Keywords

FormalPara Extended Abstract

Philosophical approaches to privacy focus on clarifying its many dimensions, providing a conceptual foundation for thinking about privacy in deep and fruitful ways. The modern concept of privacy developed as new technologies, such as print media and photography, made new types of exploitation possible. In response to the possibility of these new harms, legal and philosophical theorists began to develop analyses of privacy, including the concept of privacy rights and justifications for protecting privacy. Some philosophers have noted that there is no single concept of privacy. Instead, privacy can refer to a variety of different things, such as access to information; ownership or control of information, physical spaces, or particular objects; a private domain contrasted with the “public” domain; or appropriateness in what may be viewed by others. This chapter explores some of these concepts of privacy, examining how pluralism about the many different dimensions of privacy reflects ongoing technological change.

Philosophical inquiry also explores the normative and ethical dimensions of privacy, including questions about why privacy is valuable and how it is related to other values. Some of these areas of focus include the relation between privacy and security, privacy and ownership, privacy and the conditions for democratic society, privacy as a means of commodifying the self, and the role of privacy in the possibility of intimacy with others. Another area of focus involves understanding how privacy is related to fundamental moral principles, such as preventing harm, preserving individual freedom, protecting human rights, and promoting justice. Overall, normative inquiry aims to develop a moral framework for when and why privacy should be protected, and when and why it should not.

Introduction

The philosophical study of privacy focuses on its conceptual and normative dimensions. One key area of analysis involves clarifying the many concepts of privacy that are in use, focusing on evaluating definitions and key distinctions. These analyses are partly aimed at the clarification of various notions of privacy, but they are also often targeted at the development of new insights into privacy. The goal is to develop a coherent, rationally supported conceptual framework for thinking and talking about privacy.

A second key area of philosophical analysis deals with normative questions. Normative questions ask what ought or should be, in contrast to descriptive questions, which focus on identifying how things are. The normative study of privacy considers questions about the value of privacy and the moral dimensions of privacy, including the examination of privacy rights. Some examples of normative questions about privacy include: What sorts of privacy should be protected, and why? When is it morally acceptable to violate someone’s privacy, and for what reasons? Is a particular privacy protection good or bad, and why? What are our current goals and values, and how should we change current privacy laws, attitudes, and practices to align better with those goals and values?

As is perhaps already apparent, the conceptual and normative dimensions of philosophical inquiry are intertwined. There is a normative dimension to conceptual inquiry, for in addition to its clarificatory aims, conceptual inquiry generally has a prescriptive aspect. Some ways of thinking about privacy may be better than others, perhaps because they are more coherent, shed light on important adjacent concepts, or in some other way serve as more useful conceptual tools for thinking about privacy. So, too, our concepts of privacy influence normative inquiry, providing the language of thought with which values and ethics are expressed and explored.

The first section of this chapter focuses on conceptual dimensions of privacy, centering on the development of the concept of privacy in Anglo-American legal and philosophical traditions. The chapter then addresses the question of why numerous philosophers assert that there is no single concept of privacy, arguing that there is an expected pluralism in a concept that has evolved largely in response to extensive technological innovation. The second section explores some normative questions about privacy, concentrating on why privacy is valuable, if indeed it is, as well as on how privacy interacts with other values. Some of these other values are widely recognized, such as the interplay between privacy and security, or privacy and ownership. Some of them are more subtle, such as the role of privacy in enabling democratic society, the construction of the self, and our management of relationships with others.

Concepts of Privacy

What is privacy? What makes something in the domain of the private, instead of the public? When one values privacy, what is it that one cares about? These are questions about the concept of privacy, insofar as they explore what privacy is and is not, as well as how it is related to other concepts. The aim of this section is to explore the concept of privacy, starting by identifying some common notions of privacy in current use. This section also traces some older philosophical analyses of privacy, considering why a single definition of privacy has been elusive and arguing that pluralism in various concepts of privacy is not a problem to eliminate, but rather a feature of a concept whose development has been deeply intertwined with changing technologies and social interests.

In response to the question, “What is privacy?” many philosophers have noted that the term “privacy” is used in a variety of contexts, and no single definition of privacy applies to all the uses to which the term is put in our ordinary conversations about privacy. Also, it is not always clear how varying notions of privacy relate to one another. For example, information privacy often emphasizes the idea of control over access to information. In a classic paper, Alan Westin (1967) describes privacy as “the ability to determine for ourselves when, how, and to what extent information about us is communicated to others” (cited in DeCew, 2018). Control over access to information is often viewed as essential to managing risk and mitigating harm, especially in relation to decision-making processes (Anglim et al., 2015). For example, medical information (see Hester chapter in this volume) informs decisions about life insurance and health care premiums, and credit records can affect employment decisions. Information is powerful, and privacy protections are often aimed at keeping information from harming people.

