Introduction to Privacy

Most Americans believe that privacy, to one degree or another, is an inherent right. While there may be disagreements among persons as to the breadth, scope, and source of the right of privacy it is clear that they believe in such a right. The average person, no doubt, has a “gut feeling” of what is private and what is not. They can easily identify whether something should be considered private. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for judges and lawyers. At least this is the conclusion one can come to after reading how the US Supreme court and others have struggled to define privacy.

Courts have had difficulty dealing with advances in technologies that challenge legal formulations and tests regarding privacy. Lately, the emergence of computers and the Internet as common fixtures of society have continued to push the current state of privacy jurisprudence to its extents. In this paper I will make an attempt to examine: how the current privacy law has developed in response to advancing technologies; where the Federal interpretation has gone astray; and how Washington State’s constitution, can be used to move the law of privacy closer to something that approaches how the persons subject to such laws, actually understand privacy.