Privacy on the Internet

Privacy, the right to an inviolable private life, is one of the most valued and most fragile possessions in modern human society. According to only one of the best-known definitions, privacy is the right to be left alone; the right for every human being to enjoy a space protected by law from arbitrary encroachment, including that of the government. "Every unjustified violation of individual privacy by the state, whatever the means used, must be regarded as a violation of the Fourth Amendment [to the U.S. Constitution—S.S.]," as U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis noted in his famous opinion on wiretapping.¹ Privacy is a fundamental human right, and it has been meticulously studied and analyzed. According to one classification scheme,² privacy can provisionally be divided into four types: privacy of personal data, physical privacy, territorial privacy, and the privacy of communications.