Privacy can also mean control over access to both physical spaces and to experiences. Privacy as control over access often involves notions of ownership more generally and frequently appeals to notions of personal property and individual rights. A beach is private when access is limited, perhaps to the owner or to a private resort. A person’s private residence may not be entered by others without permission: police officers must obtain warrants; trespassers may be prosecuted. Ownership rights apply regardless of any additional harm that might result from unsanctioned access. If someone accesses private information without permission, one might object that they have violated a person’s privacy rights, even if no further damage resulted. It is also possible to have control over access to experiences. For example, a person’s inner thoughts and feelings are private in the sense that they occur only to one’s own conscious experience. It is a stretch to think of inner experience as one’s personal property, yet much of a person’s inner life is private unless and until that person decides to share it.

Another notion of privacy references a domain, where the “private” domain may be contrasted with the “public” domain. Things in the public domain are open to use by anyone, while things in the private domain are restricted to the concern of particular individuals. Privacy is often cited in arguments for reproductive rights and gender-related medical care, which view medical treatment as private in the sense that it should be exempt from government interference. Calling a person’s property, affairs, and beliefs “private” can indicate that they are outside the scope of relevance. Other examples include religious beliefs, which are considered a private matter in many contexts, and thus outside the purview of the things that the state should be concerned with in its oversight of the activities of its citizens. So too, some types of private beliefs are protected from being relevant in hiring decisions, college applications, loan applications, and more.

Privacy also sometimes refers to what is appropriate for the viewing of others, especially in relation to cultural norms of politeness, but also as it relates to the experience of being unobserved. One example comes from Annabelle Lever (2012), who explores privacy as it relates to “interests in anonymity, seclusion, confidentiality, and solitude” rather than privacy as it relates to ownership or a private domain. Privacy can designate a category in which unseemly things are hidden, things often having to do with bodily care. Children are taught privacy and modesty in order to know which sorts of behaviors are appropriate in front of others and which are not. For example, trimming one’s toenails should be done in private, not because it is important to limit access to one’s toenails or protect ownership rights to one’s toenails, but rather because cultural manners dictate keeping certain grooming activities to oneself.

In a now-classic article on privacy, Judith Jarvis Thomson (1975) remarks that “The most striking thing about the right to privacy is that nobody seems to have any very clear idea what it is.” She was not claiming that there are no definitions of privacy, but rather that there are many different uses of privacy, with no single definition that fits all the possible uses. This view has persisted, as Alastair Macleod (2018) recently argued that “The uses to which the notion of privacy is put in contexts of different sorts are so diverse that no unifying definition is available.” Despite the resignation that is apparent in both Thomson’s and Macleod’s observations, the lack of cohesiveness among the various concepts of privacy is itself interesting and worthy of further exploration. It also reveals something important about the way that the concept of privacy has developed, as well as how philosophical work on privacy proceeds. Exploring both those claims is the focus of the remainder of this section.

The main idea is that among the many changes that are driven by technological innovation, one fluctuation involves the concepts and theory underpinning our legal and moral thinking. The philosophical analysis of privacy is a primary means by which it is possible to, as Herman Cappelen (2018) puts it, actively participate in “the project of assessing and developing improvements of our representational devices,” which in this case are our representational devices for thinking about privacy.

Concepts are a primary tool through which human beings think about the world. They are, as Cappelen observes, a core representational device that enables thought about external reality, from mundane objects such as tables and chairs to complex, abstract ideas such as privacy. These concepts form the basis for understanding various parts of our experience, including what we can notice, describe, and communicate to others. Philosophers have many goals, including lofty aims such as the pursuit of truth, wisdom, and understanding, or perhaps more modestly, the aim to discover what it is reasonable to believe. But one thing that many philosophers also do is analyze and engineer concepts, which is—as the name suggests—the “project of designing, evaluating, and implementing concepts” (Chalmers, 2020). Concepts develop and change according to the various needs and interests of the people who use them to understand and describe various aspects of their world.

Consider a brief historical sketch of the development of the concept of privacy in philosophical use. Go far enough back in history, and for many philosophers the problem of how to live well together was much more pressing than any problems that concerned privacy. For instance, Plato’s discussion of privacy is quite sparse. He explores the consequences of invisibility on moral behavior in a famous thought experiment about the Ring of Gyges in Book 2 of The Republic (Cooper, 1997). There, he focuses on the effects of observation and the consequences, including social approval, of acting justly. Socrates argues that few, if any, would act justly if there were no consequences for injustice, but that a truly just person’s behavior would be unaffected by invisibility because their justice would be motivated by a genuine concern for the good. Yet again, Plato’s concern was not about privacy as a right or as a good that contributes to a person’s well-being. His focus was on illuminating the demanding standards that are met by a truly just person and showing the relation between justice and a happy life.

