Right to Privacy

Right to Privacy refers to the right of an individual or a group of people to seclude themselves or keep information about themselves secret.  

Characteristics
Arguments in favor of Arguments opposing
It provides the right to keep private matters secret.
Right to privacy helps to avoid illegitimate intrusion in individuals' life. Right to privacy make it easier for unacceptable conduct to take place in private.
Can help to restrain actions or policies of powerful entities.
Right to privacy helps to avoide the powerful entities from taking control of every aspect of individuals' life. By restraing the governing entities, privacy may come at the price of certain lack of security.
It limits the ability of governing bodies to manipulate their opponents.
Right to privacy ensures that the opponents of the governing bodies can comfortably operate and challenge the governing bodies. Right to privacy may provide too much comfort to the ill-intensioned opponents and hence may come at a cost of significant loss that could have been potentially avoided.

Related readings on other websites:

Competing Views...

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Edward Snowden: "Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say.", Reddit, May 21, 2015, [URL]
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Bill Gates: "Historically, privacy was almost implicit, because it was hard to find and gather information. But in the digital world, whether it’s digital cameras or satellites or just what you click on, we need to have more explicit rules—not just for governments but for private companies.", September 23, 2013, The annual Clinton Global Initiative meeting, [URL]

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