Privacy

Privacy refers to the ability of people or groups to keep themselves or their information apart from others, allowing them to choose what they share. This idea overlaps with security, which involves using and protecting information properly. Privacy can also relate to physical bodily integrity.

Different cultures have understood privacy in various ways over time. Most societies recognize that individuals should be able to keep parts of their personal lives private. Many countries have laws—and sometimes constitutional provisions—that protect people from unauthorized privacy invasions by governments, companies, or other individuals.

As technology has developed, the debate around privacy has moved beyond the physical body to include digital spaces. In most nations, digital privacy is seen as an extension of the original right to privacy, and many have passed laws to protect it from both public and private entities.

There are many ways to invade privacy, often used by corporations or governments for profit or political reasons. On the other hand, people can use encryption or anonymity to protect their own privacy.

Etymology

The word "privacy" comes from the Latin "privatus," meaning things set apart from the public—personal and belonging to oneself, not the state. "Privatus" is the past participle of "privere," which means "to be deprived of."

Philosophical views on privacy

Philosophers have long explored privacy. Aristotle distinguished between the public sphere of politics (the polis) and the private sphere of home life (the oikos). The Jewish Book of Sirach values privacy alongside basic necessities. The Qur'an says, "Do not spy on one another" (49:12) and "Do not enter any houses except your own homes unless you are sure of their occupants' consent" (24:27).

John Locke’s ideas about natural rights and the social contract laid the groundwork for modern individual rights, including privacy. In his Second Treatise of Civil Government (1689), he argued that a person owns themselves through natural rights to life, liberty, and property, and that government should protect these rights so people have private spaces for personal activities.

Philosophers disagree on private judgment. Hegel distinguished between moralität (private judgment) and sittlichkeit (rights and duties defined by social order). Jeremy Bentham saw law as an invasion of privacy, arguing that legal actions should be judged by their contribution to human well-being. John Stuart Mill, in On Liberty (1859), argued for protecting individual liberty against the tyranny of the majority and state interference, emphasizing privacy as essential for personal development.

Surveillance discussions connect to these ideas. Bentham designed the Panopticon prison in 1791, exploring how the awareness of being watched—even if unproven—could enforce conformity. Michel Foucault later concluded that this possibility of surveillance meant prisoners had no choice but to obey the rules.

More recently, legal scholar Scott Skinner-Thompson has argued that weak privacy protections disproportionately harm marginalized groups, who are more likely to have to share personal information and suffer greater harm when their privacy is breached.

Right to be let alone

Technology has changed how privacy is protected and violated. The printing press and the Internet, for example, made it easier to share information, creating new privacy risks. The first major U.S. article advocating privacy, by Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis in 1890, was largely a response to newspapers and photographs made possible by printing technology.