Aristotle distinguished between the polis, or city, and the oikos, or home/domestic spheres, as two distinctive domains with distinct virtues, or excellences. He viewed excellence in public life as requiring a different set of virtues than excellence in private life (Embler, 2015b; Lord, 2013). Aristotle’s account is also an example of a deeply gendered division in conceptualizing privacy, where men belonged in the public sphere, women in the private, especially those in the upper-classes. Even so, his theorizing about privacy is minimal. His attention was not focused on developing a notion of the private, but on developing a robust notion of the public, including attention to the possibility of citizenship, the obligations we have toward others, and the structure of a just society.

Moving forward over a millennium, the notion of privacy receives limited attention from Enlightenment philosophers, even those particularly interested in social, political, economic, and psychological affairs. David Hume, for example, uses the term “privacy” to mark a distinction between what concerns the goals or good of all members of society (public interests) versus what concerns the goals or good of a particular person (private interests). Hume’s use of the word “private” is essentially equivalent to what benefits the individual, and his usage is consistent across various references to private interest, private education, and private benevolence. (See Hume’s A Treatise of Human Nature especially Book 3; Enquiry Concerning Morals, Section 5 for examples.) In Hume’s work, the notion of privacy marks the distinction between a public domain and a private domain, but privacy is still not conceptualized as a robust individual right.

To find a more contemporary notion of privacy, we must look to a more recent source. In a well-known essay by Louis Brandeis and Samuel Warren titled “The Right to Privacy” (1890), Brandeis and Warren identified a need to develop legal protections based on what they called a “right to be let alone,” calling this “the next step which must be taken for the protection of the person.” Interestingly, they cite a variety of technological advancements as the impetus for the development of both the notion of a right to privacy and its subsequent legal protection. While by this point print media had existed for centuries, late nineteenth-century society saw an increase in the publication of gossip columns and pamphlets. As their production and dissemination increased, so too did the damage to the reputations of their unfortunate subjects. A second problem was the relatively new capability of photography to capture images, as well as “any other modern device for recording or reproducing scenes or sounds.” These new technologies created the possibility for new types of harm.

Warren and Brandeis argued that there was a need for the development of legal protections for privacy in light of new technological advancement that made these new harms possible. Their argument used protections for personal property as a model. However, they articulated the value of privacy as extending beyond ownership and property rights, maintaining that privacy itself was a good associated with free flourishing as a human person: “Urging that they were not attempting to protect the items produced, or intellectual property, but rather the peace of mind attained with such protection, they said the right to privacy was based on a principle of ‘inviolate personality’ which was part of a general right of immunity of the person, ‘the right to one’s personality’” (DeCew, 2018; citing Warren & Brandeis, 1890). Their arguments began a discussion in US law, political theory, and ethics about the value of privacy protections, laying the groundwork for thinking about privacy as a fundamental human right and as essential to human flourishing. (For a more detailed summary of this history, see Anglim et al., 2015.)

This brief overview suggests a way to think about the pluralism that many philosophers have encountered in the various concepts of privacy that are in use. The standard in philosophical conceptual analysis has for some time been to articulate a single definition of a concept that captures what is distinctive about the thing one is trying to define. These definitions give clarity about the concept and provide a basis for sorting out borderline cases. Some concepts do not, however, have that unity. Privacy seems instead to have several interrelated meanings, without it being possible to identify a single core concept that applies in all cases. Lever (2012) suggests that the various overlapping concepts of privacy may be due to the fact that privacy is intertwined with other notions whose edges overlap with privacy: “The main reason why it is hard to define privacy--the absence of a set of necessary and sufficient conditions which would enable us to identify privacy and to distinguish it from allied concepts--suggests that the fuzziness of our concepts of liberty, equality and rights may, themselves, explain why the boundaries of privacy are hard to fix.” Some concepts have fuzzy edges, which means they overlap with closely related concepts to the point that there is not a sharp distinction between where one concept ends another begins.

