Section 5.2. What Are Privacy Rights?

5.2. What Are Privacy Rights?

Privacy rights vary from country to country. "The Right to Privacy," a Harvard Law Review article by Samuel D. Warren and Louis D. Brandeis, is probably the most fundamental work regarding individual privacy rights in the United States.^[1] Early in this article, the authors describe the concept of privacy as follows:

^[1] "The Right to Privacy." Samuel D. Warren and Louis D. Brandeis. Harvard Law Review, Volume IV, December 15, 1890, No. 5.

That the individual shall have full protection in person and in property is a principle as old as the common law; but it has been found necessary from time to time to define anew the exact nature and extent of such protection. Political, social, and economic changes entail the recognition of new rights, and the common law, in its eternal youth, grows to meet the new demands of society. Thus, in very early times, the law gave a remedy only for physical interference with life and property, for trespasses vi et armis. Then the "right to life" served only to protect the subject from battery in its various forms; liberty meant freedom from actual restraint; and the right to property secured to the individual his lands and his cattle. Later, there came a recognition of man's spiritual nature, of his feelings and his intellect. Gradually the scope of these legal rights broadened; and now the right to life has come to mean the right to enjoy life, the right to be let alone; the right to liberty secures the exercise of extensive civil privileges; and the term "property" has grown to comprise every form of possessionintangible, as well as tangible.

The article then analyzes the issues involved with privacy, and states the following:

The protection afforded to thoughts, sentiments, and emotions, expressed through the medium of writing or of the arts, so far as it consists in preventing publication, is merely an instance of the enforcement of the more general right of the individual to be let alone. It is like the right not be assaulted or beaten, the right not be imprisoned, the right not to be maliciously prosecuted, the right not to be defamed.

In essence, the right to privacy is the right "to be let alone," and is considered to be among the basic rights of an individual. One way to look at privacy rights of an individual is as a personal copyright that others cannot publish indiscriminately. The law review article also analyzes the limitations of the right to privacy, of which the two most significant ones are as follows:

• Publication of matter that is of general and public interest

• Publication of the facts either by the individual or with his consent

If an individual publishes the facts himself or permits a third party to publish his personal facts, the publication of such does not constitute a violation of the privacy rights of this individual. Any publication (which may involve sharing of information with other parties, either oral or written, irrespective of whether it is recorded) of the personal facts of a person without his consent almost always constitutes a violation of his privacy rights.