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Commentary on Understanding Privacy — and the Real Threats to It

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Understanding Privacy — and the Real Threats to It, August 4, 2007 (20 pages, PDF), by Jim Harper, the editor of Privacilla.org and director of information policy studies at the Cato Institute.

  • Executive Summary: “Properly defined, privacy is the subjective condition people experience when they have power to control information about themselves. Because privacy is subjective, government regulation in the name of privacy can only create confidentiality or secrecy rules based on politicians’ and bureaucrats’ guesses about what “privacy” should look like. The most important, but elusive, part of true privacy protection is consumers’ exercise of power over information about themselves. Ultimately, privacy is a product of personal responsibility and autonomy.
    Law has dual, conflicting effects on privacy. Law is essential for protecting privacy because it backs individuals’ privacy-protecting decisions, but much legislation plays a significant role in undermining privacy. Indeed, the principal threats to privacy come from governments.
    These threats fall into three classes. The first, government surveillance, is a profound and well-recognized threat to privacy. Governments also undermine privacy by collecting, cataloging, and sharing personal information about citizens for administrative purposes. Less acknowledged — but no less important — is the wide variety of laws and regulations that degrade citizens’ power to protect privacy as they see fit.”
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