Lever's analysis may be correct, but it is not complete, for there is more to the story of why there seems to be an ineliminable pluralism in the concept of privacy. It seems likely that privacy is a concept that has a structure referred to by Ludwig Wittgenstein (1953) as a family resemblance concept. When careful analysis does not reveal a core notion, Wittgenstein recommends that “We should, instead, travel with the word’s uses through ‘a complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing’” (PI 66, cited in Biletzki & Matar, 2023). The philosophical work of understanding privacy involves precisely this sort of traveling through the various uses of privacy that have been developed as people create and tweak conceptual tools for thinking and talking about their experiences.

In the late nineteenth century, Warren and Brandeis were arguing for a new extension of the law, but they were also developing a new concept of privacy rights that had not yet existed in quite that form. Perhaps there are various concepts of privacy because the idea of privacy has been in constant reconsideration, revision, and expansion. As the world changes, so does the need for ongoing innovation in our laws and moral principles, but also in our concepts. The need to develop privacy law spurred the development of philosophical accounts of privacy aimed at gaining a better understanding of privacy’s value, the specific ways in which privacy was under threat, the harms that might result from failing to protect privacy, and a clearer articulation of what was to be gained by developing a robust theory of privacy rights. In particular, technological and social change drive this development. It seems all but certain that the future will continue to see innovations that make new kinds of exploitation possible, and that our current understanding of privacy will need to continue to develop in response.

While acknowledging the need for flexibility in our thinking about privacy, we can also provisionally define different types of privacy as they are relevant to specific contexts. An operational definition need not apply to all possible contexts in which privacy is relevant. Rather, those who work on issues related to privacy ought to specify what is relevant to the inquiry at hand, keeping in mind the possible need for future revision. Working to illuminate different conceptions of privacy and show their significance can help clarify and refine our thinking, as well as suggest new ways of thinking about privacy in the future.

Normative Dimensions of Privacy

In addition to exploring the conceptual dimensions of privacy, philosophers also try to answer normative questions about privacy. Normative questions ask not what is, but what should or ought to be. Ethics is normative in the sense that ethical principles aim to guide action, moving beyond the way things actually are to examine how people should act, given a broader context of values and moral principles. Part of the normative study of privacy involves understanding the value of privacy, especially why privacy is valuable and how it interacts with other values. For instance, does privacy have intrinsic value which should be protected for its own sake? Or is the value of privacy instrumental, derived from its relation to other goods that it makes possible? The normative study of privacy also involves developing various moral arguments for when and why privacy should be protected, given various goals such as promoting justice, protecting privacy rights, and contributing to a flourishing life. Finally, the normative study of privacy includes feminist analyses of privacy, which focus on exploring how privacy is entangled with various forms of gender discrimination and how privacy relates to efforts to promote justice, equality, and human dignity (e.g., Allen, 2011; DeCew, 2015; Mackinnon, 1989; Williams, 1991).

Notably, the normative study of privacy should not be thought of as isolated from descriptive inquiry, which focuses on inquiry about what is the case. In the same way that the concept of privacy has developed in response to social and technological change, new ethical challenges arise as changes in technology create new ways of collecting and sharing information, thus creating new possibilities for harm. As Catherine Wilson (2019) puts it, “…societies evolve new forms of organisation and new technologies. Morality has to play catch-up as clever humans discover new ways to deceive, use, coerce and rob one another that were not previously available…. New moral norms have to be worked out through discussion and debate by the public, including philosophers and journalists, and new forms of conscience instilled by educators. These norms, too, are subject to revision in the light of changing circumstances.” Responding to technological change requires careful attention to the many ways in which privacy may be threatened, as a matter of clear description of the current circumstances and challenges to privacy. These descriptions motivate extending normative analyses to new contexts, identifying where established moral values apply, and identifying when a new development prompts revision in our moral ideals.

Warren and Brandeis could scarcely have imagined all the ways in which it is now possible to collect and use information in harmful ways. There is an ongoing need to extend the application of normative standards in response to new technologies in order to manage technological innovation in a way that coheres with other values such as the protection of individual rights, the prevention of harm, and the promotion of security. This section explores some of these areas of ongoing normative inquiry about privacy.

The Value of Privacy

A foundational distinction in value theory distinguishes between value that is intrinsic vs. value that is instrumental. Intrinsic value is value that is internal to a thing. If privacy has intrinsic value, then privacy has value in and of itself, regardless of its relation to other goods. Those who take privacy to have intrinsic value sometimes view privacy as a basic human right or as a fundamental good, worth protecting and preserving in its own right. Many who view privacy as an intrinsic good also claim that there is something distinctive about privacy, arguing that the value of privacy cannot be fully reduced to the value of something else, such as property ownership or personal security.

