There Is No Right to Privacy

((this is really a good article to ponder..makes one think----alexis)) 

Don’t get me wrong. I am a BIG fan of Edward Snowden, Bradley Manning, Julian Assange, Daniel Ellsberg and all other whistleblowers who have undermined the legitimacy of the state apparatus. I go further; no one is a greater supporter of these heroic men than me. So when I say there is no right to privacy, this should not be interpreted as in any way a criticism of them. Rather I am attempting to call into account numerous libertarians, all of whom should know better, when they write in support of these magnificent men and say things like: “The liberty of which I write is the right to privacy: the right to be left alone. The Framers jealously and zealously guarded this right by imposing upon government agents intentionally onerous burdens before letting them invade it.”

There is no right to privacy; none at all. It is not a negative right, all of which are supported by libertarian theory; e.g., the right not to be molested, murdered, raped, etc. Rather, the so called right to privacy is a so called “positive right,” as in the “right” to food, clothing, shelter, welfare, etc. That is, it is no right at all; rather the “right” to privacy is an aspect of wealth. As Murray N. Rothbard (The Ethics of Liberty, chapter 16) made clear, there is only a right to private property, not privacy:

 It might, however, be charged that Smith does not have the right to print such a statement, because Jones has a “right to privacy” (his “human” right) which Smith does not have the right to violate. But is there really such a right to privacy? How can there be? How can there be a right to prevent Smith by force from disseminating knowledge which he possesses? Surely there can be no such right. Smith owns his own body and therefore has the property right to own the knowledge he has inside his head, including his knowledge about Jones. And therefore he has the corollary right to print and disseminate that knowledge. In short, as in the case of the “human right” to free speech, there is no such thing as a right to privacy except the right to protect one’s property from invasion. The only right “to privacy” is the right to protect one’s property from being invaded by someone else. In brief, no one has the right to burgle someone else’s home, or to wiretap someone’s phone lines. Wiretapping is properly a crime not because of some vague and woolly “invasion of a ‘right to privacy’,” but because it is an invasion of the property right of the person being wiretapped.


The government, of course, has no right to invade our privacy, since it has no rights at all. It should not exist. Period.  It is an illegitimate institution, since it initiates violence against innocent people. Therefore, it can have no right to do anything. Anything.  A forteriori, the state has no right to privacy, either. And this for two reasons. First, is has no rights of any kind, since it is an illicit institution. Therefore, it cannot have any privacy “rights.” Second, even if it did have some rights, it could not possibly have a right to privacy, since there is and can be no such thing. As a corollary, we need pay no attention to its “secret” classifications, apart of course from pragmatic or utilitarian considerations: Edward Snowden’s personal life has been threatened by these criminals; this evil institution still has a lot of power. But as a matter of deontology, we are free to ignore statist “secret” classifications.

read this entire piece at--  http://www.lewrockwell.com/walter-block/