I also thought that privacy was something we were granted in the Constitution. I have learned in fact that the word privacy does not appear in the Constitution.
To set the record straight, the U.S. Constitution does not provide any explicit right to privacy. The landmark ChoicePoint incident that compromised consumers’ personally identifiable information and made it available to identity thieves has been a hot topic in the news. Privacy and its role in our daily lives is an important discussion in our personal as well as professional worlds.
Privacy has been an issue over the millennia. In ancient cultures, being put out from the tribe and be left alone in a cave and not participate was early privacy. As we moved into the Industrial Age, the new concept of the right to privacy was raised in an 1890 Harvard Law Review article written by Louis D. Brandies, who served on the U. S. Supreme Court from 1916-1939, and his Boston law partner Samuel D. Warren. The article, which was apparently a response to newspaper reports published regarding the behavior of
I have found four general areas of privacy: bodily, territorial, communications, and information.
- Bodily Privacy- We expect that our bodies are private, unless we as a society have agreed otherwise. For example, if we are in an airport security line and the metal detector beeps as we walk through the scanner. We expect to be searched. Or if we agree to having drug tests as a condition of employment. Or we are renewing our driver’s license and agree as a condition of having that license to submit a thumb print.
- Territorial Privacy- We expect that our homes are private. However, when we walk into a convenience store or up to the ATM, we know or should know that we are being video taped. Or we are at an intersection with a red light traffic camera there to record violators of the red light.
- Communication Privacy- We expect that our personal conversations are private. But our expectation changes, or should change, if we are on a cell phone versus a land line. We expect that our letters signed, sealed and mailed with the postal service are private but our expectation changes, or should change, when sending email. It is not in any way “private”.
- Information Privacy- We expect that our financial information at the bank and the health concerns we discuss with our doctors is confidential. However, anyone can watch what our work-out routines at the fitness center and we expect that a number of people will know what we buy at the store. The act of purchasing is a public act, for which there is no reasonable expectation of privacy.
