Should There be a Right to Privacy ?

I have to plead "Guilty": I have not examined the possibility that there should not be.

This article by Norman Siebrasse on the consistently stimulating "Overcoming Bias" website tests my previously unthinking belief. Some extracts:

...the thinness of the arguments that are most often raised in favour of privacy inclines me to look for an explanation of the privacy presumption based on cognitive biases...

I can think of two types of cognitive bias that might lead to the privacy presumption. First is simply the salience bias. We’ve all done something wrong that we would like to keep hidden (well, not me, but most people), and the consequences to us of being caught are far more vivid and easily imagined than are the indirect consequences of better enforcement against everyone else...

A second possibility is that we might have evolved a direct cognitive bias in favour of privacy. Suppose that free flow of information is in fact that the best social policy. This would set up a classic prisoners’ dilemma: the best case overall is if no one keeps information private, but the best case for me is that I keep my information private and everyone else reveals theirs. Since everyone has the same reasoning, everyone elects to keep their information private, even though free flow of information would be substantively desirable.

Interesting stuff, but I still believe in a right to privacy.