If privacy has instrumental value, then its value is derived from the contribution it makes to some other valuable end. Instrumental value is derivative, meaning that the value of a thing comes from its usefulness as a tool, or instrument, for achieving something else. This view is sometimes described as a type of reductionism, the claim that the value of privacy can be fully explained by describing the other valuable ends to which privacy contributes. Also, the value of privacy then depends on whether privacy does, in fact, help achieve those goals, rather than existing as something to be pursued for its own sake.

These types of values are not mutually exclusive. Something might have both intrinsic and instrumental value, if it is both valuable for its own sake, and valuable insofar as it leads to other, desirable ends. Thus, it is possible that privacy has intrinsic value as a basic human good and that privacy also has instrumental value because it supports other goods, such as preserving personal security and enabling democratic society. In addition, although accounts differ about the sorts of goods that privacy enables and their relative importance, there is general agreement about the fact that privacy has instrumental value.

In contrast, there is disagreement about whether privacy has intrinsic value. One significant challenge comes from the fact that there is cultural variation in viewpoints about the importance of privacy. If something has intrinsic value, there is a sense in which its value is self-evident. After all, one cannot show that something has intrinsic value by appealing to its importance in achieving some other valuable end. That would show that the thing has instrumental value, not intrinsic value. Simply put, it does not seem that the value of privacy is self-evident. Rather, it appears to be culturally specific. Although some scholars argue that there are some cross-cultural similarities in privacy protections (Embler, 2015a), it is far from obvious that privacy is universally recognized as having intrinsic value (see Hawkins chapter in this volume).

Privacy need not be intrinsically valuable to be instrumentally valuable, however. The question about intrinsic vs. instrumental value focuses on how to best understand why we value privacy, not whether privacy is valuable at all. Even if there is nothing distinctive about privacy that makes it valuable for its own sake, privacy might still be important and worthy of protection. An instrumental value can still be “something in the enjoyment of which all human beings have a defensible personal stake” (Macleod, 2018). Exploring privacy as an instrumental good has been quite interesting and fruitful, for it involves examining the ways in which privacy is related to other values. Clarity about the values that support the protection of privacy is essential for understanding why privacy should be protected. These analyses can also provide a basis for evaluating particular privacy protections.

Even so, there is no guarantee that an account of the value of privacy will be simple or straightforward. On the contrary, there are layers of complexity and overlapping values in our lives. Sometimes our values mutually support one another, but sometimes they are in tension with each other. Our values come into conflict with the values of others, and we cannot assume that we are even aware of all the nuanced layering of our motivational structures (Nguyen, 2022). Thus, even if there is no single answer to the question of why privacy is important to us (Rachels, 1975), we might find instead a constellation of values that privacy supports.

Furthermore, we have already seen that the development of the idea of privacy as a fundamental right in the Western philosophical and legal tradition was a relative latecomer to the discussion of natural rights that began several centuries before. The idea of natural human rights is an idea with a particular historical development. It is also an idea that has had significant political, moral, and legal influence, providing guidance for how people should treat one another and what we can reasonably expect from our political system. As such, questions about whether privacy has intrinsic value might be more useful if transformed into questions such as “Are there good reasons to include privacy as one of the things that we choose to treat as a fundamental value?” and “What happens if morally and legally we extend to privacy the status of a fundamental right?”

The remainder of this chapter explores some of the constellation of values that philosophers have identified as being related to privacy. Some of these are values that privacy promotes and supports, while others are in tension with protecting privacy. This discussion is not exhaustive, but will emphasize particular areas of recent interest: (1) privacy and security, (2) privacy and transparency, (3) privacy and democratic society, (4) privacy rights, (5) privacy and the self, and (6) privacy and commodification.

Privacy and Security

Privacy has a close relationship to security. Privacy supports certain types of security, thereby protecting against harms such as identity theft and voyeurism. We limit access to some personal information, such as social security numbers or credit card numbers, to protect people from identity theft. Facial recognition software surveys thousands of faces at airports, an invasion of privacy that some say will make air travel more secure (Gentilo & Santana, 2023). Privacy protections can also prevent public embarrassment that leaves a person feeling exposed.

At the same time, privacy can enable harm when it is used as a shelter to hide harmful behavior. As DeCew explains, “privacy appears to be something we value to provide a sphere within which we can be free from interference by others, and yet it also appears to function negatively, as the cloak under which one can hide domination, degradation, or physical harm to women and others” (2018). Many feminist scholars have documented various ways in which appealing to the value of privacy has provided legal protection for various types of gendered violence (Allen, 2011).

