Privacy

Privacy is a surprisingly obscure and disputed value in contemporary society. With the tremendous advances in technology alone, calls for greater protection of privacy have increased in recent decades. Yet there is widespread confusion concerning the nature, extent, and value of privacy. Some Western countries, for example, do not acknowledge a legal right to privacy as recognized within the United States, while others, such as New Zealand and Australia, are sophisticated in their centralized and consistent approaches to personal privacy issues. Even within the United States, there is significant disagreement about privacy. The U.S. Constitution, for example, makes no mention at all of a right to privacy (though it also neglects to mention other rights, such as the right to marriage), and the major Supreme Court decisions that have relied on a fundamental right to privacy, Griswold v. Connecticut, O'Connor v. Ortega, and Roe v. Wade, remain highly contentious and controversial. The strongest arguments in favor of the right to privacy stem instead from the Fourth Amendment protection from unreasonable searches and seizures and from the omission of privacy from the rest of the Constitution and the inclusion of the Ninth Amendment, which explains that the enumeration of certain rights does not deny the remaining rights, and the Tenth Amendment, which provides that powers not given to the government are reserved to the people.

Two general understandings of privacy can be found in the legal and philosophical literature on this topic: privacy as the right to be left alone within a personal zone of solitude and privacy as the right to control information about oneself. Each interpretation can be problematic, but each has important implications for business. It may be considered unreasonable by employers for a worker to expect to be left alone in the workplace, so the first interpretation may pose conflicts in business ethics. Likewise, though the Supreme Court's decisions define privacy according to the latter interpretation, employers may be entitled to a good deal of information about employees. Establishing the proper limits of privacy, including drawing the line between the personal and the public at work, is a significant challenge in connection with business ethics.

Before turning to some of these more specific issues, however, it would be first worthwhile to consider the connection between these two senses of privacy. Certain decisions that one makes about how one lives one's life, as well as the control of personal information, play a crucial role in defining personal identity. Privacy is important because it serves to establish a boundary between individuals and thereby serves to define one's individuality. The right to control certain very personal decisions and information helps determine the kind of person one is and the person one becomes. To the degree that one values individuality and the distinct and individual treatment of others, one ought to recognize that certain personal decisions and information are rightfully the exclusive domain of the individual.

Specifically in connection with privacy, ethical issues arise in the process of gathering information, assessing its accuracy, correcting it, and disclosing it, as well as in connection with the substance of the information itself. The simple awareness that others have personal information about them may feel to some invasive or violating. For that amorphous reason, privacy is a slightly difficult concept to define and includes the ability to control what others can find out about you. Why do we care that someone has our personal information? We can imagine items of personal data that we simply do not want others to know, notwithstanding whether they would actually do something with that information. We do not like [Page 1672]people knowing things about us; it comes down to one's ability to be autonomous in controlling one's personal information.

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