Dinesh Kamath's Editorial 'How important is right to privacy?' that was published in Newsband

How important is right to privacy?

The right to privacy is an element of various legal traditions which may restrain both government and private party action that threatens the privacy of individuals. Over 150 national constitutions mention this right.

The inalienable human right to privacy has been a subject of international debate. In combating worldwide terrorism, government agencies such as the NSA, CIA, RAW, GCHQ, and others have engaged in mass global surveillance, perhaps undermining the right to privacy. There is now a question as to whether the right to privacy can co-exist with the current capabilities of government agencies to access and analyse virtually every detail of an individual's life. A major question is whether or not the right to privacy needs to be forfeited as part of the social contract in order to bolster defense against supposed terrorist threats.

Privacy uses the theory of natural rights, and generally responds to new information and communication technologies. Privacy is the "right to be let alone", and focused on protecting individuals. This approach was a response to recent technological developments of the time, such as photography, and sensationalist journalism, also known as "yellow journalism".

Privacy rights are inherently intertwined with information technology. The government was identified as a potential privacy invader. Discovery and invention have made it possible for the Government, by means far more effective than stretching upon the rack, to obtain disclosure in court of what is whispered in the closet.

At that time, telephones were often community assets, with shared party lines and the potentially nosey human operators. In 1967, telephones had become personal devices with lines not shared across homes and switching was electro-mechanical. In the 1970s, new computing and recording technologies began to raise concerns about privacy, resulting in the Fair Information Practice Principles.

The right to privacy is our right to keep a domain around us, which includes all those things that are part of us, such as our body, home, property, thoughts, feelings, secrets and identity. The right to privacy gives us the ability to choose which parts in this domain can be accessed by others, and to control the extent, manner and timing of the use of those parts we choose to disclose.

New technologies alter the balance between privacy and disclosure, and that privacy rights may limit government surveillance to protect democratic processes. Privacy is the claim of individuals, groups, or institutions to determine for themselves when, how, and to what extent information about them is communicated to other. The four states of privacy: solitude, intimacy, anonymity, reserve. These states must balance participation against norms: Each individual is continually engaged in a personal adjustment process in which he balances the desire for privacy with the desire for disclosure and communication of himself to others, in light of the environmental conditions and social norms set by the society in which he lives.