Fred D. Miller

Particularly pertinent essays in the collection:

In "Deconstructing Privacy: And Putting It Back Together Again," Richard A. Epstein argues that the conception of privacy isn't coherent, from a classical libertarian/liberalism perspective. He argues that while some conceptions of privacy are coherent with liberalism (especially tort law), other conceptions are at odds with liberalism (conceptions of rights and responsibilities). In Epstien's formulation of liberalism, voluntary contract is a show more vital component (along with autonomy, possession, freedom from force and fraud) (6-7). He sees privacy laws that inhibit contractual freedom (like nondiscrimination laws regarding ability, which keeps ability private) as incompatible with liberal traditions because it puts risk in the hands of insurance providers and does infringes on the freedom of contract (22-24). He concludes, "For someone who starts with a market-oriented, classical liberal perspective, privacy claims should be respected when created by contract, but emphatically rejected when invoked to limit the freedom of exchange of information between trading partners" (24).

In "The Right to Privacy," Lloyd L. Weinreb argues that privacy is not an a priori right (it is, of course, a legal right and constitutional right); Weinreb understands rights as "the conditions of responsibility" that "follow direction from the proposition . . . that persons are autonomous" (25). Weinreb argues that instead we need to understand privacy as contingent on communities, and within communities, on circumstances; privacy is thus utilitarian, in that it is determined by what will help the common good (42). This is important because it means that those who attempt to defend privacy need to understand that they need to argue for a common good that includes that privacy that is better than other alternatives offered in its place (44).

In "Privacy, Control, and Talk of Rights," R.G. Frey critiques the notion of privacy as a negative right, arguing that discussions of the invasion of privacy depend upon a preconception of privacy (negative rights are what we should not do to others; rights theorists tend to postulate rights as protecting a core of personhood, one that can't be fully defended) (47, 49, 52). Frey argues that it's not clear on what grounds we should understand non-intrusiveness, and proposes that instead we understand privacy on utilitarian grounds: what is best for the common good; privacy can be understood as a conventional right (not a natural right) that is agreed upon for the human good (60).

In "Privacy and Technology," David Friedman critiques economic models of information privacy (that privacy allows for things to be of economic benefit to people) by showing that keeping some information secret benefits sometimes, but secrecy harms sometimes. Therefore, there isn't a clear defense of privacy on economic grounds. However, technological advances (he outlines three: information processing, data encryption, and surveillance) complicate the issue. Friedman concludes that because of data encryption and real life surveillance, we may have more and more privacy in cyberspace and less and less in real life. show less