Privacy, Please

WORRIED about privacy? You have good reason. But at the same time, you may find it difficult to decide whether a strong privacy right is friend or foe. Your privacy is fine, even sacrosanct. But the privacy of the other fellow could easily cut you off from information you need for self-protection. The tension between our dual role as information-hoarder and information-seeker is inescapable. Just this past year, Intel was criticized for trying to market a new chip with a serial number that critics claimed would allow government agencies to follow a user’s every online move. Elsewhere, the federal government has been fighting a losing battle to get a backdoor key to every confidential transmission of sensitive data over the telephone and the Internet. How should we apply the traditional construct of privacy rights to the lengthening list of challenges to privacy in the cyber-age?

The privacy principle is invoked in so many different contexts that it is hard for us to know which claims to accept and which to reject. If you think abortion should be legal, it might be because you believe in a woman’s constitutional right to privacy. If you want to make sure your employer or your insurer never sees your medical records, invoke privacy. If you want to keep unwanted solicitors and callers from your doorstep, privacy is the key principle yet again.

About the Author

Richard A. Epstein

Richard A. Epstein is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law at NYU School of Law, the Peter and Kirstin Bedford Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and the James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor of Law Emeritus and a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago. His many books include The Dubious Morality of Modern Administrative Law.

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WORRIED about privacy? You have good reason. But at the same time, you may find it difficult to decide whether a strong privacy right is friend or foe. Your privacy is fine, even sacrosanct. But the privacy of the other fellow could easily cut you off from information you need for self-protection. The tension between our dual role as information-hoarder and information-seeker is inescapable. Just this past year, Intel was criticized for trying to market a new chip with a serial number that critics claimed would allow government agencies to follow a user’s every online move. Elsewhere, the federal government has been fighting a losing battle to get a backdoor key to every confidential transmission of sensitive data over the telephone and the Internet. How should we apply the traditional construct of privacy rights to the lengthening list of challenges to privacy in the cyber-age?

The privacy principle is invoked in so many different contexts that it is hard for us to know which claims to accept and which to reject. If you think abortion should be legal, it might be because you believe in a woman’s constitutional right to privacy. If you want to make sure your employer or your insurer never sees your medical records, invoke privacy. If you want to keep unwanted solicitors and callers from your doorstep, privacy is the key principle yet again.

About the Author

Richard A. Epstein

Richard A. Epstein is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law at NYU School of Law, the Peter and Kirstin Bedford Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and the James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor of Law Emeritus and a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago. His many books include The Dubious Morality of Modern Administrative Law.