Privacy [a moral analysis]

Abstract

Privacy has become the object of considerable concern. The purely fortuitous intrusions inherent in a compact and interrelated society have multiplied. The more insidious intrusions of increasingly sophisticated scientific devices into previously untouched areas, and the burgeoning claims of public and private agencies to personal information, have created a new sense of urgency in defense of privacy. The intensity of the debates about electronic eavesdropping and the privilege against self-incrimination are but two examples of this urgency. The purpose of this essay is not to add yet another concrete proposal, nor even to call attention to yet another intrusion upon privacy. Rather I propose to examine the foundations of the right of privacy—the reasons why men feel that invasions of that right injure them in their very humanity. To bring out the special quality of the concern over privacy I shall first put a not entirely hypothetical proposal, which should serve to isolate from restrictions and intrusions in general whatever is peculiar about invasions of privacy. There are available today electronic devices to be worn on one's person which emit signals permitting one's exact location to be determined by a monitor some distance away. These devices are so small as to be entirely unobtrusive: other persons cannot tell that a subject is “wired,” and even the subject himself—if he could forget the initial installation—need be no more aware of the device than of a small bandage.

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