[book] What is privacy and why is it good?

The modern world is awash with privacy discourse. We’re constantly informed that “We (and the 967 partners we intend to share your activities with) respect your privacy”. Bringing new gadgets into the home often raises concerns concerns about data collection. And we have periodic debates about corporate surveillance and government policies that are supposed to protect chidren. However, rarely do we discuss what exactly we mean by privacy and why it is a good thing. This month I’ve been reading The Right To Oblivion by philosopher Lowry Pressly, which attempts to do just this. Part of the problem is that privacy seems to have different meanings to different people. For some online privacy enthusiasts, privacy seems to mean total anonymity. For Facebook, privacy means controlling who gets to see what on your profile, while many privacy advocates would say being on Facebook at all is a threat to privacy. For others, advocating for privacy raises suspicion — that valuing privacy must mean…