The digital revolution has expanded the ways personal information can be collected, shared, and exploited, yet existing privacy theories often struggle to explain why privacy matters or what exactly its violation consists in. This paper presents the Personal Agential Realm (PAR) theory of privacy. PAR defines privacy as a condition in which others have not accessed one’s personal information within one’s “personal agential realm,” a protected space in which individuals think, communicate, and act as they work out their identities, values, and life goals. This realm is a fundamental condition for pursuing a good life, grounding privacy as a human right. This right entitles individuals to decide who may access their personal information and imposes on others a duty to refrain from unauthorized intrusion. The paper compares PAR to leading access-based, control-based, and rights-derivative theories, showing how PAR better handles contested cases including data anonymization, aggregate inference, and public surveillance.
S. MATTHEW LIAO (Fri,) studied this question.