Blackwell Reference Online

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Comment on this article   The value of privacy has long been recognized across cultures and historical time periods and indeed is one that some argue is physiologically embedded in human beings as well as in animals ( Westin 1984 ). Over the same time and again across cultures, questions of appropriate intrusions on privacy have been debated and most often framed as concerns about the relationship between the public and private realms, the state and society, and the individual and society. National statutes and constitutions, as well as international agreements, frequently express a country's understanding of the role and importance of privacy in these relationships. In modern times national and international debates and research about privacy have primarily focused on the privacy of personally identifiable information. The timing of such concerns coincided with the large-scale use of computers for processing personal information, which for advanced industrial countries was generally the mid-1960s. This essay begins with a discussion of the intellectual and social dimensions of global privacy issues and an overview of the associated literature. Conceptual and empirical research interests in privacy cross a number of disciplinary lines including philosophy, anthropology, sociology, political science, law, and economics. The essay then proceeds to focus on information privacy which ... log in or subscribe to read full text