The notion of privacy also designates some aspects of life as being outside governmental control, exempt from certain kinds of interference in domestic affairs. As a result, protections for privacy of personal dwellings and family relationships have historically been a source of support and protection for abusers. Privacy protects domestic life from unauthorized observation, but also plays a role in enabling domestic abuse (Allen, 2011). In fact, some feminist authors have argued that the private/public distinction is itself problematic, suggesting a rethinking of the distinction between public and private domains (for example, see Landes, 1998).

Privacy and Transparency

Transparency provides a balance to privacy, as it deals with the legitimate disclosure of certain types of information in certain contexts. Transparency is a tool against the misuse of privacy to hide problematic behavior, and it is often cited in cases where things such as reasoning, justification, bureaucratic processes, and decision-making should be available for review to interested parties or to the general public. For example, when decisions affect others, transparency about decision-making processes gives some assurance of fair treatment in contexts such as the allocation of funds, selection of job candidates, or calculating a student’s grades. Transparency promotes trust.

At the same time, transparency can be a double-edged sword. In a recent paper, C. Thi Nguyen (2022) argues that transparency can be deeply opposed to trust, especially when expertise is involved. The demands of public transparency are often aimed at reducing corruption. However, transparency can also require that experts “act within the range of public understanding.” Nguyen articulates a number of problems that can result from this requirement, including the pressure to articulate reasons in non-expert language which distorts the description of the actual reasoning process, the preference for metrics of evaluation that are simple and easy to understand over those that may be more accurate or that reflect a plurality of values, and the erosion of the implicit knowledge that is characteristic of expertise. Nguyen views the tension between public transparency and expertise as ineliminable: “Transparency works to eliminate the non-explicit and the private. That is where corruption and bias live -- but also sensitivity, expertise, and intimacy. There is no getting around this tension” (Nguyen, 2022). Sometimes this cost will be worth paying, but it is good to know what exactly one is trading when pursuing transparency, especially when experts are expected to provide justification that is accessible to the general public.

Privacy and Democratic Society

Many discussions of privacy assume some version of liberalism, a theory that takes the preservation of individual freedom and individual rights as fundamental in political and social theorizing (Bell, 2014). The term “liberal” traces its origins back to “liber,” a Latin adjective that means “free.” It is also the word from which the English term “liberty” is derived. Roughly, a liberalist perspective on privacy emphasizes the protection of privacy insofar as it promotes and protects individual liberties, while opposing privacy laws that interfere with individual liberty. Privacy is often taken to be essential in contributing to “the right to the enjoyment of opportunities for the living of a satisfying and fulfilling life” (Macleod, 2018).

Recently, Annabelle Lever (2012, 2015a, 2015b) has also developed a democratic justification for the protection of privacy, emphasizing the importance of some forms of privacy for democratic society. As she explains:

The point of protecting privacy from a democratic perspective is not that privacy is some preeminent individual good because of its connection to human dignity, intimate and familial relationships or to property ownership—as it would be from liberal perspectives. Privacy may or may not be justified on these grounds. The point, rather, is that protection for anonymity, confidentiality, seclusion, and intimacy—to name a few characteristics of privacy—helps to foster the freedom and equality necessary for democratic politics by structuring and limiting competition for power in ways that enable people to see and treat each other as equal despite incompatible beliefs, interests, and identities.

Lever argues that some forms of privacy are required for democratic governments to function. On the one hand, voter privacy allows individuals to vote according to their conscience, without fear of repercussions. Without voter privacy, things such as voter intimidation or retaliation can exert significant sway over voters, thereby threatening democratic elections. On the other hand, making legislative voting records of elected officials public contributes to their accountability as representatives of their constituents.

The distinction between Lever's democratic defense of privacy and justifications for privacy rooted in liberalism is not entirely clear. To the extent that the justification for democratic government is based on liberal ideals such as the value of self-governance, the role of consent in legitimating governmental authority, and the protection of unalienable rights, a democratic justification for protecting privacy might itself rely on liberal arguments that give support for valuing democratic governance. Even so, Lever’s analysis provides a helpful detail of many of the specific ways in which democracy and privacy are intertwined.

Privacy Rights

While we have already discussed the development of the concept of privacy as a fundamental right, the notion of privacy rights is also important in normative explorations of privacy. Rights come with both entitlements and obligations. For instance, if a person has a right to privacy, then they are entitled to privacy of some sort, and others are obligated not to violate their privacy. Legal privacy rights create entitlements and obligations that are codified and protected by law, as are the legal consequences of being caught violating these rights. Fundamental or natural rights are entitlements and obligations that apply to all human beings and there is a moral obligation to protect them. Ideally, a legal system will recognize and protect fundamental human rights, although the existence of those rights does not rely on such recognition or protection. An appeal to fundamental human rights can provide arguments for changing the law to bring it into alignment with moral imperatives.

