Financial Information, Credit Information, and Information For Employers

Introduction This chapter considers privacy for you as you participate in economic life. Should you be able to keep information about your finances, your creditworthiness, or your tax payments confidential? Because engagement in economic life has impacts on others, including possibilities for power and influence,...

Conclusion

Our approach in this book has been to offer responses to the ever-expanding range of questions about what privacy means in our lives. We have explored the value, or the absence of value, of privacy in the conduct of our daily lives, as well as...

Privacy and Security

Introduction Security appears in many forms in discussions about privacy. There is physical security of persons and their possessions. Attacks on your physical security may be a privacy violation, or they may occur because your privacy is violated in other ways. There is information security—that...

Privacy Within and Beyond Families and Groups

Introduction So far in this volume, we have considered privacy as a value for individuals. Yet families or groups might also want to assert privacy as a value. Children, parents, or other family members might want to keep secrets from one another, but may be...

Law Enforcement Information

Introduction Law enforcement activities involve enforcers, people who are being victimized or protected, and people who are suspected of activities against the law. Because all members of a society have a strong interest in public safety and justice, there is arguably a presumption in favor...

Privacy and Health Information

Introduction In addition to being regarded as particularly sensitive by many people, health information has several characteristics that make privacy particularly salient. Health care is very important to people’s prospects in life—so much so that it may be regarded as a fundamental good. People do...

Conceptualizing Privacy

Introduction What is privacy? What does it mean, and how does it relate to other important values? Is it a human right? When and how did it emerge as an idea? In this introductory chapter, we address these and related questions to set the stage...

Privacy and Democracy

Introduction How privacy is understood and valued varies among democracies and non-democratic states. Some of the sharper variations may be attributed to whether privacy is viewed from the perspective of the individual participating in politics or from the perspective of a state’s policymakers about how...

Privacy on the Internet and in Social Media

Introduction This chapter addresses three sets of questions concerning privacy, the Internet, and social media. We first consider features of the Internet that are particularly important to whether you can have privacy on it. Then, we explore privacy policies: where they can be found (if...

Privacy and Educational Information

Introduction Like health care, education raises complex privacy issues. Education is very important to people’s prospects in life. In the United States and in Europe, people do not have a great deal of choice about accessing education, at least before they become adults. In addition,...