ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews some of the major critiques of the 'privacy paradigm' and suggests that some of the principal assumptions behind the privacy paradigm require reformulation as a result of some key shifts in the nature and scope of the privacy issue under conditions of globalization. Most privacy scholars emphasize that the individual is better off if privacy exists; Priscilla Regan argues that society is better off as well when privacy exists. A. Westin argues that different historical and political traditions among Western nations were likely to create different results in the overall balance between privacy and government. Within political science, the analysis of surveillance has surfaced in relation to the description and critique of authoritarian or totalitarian regimes. The liberal political theory that underpins the 'fair information practices' places an excessive faith in procedural and individual remedies to excessive intrusions. The long-held concern about a 'Chernobyl' for privacy is premised on an assumption of human and technological fallibility.