A robust notion of privacy as a fundamental human right plays another important role in moral thinking about privacy. Privacy protections that focus on preventing possible harm, such as those discussed in the section on privacy and security, treat privacy as instrumental to other goals, such as security or general well-being. These approaches are consequentialist, in the sense that they emphasize the consequences of protecting or not protecting privacy. Privacy should be protected when its protection leads to a good outcome; privacy should not be protected when its protection leads to a bad outcome. If privacy is a fundamental human right, however, then it should be protected independently of any further harm that might result.

It is sometimes said that surveillance is not a problem if one has nothing to hide, or that privacy is unnecessary in the absence of personal guilt. If privacy is a fundamental right, then it is important to protect privacy for its own sake, even if one has nothing to hide. Perhaps privacy is important not just because of its role in avoiding negative consequences such as financial loss or public embarrassment, but perhaps it is also important because it is somehow fundamental to human dignity. The next section explores this possibility, considering how privacy might occupy a special role in the development and ongoing construction of the self, as well as in our ability to develop intimacy with others.

Privacy and the Self

In a now-classic essay, Jeffrey Reiman (1976) emphasizes the role of privacy in fully developed personhood, arguing that privacy is “a social ritual by means of which an individual's moral title to his existence is conferred.” Reiman’s analysis places privacy among the basic rights and obligations that are essential to recognizing and interacting with someone as a co-person, rather than as an object or as a less autonomous being. According to this view, there are certain fundamental abilities and expectations that are morally basic to full personhood. Reiman claims that the right to privacy “is the right to the existence of a social practice which makes it possible for me to think of this existence as mine. This means that it is the right to conditions necessary for me to think of myself as the kind of entity for whom it would be meaningful and important to claim personal and property rights.” Viewing oneself as entitled to certain kinds of privacy requires viewing oneself as a subject capable of making decisions about one’s own experiences and how those experiences are shared with others. Privacy is an expression of autonomy, and the absence of any control over one’s own privacy threatens the conception of oneself as an individual self at all.

Furthermore, just as the ability to conceptualize certain aspects of experience as one’s own is an expression of autonomy, so too is the ability to decide which aspects of one’s experience one wishes to share with others or to hide from others. The ability to control privacy is central to the cultivation of intimacy insofar as intimacy is fostered in part by the willing disclosure of private details about oneself. Close friends and family often have access to various aspects of each other’s lives that indicate varying levels of intimacy in those relationships, and the decision to share personal details with someone is an important way of building trust. Sometimes trust also motivates the protection of privacy. Preserving the privacy of a loved one can be an expression of care and respect, such as the respect shown by allowing a person to disclose personal details if and when they wish. A loss of privacy can undermine a person’s ability to regulate their own interactions with others, and a sustained inability to have any say in what remains private in one’s own life signals that one’s life is not, in fact, much of one’s own. It is for this reason that the loss of control over one’s own privacy can be experienced as a significant personal violation, as evidenced by the experience of exposure and helplessness that sometimes results from invasions of privacy.

Reiman’s analysis has also played an important role in many analyses of privacy. For instance, Lever (2012) considers a sense of privacy that is tied to our sense of ourselves as moral agents. Her argument is worth quoting at length:

Just as our willingness to grant privacy to others can reflect respect and trust—and be valued and desired for that reason—our willingness to act anonymously, confidentially, or discreetly can reflect a mature and considered decision to avoid burdening others with our problems, or to avoid forcing them to confront features of the world with which they may be unwilling or unable to cope…This is partly because our interests in privacy are not purely instrumental but seem sometimes to be ways of affirming, even constituting, ourselves as people to be trusted, respected, and deserving of liberty, equality, and happiness. Indeed, while privacy can be necessary to our security and be desired for that reason, people are sometimes willing to risk their lives and health in order to maintain anonymity, seclusion, and confidentiality.

By recognizing privacy as a way of “affirming, and even constituting, ourselves,” Lever is highlighting the relevance of privacy to the development and management of certain types of character. Privacy might be preserved out of respect for another person, but it also might be motivated by the desire to be a trustworthy, discreet, and reliable person. Being motivated by genuine respect for others and being motivated by the desire to develop one’s own character in certain ways are often mutually reinforcing goals.

Similarly, Iris Marion Young (2004) notes that “ An important aspect of the value of privacy is the ability to have a dwelling space of one’s own…in which one lives among the things that help support the narrative of one’s life.” Young’s observation is particularly relevant for views about personal identity that suggest that persons are narrative selves, authors of their own stories, and interpreters of experiences and their significance (Rea, 2022). Without a (literal or metaphorical) place of one’s own, it is difficult to play a significant role in determining the trajectory and meaning of one’s own life.

