The Moral Significance of Privacy Dependencies

Abstract

AbstractOften, when we share information about ourselves, we contribute to people learning personal things about others. This may happen because what we share about ourselves can be used to infer personal information about others. Such dependencies have become known as privacy dependencies in the literature. It is sometimes claimed that the scope of the right to privacy should be expanded in light of such dependencies. For example, some have argued that inferring information about others can violate their right to privacy. Others have argued that sharing personal information about yourself that license such inferences can by itself violate the right to privacy. In this paper, we argue that the latter view should be rejected.