AP/SOSC 3365 6.00
Privacy And The Law
Indoor bathrooms only began to appear in ordinary homes in the latter nineteenth century and were not commonplace until the twentieth. Their appearance signified more than just advances in plumbing and house design—they became important markers of a new sense of privacy characteristic of modernity. This new sense of a purely personal realm has given rise to a variety of legal claims about where the boundary should be drawn between the public and the private. If the home is the paradigm of a private space protected under law, does that same protection extend to a vehicle you drive on public streets, or a handbag you carry in public? Alongside these now familiar legal questions are new and, in many ways, more challenging questions about how to conceptualize privacy in the contemporary age of computer-based communications media. The amount of detailed information about individuals who routinely use social media, or who use the internet for communication and searches, or who possess smart phones, is growing at a staggering rate. How can the private be distinguished from the public in these new media? How can privacy rights be asserted for information that has an intrinsically public character? These are some of the questions that will be explored in this course which traces the development of modern notions of legal rights to privacy.