Why Does Privacy Matter? One Scholar's Answer

Even though the practices of many companies such as Facebook are legal, there is something disconcerting about them. Privacy should have a deeper purpose than the one ascribed to it by those who treat it as a currency to be traded for innovation, which in many circumstances seems to actually mean corporate interests. To protect our privacy, we need a better understanding of its purpose and why it is valuable.

That's where Georgetown University law professor Julie E. Cohen comes in. In a forthcoming article for the Harvard Law Review, she lays out a strong argument that addresses the titular concern "What Privacy Is For." Her approach is fresh. At bottom, Cohen's argument criticizes the dominant position held by theorists and legislators who treat privacy as just an instrument used to advance some other principle or value, such as liberty, inaccessibility, or control. Framed this way, privacy is relegated to one of many defenses we have from things like another person's prying eyes, or Facebook's recent attempts to ramp up its use of facial-recognition software and collect further data about us without our explicit consent. As long as the principle in question can be protected through some other method, or if privacy gets in the way of a different desirable goal like innovation, it is no longer useful and can be disregarded. Cohen doesn't think we should treat privacy as a dispensable instrument. To the contrary, she argues privacy is irreducible to a "fixed condition or attribute (such as seclusion or control) whose boundaries can be crisply delineated by the application of deductive logic. Privacy is shorthand for breathing room to engage in the process of ... self-development."