The semantics of privacy

The categories of privacy

I remarked in Chapter 13 that the rights of privacy were relative newcomers to the human rights scene and for that reason were still in need of precise definition and needed to make a place for themselves by elbowing out of the way some applications of other, well-established rights, such as the freedom to observe, to report, and to inquire. I hope to show in this chapter and in the one following how, by considering their telé, one can go quite a long way in delineating the bounds of particular human rights where they appear to conflict with others. But it will greatly assist the inquiry if we can first clarify some confusions in the use of privacy.

Though many of the scholars and official committees who have ventured into this perplexing area have thought that deciding on a definition of ‘privacy’ was indispensable as a preliminary to reviewing the principles which should govern attempts to protect it, others have despaired of constructing such a definition. Though paradigm cases of invasions of privacy are recognized readily enough, they are so disparate that there seems little chance of framing a comprehensive but determinate definition on which an enforceable legal right might be grounded. Paradigm instances are already covered indirectly by principles of equity, laws of defamation, and so on; beyond other piecemeal legislation, the courts might be relied upon, they say, to assimilate other related problems to these established paradigms as they arise.