is little or no theoretical consensus about the nature of this right. According to reductionists, the right to privacy amounts to nothing more than a cluster of property rights and rights over the person, and therefore plays no autonomous explanatory role in moral theory (Thomson 1975, Davis 1959). Among non-reductionists, there are (...) almost as many accounts of the right to privacy as there are synagogues in the old town of Jerusalem. For one group of non-reductionists (perhaps the majority), the right to privacy is properly understood as a right of control, a form of autonomy. Within this group, some think that the right to privacy is the right to control information about oneself (Westin 1967, Beardsley 1971, Gerstein 1978, Fried 1970, Moore 2003), while others insist that it is the right to control access to oneself (Parker 1974, Scanlon 1975, Rachels 1975, Reiman 1976, Van den Haag 1971). For another group of non-reductionists, the right to privacy is the right to cognitive and/or physical inaccessibility (Gavison 1980, Garrett 1974, Allen 1988). Though these are by far the most widely adopted non-reductionist accounts of the relevant right, they are by no means the only ones currently on offer. There are hybrid accounts according to which the right to privacy is a cluster of various rights of control (Inness 1992) or a cluster of various rights of control and restricted access (DeCew 1997). And according to an influential “information-based” account, the right to privacy 1 is defined as the right that others not possess undocumented personal information about the right-holder (Parent 1983a; 1983b). The purpose of this paper is to bring some order to this theoretical chaos. On my view, none of these accounts of the right to privacy is accurate.. (shrink)

Of all the moral concerns regarding privacy in its various meanings, this essay selects only one: the right to be left alone by others, in particular, by government. Because moral controversies in pluralist societies tend to be interminable, and surely controversies regarding privacy are no exception, I approach the right to privacy in terms of the centrality of persons. When there are foundational disputes about which content-full moral view should govern, it is not possible to resolve such controversies without begging (...) the question or conceding at the outset crucial moral premises. This observation is not to affirm a moral skepticism or relativism. At worst, it involves an epistemic skepticism, a skepticism about the possibility of resolving controversies by sound rational argument without begging the question or engaging in an infinite regress. (shrink)