AFFIRMATIVE PRIVACY — GENERAL 9

PRIVACY IS ESSENTIAL FOR HUMAN FREEDOM

PRIVACY IS ESSENTIAL FOR BEING A FREE HUMAN

Charles J. Sykes, The San Francisco Chronicle, APRIL 30, 2000, SECTION: SUNDAY CHRONICLE; Pg. 1/Z1 TITLE: Invasion of the Privacy Snatchers // acs-EE2001

Some commentators suggest that privacy is the essence of being human, but in fact, it is quite possible to be human without privacy. It is more accurate to say that privacy is essential to being a free human being. As Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis suggested more than a century ago, privacy -- the right to be let alone -- is the most valued, if not the most celebrated, right enjoyed by Americans. It is the zone of privacy that enables us to shut doors, close windows and say to the rest of the world, "It's none of your business."

Privacy is not simply a matter of being protected from invasions. It is also necessary for defining oneself and for entering into relationships that provide us the security to become vulnerable. It is what allows us to be individuals. The erosion of privacy asphyxiates private life as it contracts the distance that separates individuals from one another and from the state.

PRIVACY IS ESSENTIAL TO BE A FREE HUMAN BEING

Charles Sykes, Senior Fellow at the Wisconsin Policy Institute, THE END OF PRIVACY, 1999, EE2001 -JGM, p.7

But the greatest threats--obscured in debates over sexual McCarthyism, media intrusion, and technological snoopinggo to the heart of our self-identity. Some commentators suggest that privacy is the essence of being human; but, in fact, it is quite possible to be human without privacy. It is more accurate to say that privacy is essential to being a free human being.* As justice Louis Brandeis suggested more than a century ago, privacy-the right to be let alone-is the most valued, if not most celebrated, right enjoyed by Americans. Neither the Founding Fathers of the eighteenth century nor Brandeis of the nineteenth century thought that privacy was optional. How much less so in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, when others have the power literally to watch us through walls.

PRIVACY IS THE BEDROCK OF OTHER RIGHTS

Nadine Strossen, law professor at New York Law School AND president of the American Civil Liberties Union, PANEL DISCUSSION: CONTEMPORARY CHALLENGES TO PRIVACY RIGHTS, New York Law School Law Review , 1999, 43 N.Y.L. Sch. L. Rev. 195, EE2001-JGM, P.

I agree with Justice Brandeis that privacy is "the right most valued by civilized [people]." n10 It is so valued not only because it is, as he said, "the most comprehensive" right, n11 but also because it is the predicate or the bedrock for literally every other right that we exercise.

PRIVACY IS A CORE LIBERAL VALUE

Anita L. Allen, Professor, University of Pennsylvania School of Law, "COERCING PRIVACY," William & Mary Law Review, March, 1999, 40 Wm and Mary L. Rev. 723, EE2001-hxm, P.

The conjecture that the taste for privacy and the expectation of privacy are eroding is consistent with the observation I have made elsewhere that privacy norms play an expansive role in morals, politics, and law. n36 Privacy is not dead. In morals, though with significant cultural variations, expectations of, and mutual respect for, the privacy of certain places, communications, and behaviors constrain daily intercourse. In politics, particularly in Western-style democracies, privacy stands virtually on a par with liberty and equality as a core liberal value. n37 Privacy as a political value, however, is not limited to liberal thought or liberal regimes. People around the world consider protecting at least some privacy interests a core function of good government. n38 In law, virtually every country's written constitution or comparable basic law contains privacy principles limiting authorized government access to people and their possessions. n39 The civil law of individual Western European nations and the official directives of the European Community include broad privacy protection regulating the disclosure of personal and commercial information. n40