Anita Allen (2011) likewise emphasizes the importance of privacy to the self, although her view goes further than Reiman’s insofar as she argues that some types of privacy are so fundamental to the self that a person should not be permitted to give away privacy rights in certain contexts, even if they willingly consent to do so. One concern is aimed at preserving “the experience of privacy and the habits of respect for privacy it constitutes.” Another concern is that giving away some privacy rights results in harms that are worse than the paternalism she is suggesting. Her suggestions are tentative but striking in a context where privacy protection is often intertwined with the value of personal autonomy. As she puts it, “If people are completely morally and legally free to pick and choose the privacy they will experience, such as deferential civility, appropriateness and limited data flow, they are potentially deprived of highly valued states that promote their vital interests, and those of fellow human beings with whom they associate. We need to restrain choice—if not by law, then somehow” (2011). If she is correct, then some privacy rights are inviolable, resistant even to a person’s own desire to relinquish them.

Privacy and Commodification

A final area of focus concerns the ways in which privacy has been increasingly commodified. Privacy can be traded for access to goods and services, some of which are essential to participating in the modern world. We let our internet browsers track our search history in exchange for access to the internet. Our phones can now broadcast our location at any given moment, enabling friends to find each other quickly and targeted messages to be sent when close to a restaurant or event. Sometimes we are informed about the surveillance of our lives, but often the language with which we indicate consent is buried in the fine print and it is easier to simply click “I Agree” than to read through all the details. Anglim et al. (2015) refer to this as a paradox of privacy: “On the one hand, we benefit from the easy exchange of personal information through digital communications. On the other, we give up some degree of control over what happens to that information. Is that an appropriate trade off? Is it worth it?”

A further complication is that it is not always apparent what, exactly, is being traded. Privacy that can be bought and sold is another way of turning ourselves into commodities, along with our time, attention, and labor. Privacy can be viewed as a type of capital which can be used to purchase goods and services. For instance, “free” access to social media is in fact “purchased” in part by the disclosure of information that can be turned into a profit by selling it to advertisers.

Patricia Williams (1991) highlights this dimension of privacy, considering “the degree to which it might be that public and private are economic notions, i.e., that the right to privacy might be a function of wealth.” As with other forms of capital, the amount of control one has over privacy now often depends on the money one is able to spend. A particularly high-profile example of the ability to buy privacy occurred in 2013 when Mark Zuckerberg famously purchased four homes that surrounded his own home in Palo Alto, CA. The purchases were reportedly in response to the fact that “a developer wanted to purchase one of his neighbor's homes and use the fact that Zuckerberg lived close by as a marketing tactic” (Shontell, 2013). Zuckerberg’s privacy had a price tag of around $30 million. Perhaps it is for good reason that Williams refers to privacy as a “bargained freedom.”

The increased commodification of privacy raises concerns about equal access to privacy, as social and economic disparities result in significant disparities in privacy protections. When privacy is the commodity being bought and sold, there is concern about a significant incongruity between those who have the resources to protect their privacy and those who do not. This disparity exists in terms of both wealth and education, as both provide increased access to the means for protecting one’s own privacy.

Looking Ahead at Future Challenges

Technological development will almost certainly continue to drive conceptual and moral thinking in the future. This chapter concludes by briefly considering a current area of emerging concern: developing robust moral and legal guidelines for privacy protections in response to the possibilities of big data and AI generated content. While individual action is still meaningful, a person’s privacy is increasingly affected by decisions at levels far beyond their individual control. Furthermore, even if individuals want to protect their own privacy, the barriers can be overwhelming. Simply becoming aware of the various ways in which privacy may be breached can require a significant investment of time into understanding technologies such as social media, smartphones, facial recognition, AI, and more. The challenge of protecting one’s own privacy grows as the knowledge and time investment required to even understand possible threats to privacy become prohibitively large for a person who does not have specialized knowledge in the field.

Furthermore, knowledge does not always lead to the ability to take meaningful action to protect privacy. Almost three decades ago, Priscilla Regan (1995) noted that “Privacy is rapidly becoming a collective value in that technology and market forces are making it hard for any one person to have privacy without all persons having a similar minimum level of privacy.” Achieving meaningful privacy protection requires collective action, cooperation from large corporations, and government regulation, given the large scale of influence necessary for effective change.

Regan’s observation rings all the more true in our world of increasing technological interdependence. The responsibility to protect privacy will increasingly be unable to be borne by the individual, and those concerned with protecting privacy must insist that privacy be protected within the various systems and structures that affect our lives.