The importance of privacy revisited
Norman Mooradian2009, Ethics and information technology
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Abstract
James Rachels' seminal paper ''Why Privacy Is Important'' (1975) remains one of the most influential statements on the topic. It offers a general theory that explains why privacy is important in relation to mundane personal information and situations. According to the ...
Key takeaways
- The central claim of Rachel's paper is that privacy is a precondition for maintaining the diversity of personal relationships that people value.
- The fact of increased flows and stores of personal information, especially BPI, should cause us to revaluate the relevance of Rachel's information privacy theory to the concerns of computer information privacy theorists.
- As is evident from above, the sort of information divulged through a great deal of blogging in and outside of the context of social networking sites is the sort of personal information that is at the center of Rachels' information privacy theory, which information I have labeled BPI.
- This is accounted for in Rachels' space privacy theory, but as with the contextual and modal factors described above, it is absent from BPI and its absence undermines the Rachelean information privacy theory.
- It can therefore be expected that Rachels' personal information theory will be of relevance in understanding how privacy is important to the functioning of these sites and the relationships in them, even if it is seen to lose relevance in explaining how information privacy is important to our relationships generally.
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