Introduction To Privacy Law Richard Warner

An Informational Privacy Ideal Informational privacy consists in the ability to control  What information others obtain about you, and  what they do with that information. We differ in the degree of informational privacy we desire.

An Ideal Ideally, each person should, other things being equal, have the degree of informational privacy he or she desires.  Other things are not always equal: Terrorism Why is this an ideal?  Freedom  Self-realization

In The Past Each person’s individual effort could ensure, to a considerable extent, that he or she would have the desired degree of informational privacy. The effort occurred against a background of norms.  The pharmacist did not ask about your marriage.  Your grocery store did not secretly watch you to see what you purchased.

The Present: Technology has enabled ever-increasing mass surveillance. The result:  Our individual efforts cannot now ensure that each of us has the desired degree of informational privacy

Lack of Norms One solution would be to rely more heavily on norms. Appropriate norms could define what information businesses collect and what they do with it. We cannot control what information businesses collect and what they do with it, But norm-compliant businesses would control themselves.

Lack of Norms The relevant norms would strike a balance between business efficiency and privacy. There is considerably controversy about how to make this tradeoff. This shows that we lack the relevant norms. Recall: a norm is a sanction-supported regularity that exists in part because people think they ought to conform to the regularity. There are very few relevant regularities to which we think we ought to conform.