Snoopy-Typing-Away-1-CVV14J0D95-1024x768

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 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.

This is a question about where property rights originate. Property rights originate in the ownership of ones mind, extend to the ownership of ones body and thereto the ownership of ones production in the form of property rights.

If that is true [and it is] then the ownership via property of privacy is logical. Someone else cannot invade your right to privacy as it is an invasion of your bodily integrity.

To the question posed, it is not necessarily a question of rights in a utilitarian fashion that must be addressed, rather ‘just’ rights. In the question of privacy with regard to reputation, there are two preliminary questions to be asked: [i] is reputation property [ii] is the invasion of privacy to reputation ‘just’? Clearly the answer to [i] is yes, reputation is the product of labour utilising means to achieve an end, which is property. The answer to the second question is more nuanced. If the reputation is honestly earned, it is just property and an attack upon it is therefore unjust. If the reputation is unjust, then protection of it through the law is unjust. Which is pretty much where the law sits.

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.

If the printed knowledge is incorrect [unjust], there is a breach of privacy [property] and damages should be awarded.

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.

Nor invade the property right held in the ownership of ones body and mind and property derived through Locke’s theory of labour.