Law Commons^™

Surveillance And The Political Value Of Privacy, Benjamin J. Goold

All Faculty Publications

The steady expansion in the use of surveillance technologies by the state and private sector represents a substantial threat to the privacy of ordinary individuals. Yet despite the best efforts of civil libertarians, many members of the public still struggle to understand why privacy is valuable and deserves to be protected as a basic right. In part, this is a result of the inherent complexity of the idea of privacy, but it is also due a tendency on the part of privacy advocates to focus on the individual - as opposed to the social and political dimensions - of privacy. …