Amy Peikoff: Privacy is Not a Right

When it comes to privacy, Amy Peikoff is the gift that keeps on giving:

“Examples like this are why it’s crucial to understand the true nature of #privacy.

Privacy is *not* a right. Rights, properly understood, cannot be “balanced” against one another anyway. But in this example, a thief’s “right” to privacy is held to potentially outweigh the package owner’s right to property. This is a complete inversion.

Privacy is a *state*–a state which human beings can create and maintain for themselves, using their fundamental rights to property and contract. …. If you understand privacy this way, you see how ludicrous it is to say that someone’s [right to] privacy can be violated by another’s legitimate assertion of his or her property right. Privacy, in reality, depends on having a right to property. Use privacy to undermine rights to property, and you end up undermining privacy itself. If you are on someone else’s porch, stealing a package that is not yours, you have zero right–call it privacy, or zingoflip or anything else you want to call it–to not be exposed.“

Other gems:

As philosopher Ayn Rand observed, in her novel The Fountainhead, the progress of civilization has afforded human beings more privacy, which they have been able to use to think, to produce, to improve their health, and selectively share and enjoy their values. …

… Privacy–a crucial component of human flourishing–depends on govt respecting our rights to property & contract.

…We have the right to use our property—or to make contracts with others—to create states of privacy for ourselves and those we value.

…The third-party doctrine holds that, whenever you share information with a “third party” (bank, telephone co., social media, etc., etc.), you no longer have a “reasonable expectation of privacy” in it and so there’s no 4th amendment warrant requirement.

Recommended Reading:

• Of Third-Party Bathwater: How to Throw Out the Third-Party Doctrine While Preserving Government’s Ability to Use Secret Agents