ABSTRACT
Is privacy valuable? The answer, we have seen, is ‘yes’, although it is not always easy to describe and evaluate privacy, or to determine its likely consequences for ourselves and others. Proponents of privacy believe that it promotes people’s freedom, equality, and happiness, whereas sceptics worry that it leaves the weak and vulnerable at the mercy of the powerful. We have seen that there is some truth in each of these seemingly inconsistent claims. Protections for privacy are not costless, and may sometimes prevent us from speaking our mind, learning from others, or acting as we should. Moreover, the likely consequences of privacy for people’s freedom, equality and happiness depend on how we describe and evaluate the latter. Hence, some ways of thinking about privacy place it on a collision course with the freedom of women and their equality with men, although there is nothing intrinsic to privacy which means that it must have such effects. Conversely, privacy can help to protect people from unjustified scorn, humiliation and recrimination, as well as from bribery and coercion, although there is nothing inevitable about this, either.
