Year: 2003
Type: article
Abstract: Much has been written about database privacy in the Internet Age, most of it \ncritical of the way in which the American legal system addresses the issue. In this article, \nProfessor Nehf maintains that one of the fundamental difficulties with the public policy \ndebates is that information privacy is often discussed as a typical consumer problem rather \nthan a problem of more general societal concern. As a result, arguments over appropriate \nresolutions reduce to a balancing of individual rights against more general societal interests, \nsuch as increased efficiency in law enforcement, government operations or commercial \nenterprise. Although privacy scholars discussed the "societal value" of information privacy in \nthe 1960s and early 1970s, the concept was not fully developed. More recently, political \ntheorists have revived the idea and argue the importance of recognizing privacy as a societal \nnorm. Professor Nehf adopts a functional analysis that compares information privacy to other \nsocietal values, such as environmental protection, and concludes that privacy policy could \ntake a different form if the issue were viewed in this way.
Author: James P. Nehf
Institutions: Indiana University Indianapolis, Indiana University
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2266039914