Privacy Rights: Moral and Legal Foundations

“Privacy Rights is a significant contribution to the literature because it links the theory of privacy defended with other established views in the literature, but goes beyond that and adds new arguments and justifications. In the book, Adam Moore provides a novel endorsement of the value of privacy and privacy rights and a focus on contemporary issues surrounding informational privacy and the conflict between privacy and security, especially in the light of 9/11.” —Judith Wagner DeCew, Clark University. We all know that Google stores huge amounts of information about everyone who uses its search tools, that Amazon can recommend new books to us based on our past purchases, and that the U.S. government engaged in many data-mining activities during the Bush administration to acquire information about us, including involving telecommunications companies in monitoring our phone calls (currently the subject of a bill in Congress). Control over access to our bodies and to special places, like our homes, has traditionally been the focus of concerns about privacy, but access to information about us is raising new challenges for those anxious to protect our privacy. In Privacy Rights, Adam Moore adds informational privacy to physical and spatial privacy as fundamental to developing a general theory of privacy that is well grounded morally and legally. Provides a definition and defense of individual privacy rights. Applies the proposed theory to issues including privacy versus free speech; drug testing; and national security and public accountability.