Is Privacy Just About Keeping Things Secret?

If something has already been shared with another person, does it cease to be private? In 1890, Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis responded to photography and press intrusion by describing privacy as a “right to be let alone”. Their concern was not every kind of secret, but protection of personality and private life from unauthorised exposure and interference. Even this early account shows that privacy depends not only on whether someone knows something, but also on how others gain access to and use it.

Contemporary debate offers several further accounts. Control theories emphasise a person’s ability to decide when, how and to whom information is disclosed. Restricted-access theories also cover access to bodies, places and information. Contextual integrity holds that information may properly flow within one relationship while becoming inappropriate when moved outside its governing norms. Sharing live location with family for a pickup, for example, does not amount to consenting to an app using that location for advertising. The information is not absolutely secret, yet privacy can still be violated.

Each account has limits. If privacy means total control, one person might claim unlimited power over how others discuss shared experiences. If privacy means secrecy alone, we miss harms caused when data moves from one context to another. My view is that privacy is primarily a bounded relationship of access. It permits selective closeness, trust and participation, while requiring fresh justification for new uses. Disclosure once is not a permanent surrender of every limit.

https://www.brandeis.edu/library/archives/exhibits/ldb-100/career/privacy.shtml
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/privacy/