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32 Conn. L. Rev. 861 (1999-2000)
Privacy-as-Data Control: Conceptual, Practical, and Moral Limits of the Paradigm

handle is hein.journals/conlr32 and id is 877 raw text is: Privacy-as-Data Control: Conceptual, Practical, and Moral Limits of the Paradigm ANITA L. ALLEN* INTRODUCTION Professor Paul M. Schwartz's article, Internet Privacy and the State,' poses two of the most important normative questions contemporary privacy theorists should be asking and attempting to answer. The first question is how, if at all, can we secure meaningful forms of privacy while remaining appropriately accountable to others? The second question is what role, if any, should the state play in the regulation of personal privacy? Professor Schwartz's effort to answer these questions implicitly aims at locating comfortable ground between the polar domains of extreme, unrecon- structed liberalism on the one hand and anti-liberal communitarianism or civic republicanism on the other.2 Schwartz's liberal defines privacy as control over personal information and is biased in favor of private sector self-regulation. His communitarian and republican are deeply skepti- cal of individual privacy and privacy rights as threats to the common good and civic virtue. Schwartz defends an intermediate stance that falls some- where between liberalism and communitarianism. Like a liberal, he ac- cepts privacy as a vital good and civil liberty? However, like a communi- tarian or civic republican, he redefines privacy as what he terms a consti- tutive value.4 Schwartz believes individual privacy protection in some contexts is a paramount public interest, and embraces a degree of state in- tervention to create and reinforce beneficial privacy norms? Thus, his *. A.ka., Anita L A~len-Castellitto, Professor of Law and Philosophy, Unh'ersIO of Pennjyhanla School of Law; JD., Harvard Law School; Ph.D., Universly of Michigan. 1. Paul M. Schwartz, InternetPrivacy and the State, 32 CONN. L. REV. 815 (2000). 2. Professor Schwartz defines his position through a critique of communitarians and republicans, whom he groups together for these purposes, and free market liberals. See Id. at 836. 3. Cf. Pamela Samuelson, A New Kind of Privacy? Regulating Uses of Personal Data In th- Global Information Economy, 87 CAL. L REV. 751, 777 (1999) (assessing the implications of Profes- sor Schwartz's desire to treat data protection as a civil liberty). 4. See Schwartz, supra note 1, at 816. 5. See id. at 816-17.