Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
In certain villages in the Basque region of Spain, each house is named after the
person who originally constructed it. Villagers refer to people by their house names,
even if the family living in the house has no relation to the family originally dwelling
there.
These examples show a strong link between a person and his property. From this
viewpoint, privacy is seen in terms of control over personal territory, and privacy rights
evolve out of property rights.
WARREN AND BRANDEIS: CLEARLY PEOPLE HAVE
A RIGHT TO PRIVACY
We can see this evolution laid out in a highly influential paper, published in 1890, by
Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis. Samuel Warren was a Harvard-educated lawyer who
became a businessman when he inherited a paper manufacturing business. His wife was
the daughter of a US senator and a leading socialite in Boston. Her parties attracted the
upper crust of Boston society. They also attracted the attention of the
Saturday Evening
Gazette
, a tabloid that delighted in shocking its readers with lurid details about the lives
of the Boston Brahmins.
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Fuming at the paper's coverage of his daughter's wedding,
Warren enlisted the aid of Harvard classmate Louis Brandeis, a highly successful Boston
attorney (and future US Supreme Court justice). Together Warren and Brandeis pub-
lished an article in the
Harvard Law Review
called “The Right to Privacy” [17]. In their
highly influential paper, Warren and Brandeis argue that political, social, and economic
changes demand recognition for new kinds of legal rights. In particular, they write that
it is clear that people in modern society have a right to privacy and that this right ought
to be respected. To make their case, they focus on—as you might have guessed—abuses
of newspapers.
According to Warren and Brandeis:
The press is overstepping in every direction the obvious bounds of propriety and
of decency. Gossip is no longer the resource of the idle and of the vicious, but has
become a trade, which is pursued with industry as well as effrontery. To satisfy the
prurient taste the details of sexual relations are spread broadcast in the columns of
the daily papers....Theintensity and complexity of life, attendant upon advanc-
ing civilization, have rendered necessary some retreat from the world, and man,
under the refining influence of culture, has become more sensitive to publicity, so
that solitude and privacy have become more essential to the individual; but mod-
ern enterprise and invention have, through invasions upon his privacy, subjected
him to mental pain and distress, far greater than could be inflicted by mere bodily
injury. [17, p. 196]
Meanwhile, Warren and Brandeis argue, there are no adequate legal remedies avail-
able to the victims. Laws against libel and slander are not sufficient because they do not
address the situation where malicious but true stories about someone are circulated.
Laws addressing property rights also fall short because they assume people have control
