Privacy: Concept, Right, and Underlying Values

Abstract Despite ongoing debates over how best to understand the concept of and the right to privacy, we seem no closer to reaching agreement. These questions matter because it is often contested in many contemporary big data contexts whether a loss of privacy or a privacy rights violation has occurred; having a proper definition of the right to privacy will help us to clarify what justice requires. I suggest that the existing literature relies too heavily on thought experiments and intuitions in defining the right to privacy. While this may be appropriate for defining the concept of privacy, we have other resources at our disposal when it comes to normatively defining the right to privacy, namely accounts of the values that underpin that right. I suggest that considering these values, which I take to be the capacity for relationships, non-domination and autonomy, gives us a reason to favour an account of the right to privacy understood as control over privacy. This consideration of values will also give us a distinctive conception of control which incorporates not only the ability to block access to information about oneself, but also some claims to disclose it where one chooses to.