Nobody likes to be told what to do. And nobody wants to be intruded upon. These feelings make privacy something to be valued and something that should be protected by law. We are all convinced that in some way autonomy, self-determination, and personal integrity are linked to and depend upon privacy. This is why Warren and Brandeis in their influential Harvard Law Review article of 1890 argued that there should be a “right to privacy” which in their view amounted to “the right to be left alone.” The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (G.A. res. 217A III) extended this right to all human beings: “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, not to attacks upon his honor and reputation.”
Both Warren and Brandeis and the UN knew that privacy was a tricky matter, a grey area, something that could not be easily defined. When it comes to taxation, military service, investigation of criminal acts, education, health care, financial credibility, and many many other social situations, whether we like it or not, we will be told what to do and we will be intruded upon; and no one can claim this amounts to a violation of their privacy. And if they do, then what counts before the law is whether or not an “expectation” of privacy can be considered “reasonable” and “legitimate.” Expectations of this sort vary from time to time, from culture to culture, and depend on many different factors. Above all, under today’s regime of Global, Mobile, Cloud, Apps, and Big Data most traditional expectations about privacy are obsolete and no longer based on the realities of the digital age.
